BoS Drawing Challenge - #91 Drowned

Super busy with all sorts of stuff at work - so these last few are really dragging out.

I present this week's offering :

This is supposed to be Cthulu - the monstrous god-creature from the writing of H. P. Lovecraft. He lies in his death-sleep in the drowned city of R'lyeh, waiting till the stars align and his reign of terror can take over the planet. So, there's the drowned link.



It didn't really turn out as well as I thought it might be. The legs are pretty wonky, but the reaching hands arn't too bad I guess.

Nine to go.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #89 Through the Fire

Yet again - somewhat later than I would have liked, but here's the one I 'skipped' slightly :

This is Daenerys Targaryen, from the 'Game of Thrones' / Song of Ice and Fire stories, having gone 'through the fire' and having her newly hatched dragons with her. I tried to make the Daenerys layers look burned or sooty / grimy - but I couldn't really get it to work. This looks fine, and I'm reasonably pleased with the way it turned out.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #90 Triangle

Yes - I know that I've skipped number 89. I'm still working on that one, but this one is finished so I thought that I'd post it now :

The all-seeing eye of the Illuminati. Didn't turn out too bad at all.

Hard to believe that I'm almost down to the last 10 !

BoS Drawing Challenge - #88 Pain

So I wasn't going to colour this one, but I couldn't seem to stop myself. I'm glad I did now - it ended up looking pretty good :

This is a Pain Elemental - from the video game 'Doom 2'. They were pretty nasty enemies, from what I remember. They would spit out these flaming skull demons at you, and I'm pretty sure that when you finally killed one they would explode, releasing a number more of the flaming skull demons.

Pretty happy with the way this one turned out.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #87 Food

Quickly threw this one together :

The Cheese-Spider, from 'Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2'.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #86 Seeing Red

Just a quick one this time :

Sauron, seeing 'in red' over Middle-Earth, from the top of his fortress - Barad-Dur.

A little out of the box perhaps.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #85 Spiral

Yet again, this took far longer than I would have liked - but I think it was worth it this time :

This is one of the Black Spiral Dancers - the corrupted werewolf clan from the 'Werewolf : The Apocalypse' role-playing game. They're particularly dangerous enemies.

It hasn't been often I've said this in the Balls of Steel challenge, but I'm REALLY pleased with the way this one turned out. I like how the clashing colour looks on the green fur, and the green flames on the bane-glaives look pretty damn good, and I think I got the slight glow on the eyes working well.

So yes - I like this one a lot.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #84 Out Cold

Yet again - took longer than I would have liked to finish this one :

Perhaps a little more literal on the 'cold' word - but what the hell. Of course, this is Mr. Freeze - the Batman villain. I rather like Mr. Freeze. There's a tragic aspect to him. And that Mr. Freeze boss fight in the Arkham City video game ? Man - that was FANTASTIC. That Mr. Freeze was terrifying !

BoS Drawing Challenge - #83 Heal

Just finished this now :

This is supposed to be a Guardian of Kings from the 'Hearthstone' video game. When you summon it, it heals you. So there's the link.

I guess it turned out okay. I could have spent more time on the shading, but it's time to move on.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #82 Can You Hear Me ?

Finally finished #82 -

Not super happy with this. I had trouble thinking of something for the starter, and never really got into this one.

It's done now, at least !

BoS Drawing Challenge - #81 Pen and Paper

Only a quick clean-up and colour tonight :

Would have liked to change the wings a bit, otherwise - it's alright.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #80 Words

With term started again it's harder to get these completed regularly. I have the outlines of this one done before now though, I just hadn't had time to finish it off in photoshop. I really wanted to get some basic colour in on this one.

Not too bad. It would probably benefit from some shading - though no time to do that at the moment !

I had forgotten to do the feet, so I had to rush them through - they're not the best. I'm not thrilled with the face, but overall I'm reasonably pleased with this one.

I have the outlines completed on the next one too - I'll try and get it up ASAP.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #79 Starvation

Managed to get another quick drawing done today :

Wilson, from the video game 'Don't Starve'.  A cool, if VERY unforgiving survival game.

Didn't mess around with the original too much - tidied up some of the lines and quickly dumped in some colour. No shading.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #78 Drink

I wasn't going to colour this one - but I couldn't stop myself in the end :

I was tempted to draw Father Jack Hackett from 'Father Ted' for this one - but in the end went for the 'Giant's Drink' from the novel 'Ender's Game'. I'm mostly fairly happy with this one, though the legs / feet aren't great.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #77 Test

Another insomnia fueled one here - at least in the areas of cleaning the line work and colouring :

Reverend Mother Gaius Mohiam before she performs the 'humanity test' on Paul Atreides - from 'Dune', as if you didn't know. 

