Monstermanual 2

This here is my very first cover for Dungeons and Dragons. The book is: Monster Manual 2.

I still remember christmas 1984 when a friend of mine invited me to play this game he just got for christmas, and I killed my first Rust-monster. Back then, the illustrations inside the book and on the cover, was the only visual reprecentation of the world and the stories that emerged from our minds...and they were magical. I decided that, when I got grown up I would do illustrations like these. I would be Larry Elmore, Keith Parkinson and jeff Easly. 

Well I guess I just grew up right now then.

This cover was quite a challenge. it is one thing to make a monster look cool, but it is a great deal more difficult when the anatomy is weird like with the Demogorgon. He has 2 baboon-heads, feet and legs of a lizard and split tentacles from the elbow and down. And a reptile tail. 

When doing the thumb I constantly entangled the tentacles. There is a lot going on there. So I focused on getting the shapes of the arms look tight and interesting and the rest followed from there.  In the thumb I submitted I did not even concentrate on the background or much else but the figure. As long as I had that in place the rest would just have to not cover him up to much or even draw much attention. 

I got one correction...one that I had not seen coming. The art-director was afraid that it looked like one of the tentacles was caressing his crouch! Jesus! I am from Denmark, Land of Naughty; I should have seen that. I shifted the arms a little and we where back on track. 

Then I roughly transfered the thumb to the board. I do this by increasing the size of the thumb from 5 cm to 50cm on a copy-machine. Then smear the back of the copy with grafhite and transfer it by drawing on top of the line on the side that has the lines. Then I draw the final version directly on the board. This way I still keep the drawing proces fresh and spontainously, instead of transfering a neat and fully detailed drawing. I find that it looses a lot of life if I transfer to much. I ink the the whole thing with a pen and add greytones in acrylic. this here version is the final pencil sketch.

After the greytones I take another copy and do a color rough. This is very important to me. The color rough does 2 things. It lets me be bold and testy. When I am satisfied with a color rough I cheat myself not to be nervous when laying colors on the final painting. I have the color rough to prove that everything works. The second thing is that when doing the color rough I already mixed the colors that I am going to use.

The final painting is 50x40 cm on watercolor board. The orange from the color rough has been toned down a little in Photoshop. I kind of like the rough, and wished I had followed it more accurate.

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.