Laughter of Dragons

I completely missed the fact The One Ring: Laughter of Dragons was out already!
I did a LOT of art for it, and here it is:

© 2019 Sophisticated Games and Cubicle 7 Entertainment Middle-earth, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and the characters, items, events and places therein are trademarks or registered trademarks of The Saul Zaentz Company d/b/a Middle-earth Enterprises and are used under license by Sophisticated Games Ltd and their respective licensees.

What's in the Box?!

Last week I found a box full of old drawings of mine. Most of these were drawn 15-13 years ago. (I was 14-16). It's quite fun to see where this whole art thing started.

On top there were notebooks full of roleplaying stuff. I used to DM for our group, so there are many maps and I also drew scenes from the adventures we played through.

 (this was a really fun game, we played while hiking. So no dice rolls, just roleplaying. I didn't even have a story prepared in advance, had to make it up on the go. And yes, I was obviously into Mike Mignola's artwork. :))

This is a map of the world we played in. Yeah, a single continent (more like an island) with all the climates we could ask for. :D Classic.

I sure went through the angsty teenager phase too. 

My learning years, this was an attempt to (very poorly) ape Ron Tiner. 

This is pure gold. :D I had no idea who Drizzt was, but a gaming magazine mentioned he used two scimitars and was something like an elf. Obviously, his face has to be in shadow (I don't know what he's supposed to look like! Red eyes though.). Why the blue feathery cape, or why he's sitting on a mouldy dragon skeleton and a pile of gold? No idea. This one is probably one of the oldest bits in the box.

A comic I started drawing while visiting my grandmother. As far as I understand the story, it's a cyberpunk world where the Inuit people took over thanks to some kind of technology or drug they invented or discovered. I think I started reading Shadowrun at the time. :)

 

A Hellboy comic I never finished. The story (as I remember it) was about Hellboy and an undead knight teaming up to tame a hellhound that escaped from Hell in the 15th century. It starts with a very James Bond-like moment, Hellboy is chasing a shaman through a dimensional portal and the spell backfires, exploding the shaman all over the place. (Hellboy is fine, of course, he always falls everywhere.)

To finish up, here's a silly doodle thing. No idea why the sound of an arm being hacked off would be "SLAP". 

The hand that wields it

"What is steel compared to the hand that wields it?"

Tonight's post will be another in the "Drawing swords" series!

In the past I've talked about the importance of proportions, axis alignment and other aspects of a good sword drawing. Now we'll talk about weight.
Swords being portrayed as heavy unwieldy bludgeons is a trope I try to fight against. However, in art, giving a sword some weight can be a good thing.

How much do swords weigh and why do we care?

It depends on the sword. You can completely disregard any talk of swords weighing more than 3.5 kilograms.
The biggest swords ever weighed around 5-6 kg and the heaviest among them are considered to be either executioner swords, or parade weapons not intended for actual combat. Of course, weight would depend on the user, strong men could afford really big swords. But!
We're still talking about swords used with both hands, for very specific purposes.

Single handed swords would weigh from around a kilo, to about 1,5 kg. Interestingly - medieval longswords (used with two hands) would fall into the same range! (their blades are generally slimmer)

For real life reference - that's less than a two liter bottle of soda.
read more on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longsword
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zweih%C3%A4nder

This is less than most people assume, but it's not an insignificant weight.

What does it have to do with drawing swords?

A lot of information about the human body's anatomy and pose is very subtle and difficult to construct without reference. That's why we shoot reference for paintings, using whatever props we have. We can definitely appreciate these subtleties in art if they're done right - everything just feels natural.

What do we look for with swords? Their weight should affect their wielder's bearing (how much depends on the desired "story" of the painting - are they out of balance, because they're swinging wildly? Are they entirely in control, like the cool calm blademasters they are?) and almost more importantly, the sword should look natural in their hands. A lot could be said about swords not really fitting into hands, clipping through space where palms or fingers should be etc. This can be avoided quite easily - just photograph yourself holding something sword-like.

I apologize for looking tired in this pic, I was quite tired indeed. (as to why there is a stoned frog on the mirror, I have no idea) This is what I use for reference most of the time - an old practice sword. It's wooden, but the shape is quite close and it weighs around a kilo, so it makes a usable substitute.

