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The original art for Wakandan Royal Guard is now available for purchase in the shop

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As a kid I thought I might want to be a comics artist but life pulled me more towards fantasy. So being able to work with Marvel characters a little through my association with Magic: the Gathering has been a wonderful turn of events.

In this case, as with my portrayal of The Amazing Spider-Man, my artwork featured an homage, this time to an iconic cover by artist Clayton Henry. Actually, it turns out that this was literally the painting I did following the Spider-Man painting. I painted these back-to-back. It was a nice few months, and although it was a little tough not getting to do my own portrayal of both of these, as I was gated by the homage requests, nevertheless I had some leeway to update and adjust both compositions, which I took the opportunity to do. That Ant-Man released some 9 months after Spider-Man was just one of those weird quirks of schedule.

The second painted piece I did for the set was Wakandan Royal Guard. Here I was asked to portray T’Challa behind a phalanx of his Guard, who by joining up effect a magical barrier. I indicated this by having the designs on their shield glow, glowing triangular runes passing between them.

There was definitely a desire to have this piece not be about Black Panther, which is understandable since any main hero is likely to dominate any image featuring other non-name characters. So by not lighting up the patterns on his suit, removing his mask, and pushing him back in the composition, I sought to get him in, but out of the composition in a way that balanced the needs here.

A tricky piece for sure, when you have multiple figures, but also their big shields, the magic effect, but also show some of the guards, but they’re guarding so focus on the shields, and put T’Challa in, but don’t let him be the focus either, and can there be some of Wakanda in the distance!?

Apologies, but I am unable to show process images or preliminary studies for Universes Beyond projects.

I had just come off a long, hectic string of work for the book, “The Spider Who Saved Christmas.” That work was rendered in warm and cool grays, then scanned and finished digitally. Having just wrapped up that project on a Monday, it was going to be time to transition back to my usual full-color painted work. But I wondered what I could do with that idea once more, for myself.

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While our time in Italy wasn’t vacation for me, and I continued working, we did make a point to see some things of course. When I received this commission and did some reading about Theodoric, I proposed that we take a short trip to Ravenna. This wasn’t strictly necessary of course, but mind you that online images and video of every place in the world were far more limited in 2005. I figured we’d enjoy the city while I scouted out reference.

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--Fritz Leiber, “The Unholy Grail”

When I began reading Leiber’s classic series of sword-and-sorcery earlier in 2010, it was with an eye towards finding something to paint. There hadn’t been a lot of attention devoted to Lankhmar in awhile, and I prefer to play in quiet corners. This description, from The Gray Mouser’s introduction story, was perfect. In that story, some of his past was discussed which left a lot of hope that some of the psychological turmoil of trying to ride between dark and light would be a feature of the stories as they went on. It became the basis of designing this illustration, supplementing it with other details from the first two books.

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Today’s painting is available for purchase in the shop

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In 2013, I picked up doing a few small still life paintings again, which I hadn’t done since probably college. While casting about for things to paint, I glanced over at the Wii Remote that was by the couch. This was just about 4 feet from my easel in the tiny studio apartment we were living in, in NYC. I scratched my chin thoughtfully and probably uttered, “Hmm….”

I was using the black one with the Motion Control Plus improvements, but had my stock white one as well, so I fished it out and started thinking why not paint these? The 7–8 prior still life pieces had already established a couple of things for me, including that I really liked portraying objects at actual size, perceptually. As well, my handling on these was a good bit looser than my illustration work.

I grabbed my camera and set out to lighting these and playing with some angles. I used an eraser to help prop these up, and laid them out. Finally, I went to work. It was also very enjoyable marrying my favorite pastime with my work. It was a nice change of pace after a few fruits and vegetables, as well.

Upon finishing, I scratched my chin thoughtfully again and probably uttered, “Hmm….” and then considered that this might be enjoyable past doing one. And so I did. I hadn’t mapped out the shape and scope of what this series would be, the name Hearts for Hardware hadn’t occurred to me yet, but this painting ended up forking my productivity in the years since. It was the inspiration of the moment to render out my “g” sigil, which I’ve used since 2003, in a pixelized version. All my H4H paintings are signed thusly.

I routinely catalog my works, and indicate the catalog number on the back of each painting. I’ve done this since just before I started working professionally in 1994. Most of my works are numbered along a Roman numeral scheme. Most still life paintings, being fairly quick and a mostly separate body of work, have their own numbering system. My H4H series likewise exists with its own cataloging enumeration. Naturally, it is in binary.

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The landscape was generally described as gloomy, swampy. They also asked for skulls to be hanging from trees. Here is where the masochism began. Skulls hanging from trees are an ages-old fantasy device used to indicate, “Abandon hope, ye who enter in.” I wasn’t feeling the skulls this time, but they were indicated in the brief.

