Elf in Doorway (Dragon #426)

This piece for Dragon Magazine #426 was a challenge! The art description called for the character to be "strongly backlit, but we can still pick out the details of his angular elf features, sheathed sword, leather armor". I may have made the whole thing more difficult by going with yellow backlighting, which is about as strong as it gets. However, it was an interesting challenge. In the first version I completed, the character was darker, more of a silhouette with some features visible. Art director Kate Irwin really helped me find a balance between that silhouette and the backlighting that worked to bring out the character but still met the original goals for the piece.

I've included a detail image so you can see some of work that went into this illustration a little better.

Artwork copyright © Wizards of the Coast. 

Art for Hex: Shards of Fate

Last year, I painted some cards for Cryptozoic Entertainment's new game Hex: Shards of Fate. I've already posted my favorite of the pieces I created for the game. You can see it here: http://www.jimnelsonart.blogspot.com/2013/09/rocket-ranger.html

For several reasons, I needed to keep my approach a little simpler and less detailed on these cards but Hopefully, I was still able to capture a little magic. The dwarves in the game lean toward the cartoony side (which I liked) and toward gray in color. Consequently, I used muted colors and punctuated them with stronger hues where possible. The images went through some color revisions at the end so the large fellow in green is actually wearing a muted red in the final art. I've posted two versions of one of the cards below so you can see how purples and greens were also shifted to red for the final art.

It's a fun challenge to try and simplify what you're doing while still coming up with something that is (hopefully) an effective image!

You can learn more about Hex at: http://hextcg.com/

The Robot Spot

This is just a reminder to visit The Robot Spot, my robot design page on Tumblr: http://robotspot.tumblr.com/

I update it regularly!

Raum

Here's another drawing of a demonic creature created for The Shadowhunter's Codex. I've included the final ink on paper version as well as the preliminary sketch.

Worm Demon

This is another monstrosity I created for The Shadowhunter's Codex by Cassandra Clare and Joshua Lewis! This drawing (and the two I posted on Halloween) was done in india ink on bristol using a crowquil pen.

I've included the sketch as well.

Shadowhunter's Codex

I was privileged to join a number of extremely talented artists who created work for the newly-released Shadowhunter's Codex, an illustrated guide to the world of author Cassandra Clare's series, The Mortal Instruments. I illustrated a number of demons,  monstrous beings, magical objects, etc. for the book and I had a blast working with the book's co-author, Joshua Lewis. Over the next few days, I'll share some of my work from the book here. Since it's Halloween today, it seems appropriate to kick things off with a couple of demonic entities, Abaddon and a creature I whipped up from one of the darker corners of my own imagination. I'm not yet sure what it's called in the book but as I worked on it, I just thought of it as a "mouth demon", a voracious entity that will eat any living thing (but naturally prefers people).

I've included the preliminary sketches as well. Happy Halloween!

The book is available online and at bookstores nationwide. Please check it out!

Mars Attacks!

This summer, I had the pleasure of working on the new set of cards for Mars Attacks! I'm a big fan of the wild, lurid art on the original Mars Attacks trading cards released in the 1950s so this was an exciting project for me. The work in the set is all painted using traditional materials so these illustrations are painted in acrylics. However, the deadline was a bit tight so to save time, I did a bit of digital re-touching and modification in the images above just to pull the final art together.

Stylistically, I tried to paint like myself while also capturing some of the style of the original Mars Attacks art so hopefully, that comes through. The great Earl Norem, who also did some work on the set and who has done some excellent Mars Attacks paintings over the years, was an inspiration as well.

The new set is called Mars Attacks: Invasion and it should be available this month!