Picture Thursday 9: The Iron Orb of the Duergar by Scott Burdick

I had hoped to find a copy of this image without the Dungeon magazine logo, but unfortunately there were none available. In fact there were no high resolution images of this cover at all, and I had to scan in my own copy. Fortunately there’s not a lot of clutter, so I thought the image was still worthy of posting.

As I grow older, I find that I’m more drawn to painted artwork such as this piece by Scott Burdick, as opposed to more intricately detailed digital art in the style of Wayne Reynolds (who created the artistic style which Pathfinder uses in all of its books.) Which isn’t to say that Reynolds’ work isn’t remarkable, but I wonder if my mind doesn’t just interpret the abundance of detail as clutter, and ignore it. While here, there is a distinct lack of fine detail, my mind instead fills in the blanks. Take the woman’s face for example. Did you notice she doesn’t have one? I didn’t, until I spent several minutes examining the picture.

The painting has a lot going for it aside from simply style, too. I love the way so much space is given to the environment, while the characters occupy perhaps 25% of the space. The room doesn’t have a lot to look at within it, but you get a sense of the cavernous depths which these adventurers find themselves in. And, as always, I love depictions of faceless characters on an adventure. Fantasy art is filled with character portraits and remarkable creatures. It’s a little more rare to find scenes like this where the characters aren’t the focus–their adventure is.

Picture Thursday 8: "Cultural Misunderstandings 2" by 'hibbary

The very talented ‘hibbary of DeviantArt graciously allowed me to share this short comic with you all. She has some fantastic artwork available for viewing, and I strongly encourage anyone who enjoys fantasy art to check out her gallery. Much of what she has posted there is actually much more technically impressive than this. Colors, shading, all of that jazz. But I thought this comic (one of several exploring the relationship between LotR’s Gimli and Legolas) was a particularly good fit for Picture Thursday, because it eloquently demonstrates a point which I myself have tried to express before. Albeit with a less elegant approach.

Namely, that every fantasy race is going to have a unique and profoundly different worldview from that of humans.

‘hibbary makes the same point earlier in Cultural Misunderstandings 1, but I preferred this piece. Maybe it’s because the joke is better executed.

Or…ya know. Maybe it’s something else.

D&D Christmas Carols: Dark Lord Wenceslaus

This requires some explanation.

Much as I’d love to devote all of my attention to creative endeavors, I, like most other college dropouts turned artist, have a day job. Not the worst one in the world, but one that I find to be largely menial and uninteresting. Part of this job involves spending a lot of time in a warehouse, alone. I don’t mind the solitude–and in fact I quite like it. It allows me time to think which I might not otherwise find on a busy day. Many of the posts here on Papers and Pencils were conceived while talking to myself as I herd boxes.

Earlier this month, as I often do, I was alternating between humming and singing. This particular day, I was humming my favorite Christmas song: Good King Wenceslaus. It’s a great song which a lot of people, surprisingly, have never heard. Unfortunately, I only knew the first verse of the song, and I wasn’t even sure I had all the words to that right. So at my first opportunity, I printed a copy of the lyrics off the Internet, and began to teach myself the song.

Since committing the entire song to memory, I’ve sung it a lot. A lot. I’ve been telling people that my girlfriend is visiting her parents for Christmas right now, but in truth she said she needed to get away from my constant recitation of that damned song. And as with anything, if you repeat it enough, it starts to sound weird. About a week ago, the way I sang the first line; “Good king Wenceslaus looked down,” placed an unusual amount of emphasis on the “Good.” Doing so made it sound as though this was the good King Wenceslaus. As opposed to the not good one.

The idea tickled my fancy. On the spot I began to compose “Bad King Wenceslaus.”

You may wish to turn back now.

I’m going to warn you: a girl I liked once told me I had a nice singing voice. And despite the fact that no one who wasn’t trying to get into my pants has ever agreed with her, I still have a completely unjustified confidence in my singing ability. Flee while you can.

Picture Thursday 7: Ogam Thorton by Gus L.

Having friends with artistic talents has ups and downs. The downside is that I hate them for making my shitty doodles look even worse by comparison. The upside is that they still love me, and they make me lovely drawings like this one. Oh so many lovely drawings.

This particular piece is from Gus L., esteemed author of Dungeon of Signs, and my adventuring companion in the Vaults of Pahvelorn. During many of our games, Gustie plays while working on drawings. At the start of a recent game, he asked that everyone in the party write a brief description of their character’s appearance. He then proceeded to sketch each of our characters during the course of a 3 hour game session. There were four of us there that day, which means Gustie completed each of these sketches in less than an hour. That may not be too impressive to someone who does a lot of art themselves, I don’t know. But it’s damned impressive to me. And Ogam looks way cooler than I ever imagined!

I highly recommend you check out Gustie’s blog, for more of his art, his play reports, and generally awesome bloggie goodness.

Picture Tuesdays 6 – Castle Grayskull by Ralph MaQuarrie

When it comes to fictional worlds, first and foremost in my affections will always be Star Wars. I can’t even number the ways in which that universe has shaped my artistic sensibilities, and my life as a whole. And when it comes to the men and women who gave that world life, few can be given more credit than artist Ralph McQuarrie.