Two things about using reference:

1) A sword is absolutely the best choice you can make. A broom handle, or a plastic lightsaber might work as well, but you're missing on some of the subtle differences. Sword handles are often not entirely round, instead they have an oval profile. Weight distribution and the object's overall weight also matter - a broom handle or a plastic lightsaber are both very light and will not make your hand and arm react the same way as a sword would. If you weigh them down, be careful where you're putting that weight. (you might end up with an "axe/mace" if you put it at the end of the stick) Most swords have a point of balance about a palm width from the crosspiece. A sword has a flat profile and edges, if you use a round stick, you'll lose that reference information.

2)  Learn how to handle a sword, at least the basics. Swing it about a bit, carry it around, even if looks silly. Get a "scabbard" and try walking around with a sword on your belt, try sitting down etc. Learn how to grip a sword properly - most people try to use swords like baseball bats, golf clubs, hockey sticks and other sports gear. (I wrote about that in my sword sins post) Most of the time their grip is way too tight.

Kingdom of Heaven is a good film to watch for sword handling reference, Liam Neeson shows you that swords are not weightless and that it's badass and practical to rest one on your shoulder.

A painter who does swords very well (of course he does, he's a medieval reenactor himself) is John Howe. Here's a painting of his which has been among my very favourite of his for a long time - Yvain and the lion:

It may not seem so at first, but that's one big sword! But it looks just right, like it belongs where it is, resting on Yvain's shoulder as he gazes off screen.

Oh and here's another John Howe piece - "Tom Badgerlock" from Robin Hobb's novels. You can see he clearly took a photo of a friend in armour with a sword. (he describes the process on page 64 of his "Fantasy Art Workshop" book.

Specially for what the fingers do while handling a sword, I recommend watching real fighters and sword users in videos and going through their motion frame by frame. You can also use these frames for pose reference.

Here's a good explanation of a grip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_xO88Ws6O0

I especially like his comment on mostly using the two middle fingers to grip, this is something I came to use myself. The outside two fingers do most of the sword manipulation and allow for a wide range of movement within the grip.

I don't know if this guy does any sparring, but his sword handling and cutting ability is formidable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti5N3MMQfdE

They're defenseless plastic bottles, but see how they mostly don't fly off and instead he's able to cut them into tiny slices? That's good edge alignment during a cut, there's little resistance that would otherwise send them flying. See how light the sword looks in his hand? That's practice right there. ;)

What you won't generally get from bottle cutters is real combat stances and intensity, their form is very controlled and they don't move about much. For intensity and intent, I'd recommend something like these guys:

They're using lighter training swords, so it's mostly for the way their bodies move during combat.

Certain aspects of John Clemens' interpretation of fencing manuals are disputed by many in the HEMA community, but you can see the many different types of grips possible in this video, it has nice closeups on the hands.

What should we do about it then?

Painting is often not about recreating reality exactly, slight exaggerations (of things rather subtle in reality, which we don't notice consciously) are quite necessary to make an image dynamic and to improve its storytelling.

Making a sword seem slightly heavier than it would look in reality helps ground it in the scene as a real object, it needs to interact with its environment and with the person holding it. 

Looking for examples of my own art to illustrate this post, I realized I don't actually get to do many sword-wielding characters. I also noticed I tend to prefer a specific sword pose, where the sword hangs point down, its weight dragged into the cut. (possibly from a hanging parry, or a thrust position)

I now see things I could improve upon, but the general idea is there - the fact fingers are not wrapped rigidly around the handle, the wrist is not stiff and straight, the way the body turns into the cut (you don't cut with just the arm, it's like punching in boxing - the whole body twists to generate momentum). 

That's it for today! It took quite a while to explain something fairly simple - 

Remember swords weigh something, that they should look like your character is actually holding them, carrying them, or swinging them with force. Take reference pictures and know what makes good sword reference. Done! :)

Designing the Wailing Sword

This is a copy of my post in a fanart thread over at the Project Eternity forums. PE is an RPG being made by Obsidian Entertainment.

