Category Archives: Science Fiction

SF pictures from my sketchbook.

Space Pirate – Bo’sun

Earlier this year I was contacted by a Russian fellow who wanted to commission some images of Space Pirates to turn into miniatures. As I had already sketched a few (previous posts) he picked three so this is the first one, a fat bo’sun who has to boss the unruly pirates about. I gave him some alternative weapons and a different head design.
I started with a rough pencil sketch, scanned the sketch in and worked it up in Painter and Manga(Clip) Studio.

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Space Pirate sketches

Boy do I not use this website enough, it needs a right old tidy-up. Anywaaaayy… here’s a page of some sketches from a year or two ago. They’re some ideas I had for that classic SF trope: Space Pirates! I was considering whether to design them as costumes for a film or miniatures for a game.

I incorporated some of the feel of late 1980’s/early 1990’s Citadel Space Pirates by Bob Olley and Bob Naismith (Bob Olley’s Space Pirates Bob Naismith’s Space Pirates) with some traditional piratical gear and other influences like the mercenaries from Riddick (2013), and the Ravagers from Guardians Of The Galaxy(2014) and Vol. 2 (2017). More of these tomorrow!

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Sunken World sketchbook work

These pages are from my sketchbook started in 2013 of various things I was working on. Firstly I have some doodles and notes, some tinkering of my dimensional alchemist’s helmet/mask and an idea I had for a character for my second sunken world adventuring party. He’s an enemy of the Icthyss (fish-men) and their Thulhid overlords and has a fish-man skull, a weapon or two and scaled skin as trophies. The next page has some jolly Space Ork Freebooters as I felt like drawing them and some ideas for a race of smaller humanoids in the Sunken World. There’s also a fish-themed helmet for a sunken world bounty hunter.

Here we have my thief idea and more of the sea ranger/Icthyss hunter and then some ideas for a Thulhid’s experimental mutants and an elite armoured Icthyss.

Space Ork Freebooters are copyright Games Workshop, this is fan art and not intended to annoy GW.

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Colony 87 Awakens!

A new wave of Jon Boyce’s science fiction Colony 87 miniatures are on their way, concept drawings by me and sculpts by the excellent miniature sculptors Mike Anderson and John Pickford. Here’s a link to the Facebook page.
Colony 87 on Facebook

The brief from Jon was to draw a “female, deep space pilot wearing flight suit covered with pockets, cabling, tubing etc. Hard-seal connection at neck, calves and forearms. Helmet is removed and under arm in classic pilot pose. Mature, but attractive – think Helen Mirren. One side of head is shaved.”

My process is to created a reference sheet from all sorts of images I’ve collected from the internet and my own books; ranging from space suit designs by Fred Freeman of ex-Nazi rocket scientist Wernher Von Brown’s First Men to the Moon (1960) book, (Retro-future Space Suit) to actual space suits and movie space suits from science fiction films. Then produce a sketch of my initial ideas to send to the client (in this case Jon Boyce).

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Space Ork Kommandos

I quickly sketched these Space Ork Kommandos earlier this year as part of my idea for an improved Shadow War:Armageddon. These are based in part on Mark Bedford’s excellent Forge World Space Ork Kommando conversion kit; I liked them and thought since the Freebooter Flash Gitz have Kustom Shootas maybe the Kommandos’ could have a Kustom Snipa rifle and also a Ghillie suit for camouflage (maybe a Ghillie Squig!). (Ghillie Suit Wikipedia entry)

As always with Games Workshop this is fan art and not intended to infringe their intellectual property.

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Underhive gang portrait pencils – Part 1

For completeness (and because I still like them) here are the original A3 pencil sketches for my sequence of Necromunda house gang portraits. I always tend to draw through the borders of the images, especially action scenes so I drew all of them full length. Notice the Orlock ganger’s stripey trousers!





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