BoS Drawing Challenge - #76 Broken Shards

My youngest was very ill today. Running quite a temperature, and not his usual active self. So while I was sitting with him, I was able to quickly knock this out :

This is supposed to be Aragorn inspecting the broken shards of the sword Narsil. Not too bad. A bit cartoony - but then most of my stuff tends to be !

I have learned, thanks to YouTiube, how to better scan line work into Photoshop - isolating the lines and extracting them from the paper background. Very easy to do really - wish I had known it sooner ! 

BoS Drawing Challenge - #75 Mirror

Got the idea for this one pretty quickly, which isn't too surprising I guess :

I would have liked the background to be a little more detailed, but I wanted to get it up on the blog. I also tried to add a ripple effect to the mirror - but I couldn't get it to work. Ah well. Overall - not bad.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #74 Are You Challenging Me ?

A bit of a different direction from my usual fare - a Biblical base !

David and Goliath. Enough said.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #73 I Can't

Got the idea for this one fairly quickly. Didn't spend too much time refining it - just wanted to get it done ! :

About time for a 'Princess Bride' one !

BoS Drawing Challenge - #72 Mischief Managed

Ugh - the last couple of weeks have been difficult. I've barely had time to do anything. I finally managed to get the outlines done on 72 today, and I've only been picking away at it during lunchtimes. Still - it's done :

I did originally want to do a background to this one - Loki being in front of the containment thing on board the hover-ship thing from 'The Avengers' - with Thor stuck inside. But it's taken me so long to just get this far - I just wanted to post this and get started on the next one. Meh - not great, but finished is something !

BoS Drawing Challenge - #71 - Obsession

Got clobbered by insomnia again today - been up since 2am. *groan*

But - again - there was a silver lining. Did a good deal of the colouring on #71 :

This is supposed to be Shrike and Hester from the 'Mortal Engines' books. I did this at the Shakkespeare nationals mostly, and didn't have a internet link to check up on how they both looked. Shrike did indeed look different, and I think Hester was supposed to be more disfigured. But - it's done.

It's okay I guess.

On to #72.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #70 - 67%

Sheesh - been well too busy the last couple of weeks. Don't want to go into it right now, as I'm going to hit the sack very soon.

But here we are in the 70's now ! A tricky theme this one, but in the end I came up with this :

Only a very minor touch up to the central figure, and a REAL quick sketch of the shield and the blaster shots. No time to to it properly, thought it was best just to get this one published.

Right - sleep.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #69 Annoyance

These things are taking longer and longer ! -

Not hugely happy with this one - the waving hand is pretty mangled. I could have done more with the shading, but I figured this was good enough.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #68 Hero

One good thing about my eldest waking me up at 3am to tell me he was afraid of the dark, and not being able to get back to sleep, was that I was able to finish the bulk of the latest drawing. Just finished a quick shading now :

If you ever read White Dwarf magazine BEFORE it got turned into a glorified advertising pamphlet for Games Workshop - then you'll probably recognize Thrud the Barbarian here. I always enjoyed the Thrud comic. The strength and ferocity of a Rhinoceros ! The speed and agility of a jungle cat !  The brain of a garden snail ! I always loved the bits where Thrud fell from a great height, but luckily he would land on his head and sustain no real damage. Always made me laugh !

BoS Drawing Challenge - #67 Playing the Melody

Another slow one - but I really wanted to colour / shade it :

This is supposed to be the Piper, from Garth Nix's 'Keys to the Kingdom' series - which I enjoyed a lot. The Piper is one of the Architect's children ( the Architect created ... well, the universe - so he's sorta supposed to be God, though he has 'gone', and his Will subverted by the Trustees, but this is all by the by ), and he's strongly suggested to be the Pied Piper of Legend. He's supposed to be dead, murdered by parties unknown in the story - but he turns up in the 3rd or 4th book ( from memory ), with an army trying to reclaim 'The House'. He proclaims himself the rightful heir of the Will, even though it is stipulated that a mortal MUST be the heir.

His face is covered by a golden mask, and you find out that ( spoilers follow ) that only his will survived his murder attempt, and there is essentially nothing beneath the mask.

I thought that was cool and chilling in equal amounts.

