The Swords of Lankhmar

My first introduction to Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser came in 1991 via the Epic comics adaptation written by Howard Chaykin and penciled by Mike Mignola. I was 13 at the time and I didn't appreciate the series the way I should have, I guess I was expecting something like Conan, I gave the miniseries two issues and dropped it. My second run in with the Lankhmarian duo came at around the age of 21, my future father in-law gave me an old paperback copy of “The Swords of Lankhmar”. At 21 I was old enough to appreciate not only the characters, but also the humor involved in the series.

Many people try and depict Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser very seriously, like the two are dour, humorless epic fantasy characters. I can't do that, I can't help but picture them as the young, cocky, rogues that they are. Sure, there are many serious scenes in the series, but for the most part Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are just overgrown kids.

The two drawings above were done three years ago, they were a character designs for a larger piece I was thinking of doing. I have yet to do that piece, so I decided that the least I could do is ink these two rogues and see how they came out.

Well, I think they came out quite well. A little bit more cartoony than I wanted, but they'll do.

Tarzan

Well, it's been a couple of days since I posted anything. It seems that when I start typing I tend to get carried away, due to that I've got three unfinished posts that went wild and turned into six-thousand word essays. I'll try to keep this one shorter.

The name Tarzan inspires images of Johnny Weissmuller, Gordon Scott or Lex Barker grunting “Me Tarzan you Jane”, and brings to mind one of the most recognizable calls/yells ever recorded on film. While these images may be the archetypal representation of Tarzan they aren't much like Burroughs original ape-man. The closest any film has gotten to Burroughs original depiction of Tarzan was Christopher Lambert's performance in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, while Lambert's depiction of Tarzan is closer to Burrough's vision the writers of the film took some liberties with the original story. It's been quite a few years since I saw Greystoke, but from what I remember a rather large portion of the film deals with Tarzan/Lord Greystoke attempting to acclimate to living outside of the jungle. I believe he fails to adjust to “modern” society and returns to the jungle. Like I said, it's been awhile since I saw the movie, close to ten years, so this is probably not quite what happens. Regardless of the inaccuracies in the Legend of Greystoke, the writers managed to depict a Tarzan that could speak in more than broken, cavemanesque, pidgin-English. By depicting Tarzan as an intelligent man, capable of learning and adapting, the writers of Greystoke presented a Tarzan that was closer to Burroughs vision than most have managed. This is also the Tarzan that imprinted on me the hardest.

I was exposed to Tarzan at an early age, mainly through the children's books of the 60s/70s and Johnny Weissmuller films of the 30s and Lex Barker and Gordon Scott films of the 50s. This was the Tarzan that I knew until, at around the age of 8, I saw Christopher Lambert's performance in Greystoke. There was something about Lambert's version of Tarzan that just seemed right, something about the violent, animalistic Tarzan that called to my 8 year old psyche and screamed “this is Tarzan, this is the real Tarzan”. Greystoke is the reason that I depict Tarzan the way I do, scarred, grizzled and always on the edge of violence; to me this is the real Tarzan.

About four years ago I picked up a copy of Tarzan of the Apes, I'm a huge Burroughs fan, but it had been years since I had owned, or read, any Tarzan books and I thought it was time I fixed that. The version of Tarzan presented above was inspired by Burroughs description, my insane need to research even the tiniest piece of clothing and the vision of Tarzan that I had developed from Greystoke. The majority of Tarzan of the Apes is set in the Congo and has Tarzan wearing clothing, and using weapons, stolen from the local tribes. The loincloth and jewelry that I have depicted here are copied after pieces from a mix of tribes from the Congo region. I've done other versions of Tarzan, this one however, comes closest to the picture in my head. This piece has yet to be finished, it's odd for me to want to add color to one of my drawings, but I felt that this one deserved some deep red to better portray the blood dripping from his hand. This may get finished, or it may get redone, I'm not sure, I like it but the more I look at it the more I want to change.

Of the female characters in the Tarzan stories, I believe La of Opar is probably my favorite. She allows a certain amount of artistic freedom that I enjoy. La was from an ancient race similar to the Atlantis, so it allowed me to mix some various styles to achieve the level of opulence and degradation that I felt was appropriate for the Oparians.

This, like the Tarzan pics above, is not finished. I am considering finishing this piece, but I think I'll have to spend more time looking at it before I decide.

After reading Tarzan of the Apes a few years back, I got into a Tarzan kick and wanted to read more. I wound up scouring Amazon until I found The Great Book of Tarzan. I have mixed feelings about this book, while it contains every Tarzan story written by Burroughs and was amazingly cheap, it was like $15. I don't suggest this book to anyone, the binding is the worst I've ever seen, the editing is bad and the layout is so bad that it's difficult to tell where the chapters or books end. I got about halfway through the book before I gave it up, the book was just too difficult to read. If you're interested in reading the Tarzan novels I suggest downloading them for free from Project Gutenberg , they don't seem to have all of the books, but they have most of them and they're well edited and easy to read.

Women

Well I started a post about drawing women this morning, but somehow it went haywire and took on a life of its own. Now, I start again.

