Some strange doodles on the left (a German nutcracker, a shield design for an Undead Army (red skull-moon over black castle), a fishman mask idea, a flaming horse, ratman and a green dog-man using his voice as a sonic weapon) and on the right is my Mutant Psyker, a Fat Mutie and some SF hologram text.
Here’s the mutant gang boss, with clown-like hair, an extra arm and mechanical claw. There are some more mutant gang symbols too and a seal-dog whatever that is.
On the left I’m sketching some SF characters and on the right you have my giant mutant wielding a piece of a building to bash his foes. Next; the mutant leader!
Fast forward to 2015-ish and I feel like sketching my jolly mutant band again (on the left page you can see my Xeno-archaeologist examining an alien skull ). I’ve sketched the current bunch; the giant biffo mutie, the bald, pallid psychic mutant, the crazy clown-haired leader with his metal claw arm and various others.
This is my line-up of mutants; a mutie wide-faced woman with a scrap-shotgun, a melting-faced fat mutant with a giant crossbow, the mutant psychic (now a dwarf), the giant dude, the clown-haired leader and the berserker.
Round about a couple of years later I returned to these ideas as I felt I could do them a bit more justice. I started with the mutant berserker. I imagined he had found an electronic object that glowed a little when he discovered it in the filthy junk-heaps. He thinks it’s a refractor field so now believes he’s invulnerable to bullets.
I added a bit of acrylic white (probably Skull White!) to this version and some more crazy mutant gang territory symbols.
Here I’ve loosely sketched in a version in inks, acrylic white and a bit of watercolour wash. More next time!
One of my first attempts at digital painting (in 2002!) was a fight scene in a hive world setting between slightly medieval-garbed fanatical mutant-hating humans (a Venator gang) fighting a mutant slave gang.
Hive World Warhammer 40,000
I still like it, despite it being done ages ago and in Painter Classic (maybe having only one layer helped the image to be more coherent.)
Well a few years later, back in 2006 I wanted to revisit the image and began doodling and sketching these muties again. They’re not ‘Chaos mutants’, just unfortunate souls mutated by all the toxic pollution affecting generations of humans living in the Underhive.
Some of my mutant character’s are evolving on these pages; the gangly, goofy berserker and the guy with the blade on the end of his arm.
Here’s a very quick doodle on some lined paper of the mutant gang, the large mutant waving his trusty hitting pole in a threatening manner at the back! More of these sketches later.
These Outlander gang pencil drawings have the whole figure again (I like the Enforcer’s cyber-hound, I will return to this idea in some form!):
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!
Here are the last few pages of my Underhive sketchbook.
Some refinement of my human rebels logo, an idea for a Space Marine Chapter symbol and some Necromunda Outlander gang symbol thumbnails:
More Necromunda thumbnails, a Space Marine scout riding a lizard conversion idea and some Chaos Space Marine Renegade logos, avoiding the look of Toy Story’s Zurg of course:
The Redemptionists symbol is about right, still working on the Spyrers and Ratskins symbols with a dessicated Ripperjack as a gruesome option!
And here I’m working on a gladitorial Pit Slave gang symbol:
That’s all from my Underhive Sketchbook, though I have the original pencil character drawings of all the gangers to show.
As allways this is Games Workshop’s intellectual property, just ‘fan art’ and not intended to get up the noses of their legal team.
Continuing my Underhive sketches and doodles.
An Ash Wastes Nomad portrait and a doodle of a Deathclaw conversion plan (a mutant creature from the Fallout computer game)
My process for creating the symbols for all of the Necromunda gangs are next; font and colour ideas followed by thumbnail sketches.
