Balor and friends

This is a cover for a Dungeons and Dragon Book. I was going to portrait a bunch of different demons having Balor as the leader of the pack. As you can see from the forst sketch his horns and face has undergone a lot of changes. Also the sketch shows how searching I am in this stage. I need a lot of trying lines to shape the form. I am not one of those who sees it in his mind first and then more or less print it out on paper ( Would be cheaper I guess ).
The colors are some of the brigthest I have ever used and the contrast almost hurt my eyes when I first started blocking in the colors. Paul Bonner, with whom I share a studio, walked by and exclaimed: "Oh my God", when he saw my first couple of layers. I do not think he meant it in a good way so turned it down a notch.

Sea of Blood

This is a cover I did for Fantasy Flight Games. I did a million or at least 40 thumbs trying different angles and setups before settling into this version.

The irony of it is that the final thumb that I liked took less than 10 minutes, where as the rest of them had me sketching and sketching for days. I try to convince myself that they are necessary and lead up to tha final good one. But boy do I wish I could just skip all the ugly ones and get right to the gold in one shot.

When I have sketched the details and all onto the board I ink the whole thing and greytone it in black acrylic, thereby establishing the values of the painting. the greytone painting is scanned and i print out a couple of copies to do colorroughs on.

The painting process is a fast process. I used only three days on this and the whole of one day was spend only on the barbarian. Him being the focal point and hero.

This is one of the paintings I will send in to Spectrum and I cross my fingers that it will get through.

Borderland Ranger

This here is one of my magic illustrations that went through a lot before turning into the version that was printed. I submitted a sketch as you can see here. It had all the dynamic and action that the artdirector was asking for. He told me it should look like an ”Aragorn of Magic the Gathering”, and I kind of aimed at that, just made him a little younger.

Somewhere in the painting process he turned into an Erold Flynn/Selda-pancy in a superhero-like costume. Jeremy – the artdirector – was not going for it. Not at all. So I tried to change it digitally and failed, like all the other times when I try to do major changes on the computer. In the end I reasoned myself into painting on top of Erold Flynn and kind came up with this more muddy leather weatherworn costume, thinking I got nothing to loose. To those who work digitally it might not be a big deal, but I tell you, there is nothing cool about me when painting on top of another painting. I have no Idea if I am messing thi sup for good or actually doing something nice...not in the first half an hour that is. Painting this way is slow. The correction took me the same amount of time as the whole first painting did.

The face got a redo and well...in the end I do not think any of the first ranger was left intact. Except for the strap on the shoulder pjece.

Armored Ascension

This is one more of my illustrations for Magic the Gathering 2010. The fist sketch I did was kind of ok but even when it got approved I still felt it I could do better. To me it was seen too much from the side, the knight was too relaxed and even a little goofy. So I tried to pump up the action. It resulted in the next sketch that i really felt had all the first one lacked. Jeremy agreed and I painted the illustration. I have seen so many digital artist using the burn tool to make it look like a light source is burning away at the edge of things and I wanted to do the same but with paint. I am not sure the result is all I aimed for. Next time I will do the effect first in computer on a color study and then copy it directly in acrylic.

Damn; I like the sketch better than the final. The horse should have been white.

Territorial Baloth

This here illustration is a rare success for me.

I did about five sketches of the Baloth charging forward and they all seemed less aggressive than the picture I had in mind. While cooking dinner I got a glimpse of a solution where the beast had the head held low and I did the thumb while the stew was simmering on the stove. I took a chance and sent it as it were to Jeremy, the artdirector at Wizards, hoping that he could make heads and tail of it. I was actually a little embarrassed having sent such a loose sketch. Having seen some of the other sketches that my fellow artist at magic submits I knew I was way beyond blurred sketching leaning on stick figure...But Jeremy liked the action and trusted me to go on.

So I simply transfered the thumb to a board and did all the detail - well most of the drawing actually - on the board. I have tried for years now to cut the stages of sketching and keeping the drawing fresh and impulsive while jumping directly from composition to final transferring. The rare thing for me is to actually succeed in cutting away the sketching and to seemingly effortlessly do a nice drawing almost from scratch and then proceed to the first layer of paint. If you compare the thumb and the final the bare silhouette is almost identical. I just added details.

I masked out the beast and did the background in coarse strokes and washes of thin acrylic. I use an airbrush to mist the wet paint with water, so that it doesn´t dry up too fast. That way I can control a glazing more precise, I think.

The mouth of the beast was inspired by Jason Chans Malfegor card.

The blood around the mouth was something that I added last because I thought the picture needed some color contrast instead of becoming to monochromatic.

Goblin Trailguide

This is one of the few cards I did for Zendikar Magic the gathering. I was really trying to do a detailed and rich background without having it confuse the figure. I always mask out the figure with frisket film to keep the main figure clean. It is always tense, when I take of the film.

The first sketch was kind of too nice. Jeremy Jarvis who is the great art director at Wizards, told me to watch out if it became too comical. My background has always been in comics, but doing traditional fantasy I am always aware of not doing it too comic-like. So when he said that I went back to the desk and changed it. I submitted a new sketch and got good to go.

The transferring look like this before I add greytones.

The final has a few things i like: the blanket he has on the backpack is only colored by the first wash. I kind of like that. The face is almost all done very transparent.

Flockformer

Here is a magiccard illustration. I was asked to do a owl man wizard with a mirror staff. 

I did 2 versions and the art director Jeremy Jarvis said I could choose one myself. He liked both of them. 

The colors is my favorite combination. red and orange and purple. All of it balanced with grey.

Much to my own disliking I did the mirrored faces in the staff digitally. If the original had been bigger I would have tried to paint it with brushes.