I think this drawing turned out pretty well, and though I could have spent more time on the colouring and background - I was starting to get bored. I like how it looks. The arms look a bit out of proportion - a touch too long - but other than that, it isn't too bad !

BoS Drawing Challenge - #66 Trap

Two in one day ! Now there's something.

A REAL quick one tonight - I cranked it out over a couple of episodes of Fringe.

I had a more complicated initial idea - but when I thought of this there was no other choice :

I think you probably get it. :-)

BoS Drawing Challenge - #65 Horror

Taken a bit longer than I would have liked with this one :

This one really needed to be coloured, mainly to bring you the worms.

The creature is a 'Son of Kyuss', or a 'Spawn of Kyuss' as they are called now. They're an undead creature from Dungeons and Dragons. Pretty horrible things - they're sort of zombie / mummy things, corpses filled with these vaguely parasitic grubs. In combat the grubs can leap off the spawn and burrow into new hosts, which if untreated will turn the host into a new spawn. I think that's how they rolled anyway. I don't think I ever had a character who ran into any.

It's the first thing that came into my head when I thought of the theme word - though I thought of arguably better ideas after I'd started the drawing.

*update*
On checking up on the Sons of Kyuss in my good old 1st ed. 'Fiend Folio', I found I was a bit wrong in my recollections. Seems the worms / grubs only inhabit the skull ( on infection, they burrow towards the victims brain, killing them when they get there and starting the creation of a new 'son'. I still think the drawing is better with the worms coming out of the wrappings elsewhere on the body - but that's just me

Dunesteef Episode Art - 'Last Contact' - Finished ( I think )

I have been having REALLY bad insomnia again this week. I went to bed at 8pm last night in an attempt to get a decent amount of sleep, and promptly woke up at 1.30am. Couldn't get back to sleep - so I got up at 4am and finished off the episode art.

And with the text :

BoS Drawing Challenge - #64 Multi-tasking

This theme word did give me some trouble at the beginning. I can't remember where I first went to in my mind, but eventually I did start thinking of mulch-limbed robots, which made me think of multi-armed deities - which brought me to here :

This is supposed to be Tou Mu, the Goddess of the North Star from Chinese myth. Or - more specifically - the AD&D version of her from the 'Deities and Demigods' book. She's supposed to be much more monstrous in that version - with 'red scaly skin' and '3 eyes in her barely human head'. She's also supposed to have 16 arms, rather than the 8 I've done here. I decided to make her more human looking, as I don't think she's supposed to be quite so evil / inhuman in the real myths.

I really loved this character from the book as a kid because of all the cool weapons and gear she used in combat with her multiple arms, which were :

- A magic bow which never missed a target within 100 yards.
- A +3 Spear.
- A +3 Dancing Sword.
- A red flag which projected death spells from its folds.
- A living dragon head which could breathe fire.
- A piece of the moon which could block any single hit against her in a combat round.
- A lotus flower that could heal all wounds at a touch.

I loved that book. I remember my mum getting it ( as well as the Monster Manual and Fiend Folio ) at a bookshop in California when we were on holiday. Still got them on my RPG shelf, still have very fond memories of leafing through them.

Anyway - the drawing turned out ok. I would like to colour it, but I haven't got time right now. I threw a gray background on just so you can make you the figure a bit better. The hands are hit and miss - the 'lotus', 'moon', 'dragon' and 'sword' hands aren't bad - though perhaps a bit big. The rest are pretty bad. Have I mentioned how hard it is to draw hands ? ;-D. I had to move the legs over a bit in photoshop, as they were off centre and looked weird - though they're okay now. The 'sword' arm might be a little too long, but it's not too bad.

Overall - I'm reasonably happy with this one.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #63 Do Not Disturb

Finished this one yesterday, just finished a quick colouring :

That's Dhalsim, from the Street Fighter video games. I figured that if he were meditating on the infinite - he wouldn't want to be disturbed.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #62 Magic

I've been awake since just before half three - I think I over ate at Angelo's birthday meal. Ugh. I got up at half four and fixed up this latest BoS drawing :

The drawing is supposed to be of Sabriel, from the book of the same name by Garth Nix. There's a really cool idea of magic present in the stories which is too hard to explain at half five in the morning. The eyes aren't quite right, and there should be more bells in the bandolier - but on the whole I'm pretty pleased with this one !

BoS Drawing Challenge - #61 Fairy Tale

I've been nursing this one for a bit now, I kept changing bits of it, and it really wasn't working. Today - somehow - I managed to turn it around enough to where I was feeling pretty alright with it, and here it is :

Not perfect, and I'd really like to have some colour added, but I wanted to get something posted for the challenge dammitt ! It'll do as is for now. I was going to draw in a shot wolf behind her - but, y'know, time.