Ralph McQuarrie rarely worked on fantasy projects, though I was able to find a few pieces he did relating to He-Man and the Master’s of the Universe. (A franchise others are far more familiar with than I). I particularly like this sketch of Castle Grayskull. The way that the castle is largely generic in construction, with only the skull shaped entrance to mark it as unusual, is very interesting to me.

Picture Thursday 5: The Chaos Curse by Jeff Easley

I’ve long felt that the Cleric Quintet is an underrated series, from a writer who gets a lot of undue flak simply because he’s popular. (Protip: disliking something popular does not make you cooler than the people who like it).

I have several of the books in this series from the first print run, and I’ve always loved the art for the series’ final installment, The Chaos Curse. If you play D&D, you’ve probably seen Jeff Easley’s art at some point. The guy joined TSR in the early ’80s, and continued to produce official D&D art up to at least D&D 3.5.

His official website has some very nice, easy-to-browse galleries.

Picture Thursday 4: Skeleton on an Altar by Courtney Campbell

I love this piece. Tabletop art tends to focus on characters and monsters. Occasionally you might get a sketch of an item, but most of the time there’s some kind of living creature at the focus of the image. And while that’s all well and good, I think illustrating environments is extremely underrated. As GMs, its our job to describe environments in a way which will paint a picture in the player’s minds. So it makes sense for us to imagine and share pictures of the types of environments we need to describe, doesn’t it? How would you describe this room in a way which is short enough to hold the players attention, but still covers all of the important details?

You can see more of this artist’s work on his tumblr. He also maintains a an OSR blog which you may have heard of.

Picture Thursdays 3: Green Dragon by Larry Elmore

A couple years back, my local comic book store came into possession of a large number of oldschool Dungeons and Dragons modules. I bought as many of them as I could afford, and have thoroughly enjoyed owning them, reading them, adapting them, and basking in their marvelous artwork. I’m sure a lot of that art will end up as part of this series eventually if I continue with it, but this one holds a special place in my heart. Among the modules was an early D&D supplement, the Player’s Companion: Book One by Frank Mentzer. This is the cover. The artist is Larry Elmore, whose artwork you’ve probably seen before. Dude is prolific.

Where to begin? The sweeping landscape in the background speaks to me of endless adventures and armies charging across the planes. The castle at the end of the long road gives me a feeling of power. For some reason I imagine the knight is the lord of that castle, and he’s here defending his lands with his own sweat and blood. The dragon is just perfect. It maintains what I would consider the ‘traditional’ dragon anatomy, while also appearing sleek and limber enough that it isn’t just a lumbering colossus as dragons are often portrayed.

And then there’s that sword. What the hell is up with that sword? That is some serious Cloud Strife shit right there, right in my oldschool D&D! I like to imagine that the sword was left on earth by a defeated angel, and the knight’s purity of spirit allows him to wield it even though it is far too large for him.

Picture Thursday 2: Battle with Trogdolytes by Darlene Pekul

Darlene Pekul is responsible for a lot of artwork in AD&D. In addition to the iconic unicorn which graces the inside cover of the Dungeon Master’s Guide, Darlene’s loopy signature shows up a few dozen more times elsewhere in the book, as well as on other products from that period. And while her personal website is down as of this writing, it had a lot of cool stuff on it when it was online. Hopefully it comes back soon. [Edit: It is back online, and you should check it out!]

I particularly like this piece from the back cover of In Search of the Unknown, because I love snapshots of adventuring parties. These characters aren’t iconic. You don’t know who they are, why they’re fighting Troglodytes, or even what class they belong to. The characters have no established personalities or traits. They are expressed entirely through this piece of artwork, which gives the viewer a lot of leeway to imagine.

I also like that the majority of party members in this piece appear to be women. Rock on, Darlene!

Picture Thursday 1: Floating Keep by Teddy Wright

I’ve often wanted to find something I could do on Tuesday and Thursday each week. I’ve had a lot of various ideas in the past year, but ultimately none of those ideas worked out. This, however, seems simple enough that I can keep up with it easily, and interesting enough that my readers ought to enjoy it. Every Thursday I’ll post artwork which inspires me in my writing or my tabletop gaming.

I’m not sure if this will be popular or not, so consider it a trial run for now. Let me know how you feel about it so I know whether I should keep it going, or drop it as a regular feature.

This piece is from Teddy Wright, who does a lot of fantasy artwork. In early 2010 he did a few different pieces like this one, where everything is a stark contrast of black and white. I’ve featured his work on Papers & Pencils before, but with the start of this series I wanted to do so again. I’ve come to really appreciate simple black-and-white paintings, and this one (along with the Succubus linked above) are among the most memorable pieces I’ve encountered.

If you have any ideas for artwork or artists I could post on Picture Thursday, you can let me know in the comments, or send me an email. And, incidentally, if I’ve posted your artwork and you’d like me to remove it, just let me know! I want to respect your rights to your work.