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Shadowfist was a wild ride, mixing up Kung Fu movies and other sci-fi and action movie tropes. So the assignments could be nearly anything. It felt like the time in general, really, as the number of new games that were appearing were each carving out narrower and narrower niches, but all together, a young illustrator could really find anything they wanted to paint. That certainly narrowed down again over time.

Once again, a taller than necessary piece done for myself. In the magical circlet, in the card you can see 3 small items floating there between his hands, which correspond to three different other illustrations I had done for Shadowfist, including the Red Monk character I discussed elsewhere. These were painted actual size on acetate and stuck to the painting to be photographed, and then removed and discarded. They were part of a request for the illustration that I thought detracted from the final painting, so I decided to leave my final painting without them. I employed this trick a couple of other times in those years, including on two Magic paintings.

Some of the Shadowfist cards were printed in circular frames, and I think in only one case did I try to paint a circular illustration. That was too much trouble, so I just decided to paint out to a rectangle or square and design the crop into the composition. Also, framing circular images was going to be a problem if any of the originals sold. And since I was already used to painting beyond what was necessary, it didn’t feel like a waste.

Here, the nuclear explosion that is about to scorch the earth is reflected in the soldier’s visor.

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With Magic’s Marvel Superheroes set on the horizon, I thought I’d theme out this month’s sketch gallery with a few Marvel heroes I’ve been asked to sketch or alter cards with. Mostly alters. I suppose if artist proofs had been available for the Spider-Man or this set, I’d have been asked for more. Some say this is maybe why artist proofs are not made available for Universes Beyond releases. In any case….

I think this is the only artist proof I’ve done with a Marvel character?

Though a card alteration, it’s a full-art replacement, so it functions like an artist proof painting, and I’m generally up for this as it’s less of a headache than getting an alteration over only part of a card. I loved this idea of painting X-Men’s Phoenix as Millais’ Ophelia painting (commissioner’s concept).

Like so. While occupying less real estate should be easier, as at left, it’s actually tricky. When painted on a foil, it’s quite hard. Technically, the Dance of the Dead alter at right is a full-art-replacement. But the figures are so tiny on the card! So that makes it tricky as well. Remember, a Magic card art box is ~1.5x2”. I do thumbnails at this size. Both of these were fun, though. I did them at events, which I no longer do because I’d rather have spent more time on them, and done them in a more comfortable environment with fewer distractions!

Those were formative years for me as a young artist, and the TSR studio artists were among my early heroes. I copied so many D&D and Dragon Magazine illustrations in pencil, colored pencil, and eventually in early forays into oil and acrylic painting.

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MAY COMMISSIONS
I do not open new commissions until prior ones are completed. I will not take new orders while sitting on old ones!

Painted commissions are rendered in acrylic and/or oil paint on surfaces prepared to accept paint, and varnished using the same materials as for my finished illustrations. Borders are preserved around the image, unprimed, to verify the card was unprinted on back.

You may mail in your already-purchased card when you secure a slot. Let me know on checkout and I’ll provide an address. Please put it in the mail promptly to keep the schedule flowing!

Otherwise, if you secure a commission, you should then go back and purchase the proof you’d like art on, and let me know in the comments on checkout (this will save you time in trying to grab a commission).

HEADS UP: There’s a very good chance I won’t have commissions available again until late July with MagicCon Amsterdam and client work looming.

You can find the full inventory of artist proof cards here.

The public commission this month is one painted proof.

Paid subscribers have access to one black-and-white commission, below, which is now sold out. A paid subscription gets you access to these, the archives and unlocked posts every weekday.

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Early on in discussing this independently published illustrated story, the author communicated his hope that the book would have interior color illustrations. While I would have loved to do a fully painted book with multiple illustrations, such opportunities are rare simply due to the cost, the timelines required, or both. It would not have penciled out here.

While talking over dinner, we got to talking about his love of older, more classic children’s illustrators like Arthur Rackham and the like. I love those illustrators as well, so it was a nice commonality. It also resulted in the proposal that the interior art be done in some sort of style along those lines.

Were I a proficient watercolorist, that might have been the solution outright. But while watercolor can be faster than oils, it isn’t necessarily, although the drying issues are of course absent. The number of times I’ve used watercolor are very few, and usually they involved my cat. It’s a very different medium than oils, and I find it a bit unusual when an artist freely moves between the two. It’s not unheard of, of course, and is certainly impressive. So for me to do the interiors in watercolor might actually have been slower than oils. You do build speed over time and repetitions.

So I decided to make an attempt to create some faux watercolors. I would create fairly detailed drawings, as I might with an actual watercolor, scan them, and then use various tools and tricks to make Photoshop produce a look a bit like watercolor.

That allowed me to produce something faster than usual, in color, and with a watercolor feel.

