Fantasy pictures from my sketchbook.
Whilst I’m busy with various things I thought I’d share these sketchbook fantasy scenes I drew a few years ago. The first one (the market) I think I posted on the ImagineFX forum. The second one depicts an ancient statue that has been built into the side of a tavern. The perspective is wonky but I still like them both. These are spontaneous drawings that I kept adding to when I had a spare moment.
A brief diversion back to my Demon designs. Here is the Mage-Lord demon himself (leader of the army featured in my Ghaan-og the Berserker one-page comic) with his centaur-demon bodyguards in the background. The Mage-Lord has multiple arms for casting multiple spells on the battlefield.
The demon spirits he’s summoning from the globe on top of staff came from a combination of ideas (they were blue originally but my brother said they didn’t stand out enough):
Firstly these critters on the right page:
The demon witches on the left are servants of the Demon Prophetess, from my earlier post:
https://www.willbeck.com/artblog?p=635
And also the colours came from the invisible monster in an old weekly ImagineFX challenge on the theme of ‘invisibility’:
I’ve been very busy this last couple of months so haven’t had chance to update my website/blog. Here’s an old image I drew a few years back of a Great Unclean One; a plague-ridden, maggot-infested, bloated Greater Daemon from Games Workshop’s Warhammer Worlds.
No digital work here; simply inks and watercolours.
This is fan art and not intended any way to infringe Games Workshop’s copyright.
Skaven Rat King
I’d never heard of Rat Kings until I was looking for pictures of rats on t’internet (see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_king_%28folklore%29 ) and thought it would make an interesting idea for a Skaven mutant; a master moulder perhaps. I added some digital paint to this to flesh him out some more.
Fan art, copyright Games Workshop etc.
Here is the final design with some other troops sketched in to show his monstrous size. His evil gauntlet can magically slash and crush things from a distance or produce dark smoke to obscure the battlefield.
I’ve almost finished the first Demon Lord picture; here are some ideas I had for his weapons and a Demon Lady. More soon.
While I’m working on a concept design for a Demon Lord I thought I’d show some sketchbook pages on how I come up with a final image.
Before starting this project I wanted to establish a few ‘rules’ for my Demons – firstly not much hair or fur, secondly no hooves and lastly no lava!
The first doodle is from my sketchbook from 2005; a demon sketched in a matter of minutes.
I liked the look of his long angry face and a few years later I thought it would be ideal for the first Demon Lord; a huge brutal looking monster. These are some of my ideas from my A5 sketchbooks.
More of my designs for demons. As I had doodled a flying demon (carrying a warlock) I wanted to see if I could create a more detailed version.
I scribbled a few ideas but it was while watching a dinosaur program on the BBC website I thought the way the Hatzegopteryx had been animated gave me an idea for how to draw my flying demon that wasn’t obviously a like dragon or a wyvern. I later had the idea that if endangered it could vomit acidic bile on an opponent.
Finally my first non-Christmas themed comic page (apart from my Mr. Scarecrow one which I drew at art college).
I approached this as a professional comic book artist would, from (my own)script, thumbnails, drawing and inking the panels and so on. An excellent exercise; it really made me appreciate the skill of my favourite comic-book writers, letterers, colourists and artists.
The next one will be at least two pages long!
Fonts by Blambot
A brief diversion back to my demon concepts. Here is my idea for the warlock demons; I hope the notes fairly are self-explanatory but here is a bit more description:
Demons warped through their use of dark magic are usually stunted and need creatures (slaves or other beasts) to convey them to the front line. Here I’ve designed a dog-demon for the weirdest-looking warlock to ride (controlled by a control rune linked to his master) based in part on cryptozoology’s ‘Texas Blue Dogs’.
http://www.forteantimes.com/features/fbi/6298/texas_blue_dogs.html
Next, for my ghostly-gas polluting demon I doodled some ideas for the way he could travel around (a balloon or carried by a flying demon) but the bloated soldier demon seemed to suit him (it?).
And finally for the arch-warlock, the most powerful wizard in the demon army (apart from of the Demon Lords ) he required a more high-tech magical way of moving around and fighting so I invented this automaton-cage device.