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(Background: During the last hours of the Kickstarter video stream, Chris Avellone expressed a certain opinion on swords. To quote (from memory), it was "Swords are boring!". When I protested in the chat, he continued to say that "If you like swords, there's something seriously wrong with you."

I should probably mention that I absolutely love swords. Swords, to me, are super interesting, I could read about their evolution, design, decoration and other aspects for hours and hours. And not only are they very cool as tools with a certain purpose, their role throughout history (other than "you poke people with the pointy end") is fascinating as well.

I decided I would attempt to prove Chris Avellone wrong.

The next day after the stream, I was sitting on an early morning bus, heading to the city where I went to school at the time. It was dark, the engine's humming made me sleepy, but all of a sudden, an idea for a sword struck me. I kept thinking about it the whole time and quickly typed it all in my phone, so that I didn't forget any of the brilliant ideas. (:D)

Then I got really busy with school and illustration work, so the sword didn't get painted until today. I found myself with a free evening and having backed the Torment Kickstarter, it reminded me of the sword design in my desk's drawer.)

Last note: I had NOT yet played Planescape: Torment when I came up with the idea, I was actually bringing my old CD of PT with me on the bus! I played it about a month later and when I got to Dak'kon and read the description of his sword, I thought: "Oh."  

I have to wonder, it seems like the only sword there is in that game. Did Avellone write it? That'd make me SO mad. :D

Wailing Sword of Eír Glanfath

Lore: This ancient elven short sword is made of obsidian, inlaid with copper, the copper handle decorated with opal. Powerful yet unknown magic has been used for its making - the obsidian blade does not shatter on impact, if it's wielded by a warrior of strong will. Mages speculate that the copper inlay transfers the impact and vibrations into the handle, where the opal heads with tongues stuck out connect it to the soul of the user. This puts the mind under pressure, similarly to how ciphers use their gift sometimes.

The stronger the warrior's soul and will are, the more powerful the sword becomes. However, one moment of weakness, one break in concentration and the user may end up blank eyed and babbling, wiggling on the floor in a pool of urine. As a reflected wave, this energy flows back into sword and comes out of the opal heads on the pommel, transformed into sound. It's form and intensity range from subtle humming to blood-curdling wailing.

It is rumored that if an especially weak minded person draws the sword, it'll break in the slightest breeze. Or it may even shatter and kill its bearer with an explosion of burning obsidian shards.

Design ideas: As far as I know, the ancient elves of Eír Glanfath are described as quite primitive, technology-wise, yet with impressive knowledge of astronomy and so on. I went with a very simple, yet ellegant bronze age design - a short leaf blade and a cone pommel. The sword is vaguely reminiscent of celtic weapons, but I didn't stick too close to any historical style. It's magical after all, so it's longer than any obsidian weapon we could reasonably imagine. Beside obsidian I chose the most primitive metal I could think of - copper. No idea if the elves actually used metal or not, this one has that ancient look for sure. Opal is just cool, I really liked the idea of it being a magical transformer for soul energy. ;)

Obsidian I chose for obvious reasons, but also because it's supposed to (perhaps as an urban legend) hold an edge one molecule wide and thus able to cut anything. (if only it wasn't fragile! hey, magic solves that problem! ;))

The copper inlay all revolves around sound. The blade decoration looks a bit like a signal, a sine wave and a snake (Ouroboros? I know they got rid of that, it's an old idea). The guard ended up looking a lot like pointy elven ears, but that was NOT intentional. Maybe it was subconscious. The arms holding the "signal" symbolize the user's soul grip on things being the only thing keeping the sword intact.

The opal faces are pretty self explanatory - the handle ones dig into your palm, make it slightly uncomfortable to use, reminding you of the responsibility you have when you draw the sword. 

Possible system uses: 

- obviously more damage or armour piercing if the user's willpower or soul power (uh, whatever stat you choose :D) is higher

- regular roll checks if the sword breaks and hurts you?

- maybe there's a chance the wailing (if you do a critical?) scares some of your opponents and breaks their morale?

- maybe you can do sonic attacks by waving it wildly? Or if you hit the ground?

So, that's that. It'd be kind of cool if I could mod it into the game one day, but who knows how that turns out. (2017 edit: It didn't. Boo! :D Obsidian, we want mods!) 

