Today's piece of spot art is the Sceffe Goddess of Death and Rebirth Bell. This relates to the Belled Kreep section of the book, and Reginald and Ethra will make mention of it. I can not say too much more without giving some things away, so I will leave it at that.
You may have heard by now that we lost Peter Mayhew earlier this week. For most of us, Peter is interchangeable with the character he brought to life in Star Wars, Chewbacca. It is fair to say that Chewbacca is Peter Mayhew and Peter Mayhew is Chewbacca. I had the wonderful opportunity to meet Peter several times over the years. The first being when I worked at a comic shop in the early/mid-90s. Back then you could have actors from Star Wars come to your shop to do appearances and signings. I, of course, got my Chewbacca figure signed. Back then the signatures were free. Peter was quick with a story and a kind word. I don't often meet people that are taller than me, but Peter was a full foot taller than me, and it was quite the experience to be around someone so large. It was easy to see why Wookiees are so formidable. In the years since then, Peter has been a guest at various events I was working or was a guest at myself. He remained a singular figure until the end.
Since becoming an artist, I had the opportunity to illustrate Chewbacca twice for the Fantasy Flight Star Wars games. It meant a lot for me to take on the challenge of painting Chewie since he holds a special place in our household. I did all that I could to capture Peter and Chewie in my paintings. In the end, I think the second painting was a better likeness, but who am I so say. It was an honor to paint Chewbacca, and I hope I did the character justice.
We lost a legend this week, but we did not loose Chewbacca. He will always be with us, no one is ever really gone. Joonas Suotamo has picked up the torch and has been doing a great job filling Chewies shoes.
Here are the two illustrations of Chewbacca that I created for the Fantasy Flight games.
File this under better late than never. Last week I finally shared the process that went into making the Festering Mummy painting for Magic the Gathering. Today I have for you the Art of Amonkhet Book that features the Festering Mummy. This came out in 2017 if I remember correctly, and of course, now that we are approaching mid-2019 I am sharing it. This is the second Art of Magic the Gathering I have had my work featured in. It is a gorgeous book filled with beautiful art, and I highly recommend anyone interested in seeing Magic art printed larger than a trading card to pick one up. Enough of my yammering, here are some images related to all of this.
The Art of Magic the Gathering - Amonkhet
Festering Mummy
Here again is the full art for the Festering Mummy in all its mummy glory, one last time.
Today I have for you an overdue post about the process and steps that went into a Magic the Gathering piece of mine that I first shared with you way back in April of 2017, the Festering Mummy. This was the first opportunity to create a self-portrait on a Magic card, and I had a lot of fun working on it. To start things off, here is the final art for Festering Mummy.
As with all of my pieces I began with a photo shoot of reference to get my head around the physicality of the piece, composition, and lighting. Dear Wife took many a silly photo of me being a mummy. Once the photo shoot was completed, I got to work on a series of thumbnails that distilled my ideas down to something usable. Many of these I was excited to work on.
As you can see option 'B' was the winner. I was putting my money on 'A,' 'D,' and 'E,' but it was not meant to be. There was concept work in the style guide for this set of Magic that depicted mummies without arms. I was fascinated by that and had wanted to do a mummy that was armless but still a danger with its mouth. Maybe another day. Now that I had an approved thumbnail it was time to work on the final drawing.
This drawing came together quickly and easily. You can even watch the drawing being created with this handy dandy time-lapse video I shot while working on this set. Now you can watch and learn all my drawing secrets.
With a finished drawing, it was time for the tonal study for the piece where I work out the lighting and values. Not much more to add. It is just the heavy lifting of figuring out the painting.
Now that all the prep work was completed and I had a little bit of an idea of what I was going to do with this piece it was time to paint. This piece came together quickly and was a straight forward painting. A relatively isolated figure on a low definition background. No horror stories to share on this one, it was only a matter of putting in the time working to get it completed.
And with that, the painting was completed. There were no edits or revisions with this piece, and it was approved after submission. Here again, is the final art of the Festering Mummy as well as the production card.
I have not been posting a much about The Grand Bazaar of Ethra VanDalia as of late. I have been so busy working on it that it has been hard to make the time to also post on my progress. I am in the middle of the last push with the writing, things are finally coming together and taking shape on that front, and I am so excited to finally see the pieces falling into place. I am also making quick work of the remaining spot art pieces for the book. In the end, I realized I needed a lot more illustrations than initially planned, but they are coming together unexpectedly quickly, so I will not complain. All this aside, I feel it is well past time to start sharing more art from the book, and what better to share then the spot art I have been working on!
Today's piece of spot art is the Iishlukmaw Ritual Statue. This relates to the Aberrant Stilter section of the book, and Ethra will make mention of it. I can not say too much more without giving some things away, so I will leave it at that.
I have updated the available Magic the Gathering original drawings over on my store. A couple of pieces were missing. In celebration of getting everything updated, I will be offering a 20% discount on all of my original Magic the Gathering drawings until April 27th. Use code MagicMonsters at checkout to get the discount. Head over to my store to take advantage of this limited-time offer!
Here are all of the drawings currently available, with links to each drawing on the store.