It was a lot of fun, actually. Certainly I was learning on the job, and there was a bit of upfront experimentation before I could really dive in. The original drawings were done in pencil on bristol. This was the upside to this era of working with independent publishers. Those projects often allowed for lower than usual stakes wherein I could try some things.

What you see is what the description read as. Some Lord of his Estate or whatever is lounging by his fire, seems to have been burning correspondence. He is found deceased, a calling card in the form of a rose left on him. Simple enough, and the sort of image where there aren’t infinite possibilities since many aspects of the image were locked in by the specifics of the assignment.

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So it was fun when Wizards acquired the license and rolled the IP into Magic, even with its reinterpretations of characters and such. I was there for the earlier game, and still around for the more recent one. It turns out that I think I am the only artist who worked on both games!

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This was the last piece I produced for them, and I had taken the opportunity to scale up a little compared to earlier pieces. But my studio was capable of larger still, which I rarely took advantage of in those years.

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I believe that these pieces were going to be cropped to horizontal format, so that this and The Hun were vertical was simply me once again making extra work for myself for no reason. I was working a little larger in this era as well, which I enjoyed. The thumbnails here indicate the standard horizontal crop.

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Interestingly, this still wasn’t the first time I used digital tools on a Magic card, but it was the first time I didn’t use paint or pencil at all.

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Which is a shame because it’s one I liked. A number of illustrations I’ve done for the game that I liked ended up on cards that rarely saw play. And inversely, a disproportionate number of cards I wasn’t happy with ended up being evergreen!

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I’ve mentioned elsewhere that I’ve used Canson Mi-Teintes paper a lot, starting in Jr. High school actually. I’ve used it for drawings, preliminary studies for illustrations, and even glued to masonite for painting. However, I stopped using that method some years back now. Regardless, over time I accumulated odds and ends, which I trimmed down into mostly ~6x8” sheets, and these were my primary paper for doing these studies at the American Museum of Natural History, in NYC. It’s a good size, and insured I wouldn’t be there all day working on one thing.

As I was running out of these extras, I picked up a pad of Canson sheets, in multiple colors, all of which were ones I’d use anyway. Canson comes in two textures, depending on the side of the sheet--smoother and orange-peel. Since 8th grade, whenever I’ve used Canson, I used the smoother side, which still has a nice tooth. The orange-peel side was way too textured, it seemed, to do any detailed work on. So imagine my surprise when the Canson pad had the orange-peel side face-up in the pad. It seems that’s the side they think I should be working on! Needless to say, I took to tearing pages off and drawing on what I now know is the, “Back side.”

I usually carried a selection of papers with me, and a pencil case full of drawing tools. As I considered what I was about to draw, I’d pull out the paper and tools I felt were appropriate for capturing whatever it was. Since I was working on toned paper some of the time, vs. always white (which I used in my Figure Drawing in that era), I included pastel pencils in my kit. I was using Faber-Castell’s Pitt Pastel line, which come in a full palette range and can hold a point decently well. They’re smudgeable, but not so much that you are afraid to breathe on them.

The Andean Condor is massive, its wingspan could easily have warranted a page thrice the width. My main purpose for drawing it, however, was to practice the wing portion pictured here, in preparation for an illustration. For things which I want to study in more detail, I still often default to pencil, since it has the finest point of my dry media and is still the thing I’m most accustomed to, having used it since before kindergarten.

The transition from 2d, pixel-based gaming to 3d, polygonal-based graphics was a rough one. It opened up a lot of new horizons, and the world of videogames is richer for it. That it so aggressively tried to end 2d gaming, was unfortunate, as if we couldn’t just add to the good things we had with more good things.

What was unfortunate was that, in my opinion, first generation 3d graphics were ugly. Even at the time, it felt like we’d gone back to the 2d equivalent of 1982 or so. So while there was a lot of artistry in the late era SNES/Genesis generation, things felt primitive again for this generation. And so I blamed Sony for a lot of that, and didn’t really engage this system much at the time, when it released in 1995. It took me until Ocarina of Time more than three years later for me to warm up to this generation of games.

But the original Playstation was a beast, and newcomer Sony quickly became dominant in the hardware field. And over the years, as I sampled back through games, I could see why. Watching my younger brother get into Resident Evil 2 back then helped, also.

The black disc media Sony used for these games was visually compelling, and while only the Nintendo Gamecube opted for any other visually distinct disc media, these to me definitely had a feel of their own and set the system apart. Therefore, I chose to paint the four-disc Final Fantasy VIII discs as part of this series—the multi-disc setup of some of the larger games also being a hallmark of the system. I generally have not included paintings of cartridges and such as part of this series, and less so for limited edition prints, owing to the murkier area of copyright as the artwork on the labels creates a problem. I have on a couple of occasions created paintings of game media, but they haven’t been part of my limited edition offerings.

When creating these images of often floating objects, I usually take a bunch of photos and essentially green-screen myself or props out of the images.