Farquhar (2004)
There are portraits, and then portraits
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Working on the Blue Moon game was enjoyable. I wish I recall how long I had for the 9 illustrations, one of which was digitally done. But the portrait-styled character pieces were lower on narrative and heavier on mood, making them a welcome change of pace at the time.
When I say that these were mostly portrait portrayals, I mean that each card focuses on one named character. That character is in their rugged, snowy and rocky environment, each has an owl familiar, and each is doing very little beyond being shown. In this case, it was even moreso a portrait, as I was given a couple of crude snapshots of someone known to the game designer or someone on the design team, and they wanted this character to be him, translated to the long haired, goat-eyed, horned race I was portraying here. So, it’s a bit more portrait-y than others in the set.
Size was one way that I juggled the project, choosing painting sizes that generally were just enough room but not much bigger than strictly necessary. For a couple of pieces where the full figures were shown, those paintings were a bit larger as a result. This one was one of the smaller ones, then.
I found this photo as I began digging into the paintings. When working on a set of paintings--even if they aren’t from the same project--if I can line them up like this and get them all prepped at once, allowing me to spend a good chunk of time just moving from painting to painting, that is my favorite way to work. The stars align every few years either due to a project’s scope or because a few projects happen to overlap in their deadlines where I can group them like this. Times like that are some of my favorites, because actually executing a painting is my favorite part of the process.
The concepting, referencing, doing preliminary studies and stuff vary in enjoyment for me. But doing one or two paintings then having to reset, go back to thumbnails, and starting over is far less enjoyable. Or having to stop mid-painting to work on concepts to get a sketch deadline in, then resuming the painting. I find these other stages are the equivalent of downshifting a car to 1st gear (thumbnails) back to 5th (executing the final). If you’ve ever driven a stick-shift car, you know that constantly going up and down due to traffic or whatever is no fun. But taking it from 1st to 5th straight is enjoyable. Leaving it in 5th and cruising for hours, is the best.
I don’t have a copy of the printed card to show here—if you have one, send me a scan!