I absolutely love drawing women, clothed, unclothed, it doesn't mater, I just like drawing them. I love taking a blank sheet of paper and giving it sex appeal.

Although there's things I don't like about this drawing, the way the lighting on the back came out saves this picture for me. I do little studies like this from time to time, I'll come across a photo that has good lighting or something and just decide, screw it, I'm drawing a naked chick.


I came across a photo of Sasha Gray a couple of years ago and had to draw it.

I had to draw that hair, that was the main thing for me in the photo and it was my reason for doing this drawing. I wish I had put more work into the rest of the drawing, mainly her face, it vaguely looks like Sasha Gray, but I could have done better.


Sometimes I like to combine my two favorite things to draw, monsters and women, but I always try to keep up the sex appeal.

If you stick around here long enough you will quickly find that I have issues with pretty much every drawing I turn out, so, just like most of them, I see some problems with this drawing. Thankfully, my wife has finally convinced me that most people can't see the defects that I see and to stop pointing them out, so I may say that I see issues with a pic but I'm not going to point them out.

I like this drawing, I had fun drawing it and I think it's cute.

My wife hates it, she thinks it's boring. It's simple, bit I like it.


Obviously I like coupling women with tentacles, eh, that's what you get from someone who reads too much Lovecraft.

This looks a lot better in its original size. Reducing the size really blurs out the details, especially on the tentacles, but that's the curse of the internet.


I think we'll wrap things up with a demon girl, or, as they've come to be called in my house, a naked demon chick.

This is my wife, well, I used a photo of my wife as the reference for this piece. My wife doesn't think it looks like her. I disagree, I think it's a very good likeness. I'll admit it's not perfect, admittedly the eyes are probably too large, but besides that, it looks just like her.

Of friends and RPG characters

When it comes to drawing I have many areas of inspiration, books and short stories being in the lead. Close on the tail of the books and stories come the RPG characters that my friends and I have created.
I have found that by creating visual representations of RPG characters they become more solid for me. By solidifying the character in my own mind I find it easier to stay in the game mentally and not get bored. Having a visual representation also gives me an in game reason to aid the character/player and maintain the group dynamics (my wife would disagree with this statement, saying that i don't maintain the group dynamic and in most cases try to destroy it. I guess it all comes down to your point of view.) Now, on to the characters.

First up are a couple of my characters, one from a D.C inspired Mutants & Masterminds game that was quite well run but never completed, and one from a very good, and slightly disturbing, 3rd edition Vampire campaign that my wife ran.

When our group decided to try out Mutants & Masterminds the majority of the players weren't looking forward to it. The player that wanted to run the game didn't have a good track record when it came to being the GM, he had a severe issue with being loud and obnoxious as a player and downright boring as a GM. This game turned out a bit different though, it wasn't anything great, the plot was passe and the villains were over the top, but it was a fun distraction from the uber violent campaigns we were used to. We all chose slightly stereotypical D.C type characters, with me settling on a Green Lantern named Asadi Kital. I had originally decided that his personality was going to be very much like Hal Jordan or Captain Kirk, a shoot from the hip, swaggering “cowboy” type, in actuality he turned out to be a bit of a bumbler, but, sometimes the game dictates the character's personality.

A few years ago my wife decided to try her hand at running a Vampire campaign, she had been playing Vampire for close to a decade at that point but had never run a game, it turned out to be one of the creepier vampire games that our group ever played. I chose to play a Nosferatu in this game, Sigurd VonWerther.

VonWerther was a spy, information dealer and a Shadow Soldier working for the True Black Hand, he was a fun character to play.

The next two up are from a 1930s era Lovecraft/League of Extraordinary Gentlemen inspired cross genera White Wolf game I ran for a few years. It's been years since I ran the game and can't quite remember the character's names, I know I've got copies of the character sheets but they're packed away I know not where.

This is Harry (last name forgotten), he started out as a mortal private eye played by a great guy named Leonard. Harry wound up getting ghouled and infected with a heavy dose of vicissitude, hence the claws, extra eyes and oddly placed fingers. He was a great character in the game as long as Leonard stayed focused and didn't get distracted with porn.

I can't for the life of me remember what this character's name is, I do know that he was a Demon/Hedge Mage (obviously this is his demon form) and that he was played by Eric. Eric was an old friend from high-school that I had fallen out of contact with over the years. He was a good player with a fast train of thought, unfortunately he's very hard to maintain contact with so he has yet again disappeared into the eather.

And for last, how about some D&D?

Yet another character who's name I can't remember. This character was from our last, and best, D&D game, a halfling rogue and “leader” of our party. He turned out to be a very ineffective leader due to no one paying attention to his “orders”.

Since we began with one of my characters we might as well end with one.

This is Atheas, wild elf ranger. I tend to draw from history when constructing D&D characters, for Atheas I decided on a mix of Scythian and Pains Indian. He was an okay character, not my best, but I get a bit bored with D&D after a few games and didn't want to invest a lot of time on the character.

I've got plenty more to come.