Fantasy sketch.

Not sure where this came from but it was fun.

Rest of the Best

Here are the last few images from Mark Charke's Chronomancer RPG. I hope you like em.

I missed the update yesterday so you get two today. More of the RPG work I've been doing lately. A friend asked me the other day how I've been able to do so much work lately and I've got an easy answer. I've been getting paid. Yes, all the rumors you've heard about money being a good motivator are true.

Queen Isabella

Ohhh, look at the pretty lights.

Here is the second illustration from Mark Charke's Chronomacer RPG of the eight I did.

Some Published Work

I've just finished some work on Mark Charke's RPG entitled Chronomancer, Time Travel for Everyone. I did a number of pieces and I'm going to post one of them a day for the next 8 days. Hopefully, people will come back over and over. (I can dream, right?) Anyway, Mark was fantastic to work with and I had a ton of fun doing these. Run out and buy his RPG today.

The piece below is probably my favorite of all the work I did for him. All the pieces were done in photoshop with a little big of painter mixed in on a few. The idea was for each illustrations to reflect a certain time period.

"The Dragon's Ruby"

Another personal piece. I ended up learning a lot on this piece and doing a few things I haven't done in the past. First, I paid much more attention to my edges, focusing on crisp sharp edges in my foreground, especially where I wanted to focus my viewer's eyes. In contrast I used a lot of similar values in the background without very many sharp edges. Many artists try to take a shortcut and just make it blurry trying to reproduce what the human eye does but I've found using value and edge control does a much better job without the distraction of something being fuzzy.

I also used a little technique where I paint 95% of the image in grayed out neutral colors but in key areas I pop a local value. The local value is the true value of an object unaffected by surrounding light. Since this turns out to be a color of much higher saturation it works well to add volume to things as well as pop the color. You might notice it a bit on the dwarf's face and the green of his shirt around his shoulders. You have to be careful where you place them though. Local color usually only shows up right where your shadow and halftone meet.

I hoped I haven't bored anyone with my ideas here but I think an artist should never stop learning and I find that by explaining some of the methods behind the choices I make I cement the techniques and ideas more firmly in my brain.