Pathfinder

The red dragon smashing the adventures is for a Pathfinder cover for Paizo Publishing. 

I always enjoyed drawing situations from roleplaying games. Being a devoted roleplayer myself I draw from experiences via first hand knowledge. 

Well in this painting I wanted the heroes to be in serious trouble. The female has been thrown from the balcony and the fighter is down and burning...but I have left them some hope, since the sword of the man at arms is jutting out from the neck of the dragon. Who knows if it is a mortal wound?

The somewhat simple palette was chosen because of the paper I was painting on. For some reason I used a sheet I got left and thought it was the same thing I usually used, but when laying in the first layer, it felt totally different and kind of soaked into the surface in a whole other way than what I had imagined. So I took it from there and used a more thin way of painting. Kind of like a watercolor way. 

had I known I would have left some of the ornaments in pencil instead of inking them first.

the sketch is a scan of the board as it looks right before I start painting. 

Priest

I got assigned to do 6 covers in a row for Paizo Publishing. Before me they had used Wayne Reynolds and Steven Prescott, and I am a huge fan of both of them. So I really had to up it up a notch to be able to compete with those guys. 

The theme of the covers are a main figure and a widescreen illustration

 behind the figure. 

Here is the steps of the illustration for the main figure:

1

I start out with a sketch roughly done and focused on the face and the expression. 

2

Then i clean up the sketch and add the details. in this case a holly book, a sabre and strips of holly scripture hanging from his hands. I do a tonal study in Photoshop and submit it to the art director. 

3 

The final is done in acrylics on paper.  

Retaliator Griffin

For a while I had gotten tired of the way I showed light. I had gotten into a way of always doing rim-light in the same way every time. So I wanted to do a picture that should mirror a more naturalistic light-source but still wanted to keep the rim-light. ( I think it creates a nice 3d feeling )

So this is me in a more updated version when it comes to light:

I was heavy influenced by a painting of James Gurney and more or less stole the color-palette. 

The reason I think this is one of my best card illustration is because the silhouette is so clearly readable and it does very well in a small size. 

As you can see on the sketch I like to keep it fairly simple and not too detailed and done. That way I keep some interesting parts, like background and ornaments and stuff for the final version and do not just color a finished transfered drawing. Paul Bonner was the first one to teach me that, and I thought he was crazy at the time. Now I see that the final result gets more spontaneous that way, and I have tried, ever since, to sort away the fine- sketching part and instead go straight from thumb to drawing directly on the board.

SPECTRUM 16

I got in! and I am so very glad. The thing is, you do not know how many and which picture got in: Your name is on a list; that is it.

But I am hopeing it will be this one: 

It is a painting I did for Fantasy Flight Games. 

"Wren´s Run Vanquisher"

This was one of my first magic card illustrations and one that I am really proud of. It has not been used until recently so I have not been able to show it before, but doing so now, feels good.

I struggled with the face a lot, because I wanted to get away from my usual heroesqe type and tried for a more believable figure. The face should look like a person more than a steriotype. 

The small flask he has hanging around his neck, is sopposed to contain the Moonglove extract with which he has poisoned the weapons; hence the card ability "Deathtouch".

Inthe sketch you can see that the wing-like armor did not make it to final. 

I just visited Irene Gallo at her office at the Flat Iron Building in New York. She actually was in a corner office and it was litterally filled to the brim with originals. She had em in stacks, on the wall and even in the hallway. 

Boartusk Liege

Boartusk Liege is another one of my new magic card illustration. It was difficult to get both the rider and the steed equally detailed in the ususal format ( 40x25cm ) so this one I did on watercolor paper stretched up on board. 

I did a lot of sketches of the giant Boar, most of them too naturalsitic. I found that when they looked to much like a real animal it did not seem dangerous enough compared to the Boggart.