I'd like to come back to this one later on.

Dunesteef Episode Art - 'Last Contact' - Bits and pieces

Finding it very difficult to find time to do anything art-wise, but I;ve forced myself to some stuff on the cover art project :

I think it's coming close to being finished.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #60 Rejection

Yay - I've hit the sixties !

I've never seen 'Bride of Frankenstein'. I think I should.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #59 No Way Out

So - I've spent most of my evenings for the last couple of weeks making candy necklaces. They're for Angelo's school gala. No hard to do - but very time consuming. I get about 4 - 5 done in an hour. That's why my drawing has been pretty non-existant lately. I did finish the BoS 59 theme today though :

Another Star Wars one - hardly a surprise ! I think Boba doesn't look too bad, and the Han-frozen-in-carbonite looks okay too. I would like to colour this one - but it's taken so long to do I just want to get it up and start on the next one !

BoS Drawing Challenge - #58 Kick in the Head

I was kinda dreading this one, but weirdly the idea came to me really quickly :

This one was fun.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #57 Sacrifice

Took longer than I'd like to get this finished - but here we are :

I was tempted to do one of Mola Ram from 'The Tower of Doom' - but the Kraken won out.

Dunesteef Episode Art - 'Last Contact' - Added alien

I was really tempted to flag doing any of the episode art tonight and play video games instead, but I went downstairs to the office and mapped out the outline of the alien :

The shaggy fur of the alien did make the vectoring a bit of a challenge. But I think I did it okay. Not sure about the pink colour. Still - it's pretty easy to change the hue !

Dunesteef Episode Art - 'Last Contact' - Added kid, darkened hills

I thought I'd change the figure a little to have him pointing at the kite :

Not sure about the colour. Also added another hill, and darkened the hills slightly to get a sense of perspective.

Dunesteef Episode Art - 'Last Contact' - Added kite / foreground hill

Spent a little time on the episode art this evening after the boys were in bed :

I like the kite colour !

Dunesteef Episode Art - 'Last Contact' - Beginning

So, no - I've not forgotten or abandoned the 100 drawings. With work in full swing I've not had as much time as before to draw. But rest assured - it's still going ! I'm maybe a third of the way through the 'sacrifice' theme drawing.

But I have some other art missions come up on the radar. First is the episode art for an upcoming installment of The Dunesteef It's for a story called 'Last Contact', which was written by Rish Outfield - one of the hosts. Rish was having trouble making his idea for the work, and wanted me to see if I could do something with it. Here it is :

I like it. There's some cool distances from the foreground kite to the far hills / clouds.

I thought I might use some of the texture layer tricks I'd used in my recent 'Drow Wisdom' pics. I've got some of the initial shapes done :

I want to try and keep the colours in the blue spectrum, and have the kite be a red or pink - to have it be the focus ( the kite is reasonably important in the story ). I'll need to alter the hue of the clouds.

Still - it's a start, and not a bad one so far ! 

BoS Drawing Challenge - #56 Danger Ahead

The idea for this one hit me pretty quick, in contrast to the last theme :

The robot from 'Lost in Space' is pretty cool. I prefer the one from 'Forbidden Planet' - but it's still great. Mind you - there are very few robots that I don't love in some way !

BoS Drawing Challenge - #55 Waiting

I won't lie - I REALLY struggled to think of an idea for the theme word 'waiting'.

That, and work has started up again. Boo.

But, I eventually came up with this :

In case you don't know who that is - it's Death, from the 'Sandman' comics. Death of the Endless - if there's a nicer personification of the end of life, I don't know what it is.

Drow Wisdom #3 - mostly done

I wasn't ready to go to bed at a reasonable time, so I spent a while on the new poster :

A little more adjustment needed - but it's mostly finished now I think.

Drow Wisdom #3 - initial work

I decided to do another 'Drow Wisdom' poster tonight - or get one started at least :

I might get this finished tomorrow.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #54 Tower

A little more simple with this one :

BoS Drawing Challenge - #53 Keeping a Secret

The idea for this one came pretty quick :

This is supposed to be Chancellor Palpatine. He was keeping a pretty damn big secret.

Not too bad - though I'm not terribly good at caricature !

'Overtaken' cover art

A reasonably simple piece of cover art for the guys at The Dunesteef :

Really just lines and text, with some perspective transformation.