Loose sketches

I do a lot of loose sketches, a lot. I have a habit of sketching heads or busts of characters from stories that I'm reading, it helps me keep my mind on the story and it helps me to mentally solidify the characters. Most of these are less than 6"x6".

These first two are sketches done while reading R. E. Howard's Almuric.
Random male Yaga.

And the Yaga's black queen Yasmeena.

Next up some Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Very rough preliminary head sketch of a Kalkar.

A slightly cleaner head sketch of a Kalkar and some random woman.

And who can forget Tarzan. Here's a couple of head/bust sketches where I was trying to work out what my version of Tarzan would look like.

Sometimes I decide that one of my character head shots are too much fun to go to waste. Once I have an idea of what the character looks like (and I'm sure that I can replicate the look), I start doing fast preliminary composition sketches, this is what those sketches look like.

This picture however, never came to fruition.


This is a slightly more refined sketch, this was going to be La of Opar.

This is about the level I take a drawing to when I'm going to transfer it for inking. Like the sketch above this one was never finished, it just wasn't quite opulent enough for my tastes.


And lastly we have Deja Thoris.

I got about halfway through this before I decided that I didn't like what was going on with her ass, and no, you may not see her ass, I didn't like it so it got cropped out. This is part of the drawing is about half to two thirds finished. Who knows, in the future I might finish up this section and try and do some “artistic erasing" to see if I can crop it down into something useable.

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.

A new begining

I felt that it was time to start this blog over. My initial purpose for this blog was to have a place to vent my rants without stressing those around me, it didn't work. Not only did it not stop me from venting my frustration at others, it allowed me to construct my rants more thoroughly. Instead of running out of steam at a certain point, I had developed the ability to go on for hours about whatever topic (usually politics) I was angry over. There will be no more of that here.
This will now be a place to air the things that bring contentment to me, namely the items that I create. My artistic interests are broad, pencil, pen & ink drawing, woodworking, leather-working and costuming. My drawings range from pseudo realistic pencil work, to comic and cartoon style pen & ink. My leather-work generally covers historic replicas/representations, costuming and gun/knife related items. My woodworking consists of historic replicas/representations such as wooden bows, atlatls and rabbit-sticks, in other words, historic/prehistoric weapons.
Hopefully I will find it a bit easier to post more often, and if not, oh well.