Let me know what you guys think. ;)

Painting a plate

No, I have not become a potter. As the Kickstarter for Guide to Glorantha races towards its end, it keeps raking the money onto a rather huge pile.

Great!

You can check it here:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/224590870/the-guide-to-glorantha

I have been painting full page colour plates for it, very much in the style of Angus McBride's plates for the Osprey books.

Each plate depicts a culture-specific event, cultures being represented by four or five characters doing whatever they do and showing off their clothing, jewelry and tattoos.

Jeff Richard and I agreed it'd be good to show how one of these is made, step by step.

Plate n. 4 - Ralios

It all starts with Jeff sending me a brief in PDF. Like this one:

http://pospabr.sweb.cz/BriefPlate04.pdf

I spent one whole afternoon reading these briefs, googling images and going through my image library, looking for reference for each plate.

Examples of such reference may look like this:

I should note that I don't use these images directly, they're not traced, they're not "Photoshopped" into the painting. I simply want to be sure about how this kind of stuff looks so that I can paint it looking plausibly.
This set of reference is for the barbarian bodyguard of course.

After gathering reference I attempt to sketch a composition of the piece. It's important to decide where characters stand, kneel or do whatever they're supposed to be doing. The have to be placed to make sense in the "story" and also to be well visible. That can sometimes be a problem, but here it was quite simple. A tight group of conspirators standing in a dark alley! Very easy.

I draw and paint directly in a program called ArtRage. It produces a nice traditional look and it feels like using real paint too. (ie it's a struggle all the way through :D)

I actually drew this in two layers - one for the architecture (to keep it in perspective) and one for the characters. So if I needed to erase bits of the characters, I could do so without damaging the scene itself.

You can see I've done a bit of the character design in the sketch already. This plate didn't see many changes from sketch to paint, which is a bit unusual for me.

The scene as described in the brief sounds very dark. Dark alley, in the night, no street lights...I was a bit worried about that. I have to get light in there somehow! I suggested we give the sorcerer some kind of magical lantern and it was okayed by Jeff. I quite liked the idea of a night scene with a purplish tint to the dark city (which is pretty common in big modern cities due to air pollution. Not sure how that happened here, but hey. Artistic license, right? ;)) with a contrasting green light illuminating the characters.

You may notice the vertical and upper facing bits of buildings are coloured more towards cold grays, being "lit" by the sky, while the down facing bits are more purply. This would happen on a bright day more likely, where sunlight is bouncing off the ground upwards onto horizontal surfaces. So it's not very realistic to do this at night, but it serves as a nice compositional tool, to get some of the warm colours into shadows. That balances the use of warm hues through the image somewhat.
The bodyguard's face is also the first one I painted. I tend to start with getting faces "right", because they're the most difficult and fun to do.

I did some work on the right side of the painting and noticed the bouncing light issue. I opted for a slightly more realistic depiction and darkened the shadowed area considerably. A lot of work has been put into the stones of the building and the barbarian's costume is mostly done.

I finished the barbarian by detailing the sword, armour and adding runes to his face and arms. I decided the background could use some work, so I painted the buildings in the back. I've done some work on the noblewoman, but almost exclusively her upper half. Somehow the lower bits weren't so appealing to me in this image. I also started on the sorcerer and it was really fun and easy for some reason. The green light was a joy to use too.

This part was a mix of fun - painting the face of the priestess and less fun - painting the lower halves of the sorcerer and the noblewoman. Lots of ornaments everywhere. I also realized the lighting wasn't quite right on the left wall, so I added cast shadows and half shadows, which framed the figures better.

The last step was to paint the priestess, her frilly skirt, tattooed legs and tighten everything else that needed fixing or detailing. I decided to add ornaments to the stonework to the right, including the Harmony rune inside an Earth rune. I thought those two would be a good choice for masons wishing for their building to last. (that wasn't in the brief, just my own initiative after learning the runes by heart :D)

That's it!

My biggest fear:  The architecture. I'm not very confident about buildings, but it ended up being surprisingly alright. Darkness did help for sure though.
My favourite bits: The whole barbarian bodyguard was my favourite from the moment I got the brief. His pipe, his scratched and notched sword, the lamellar vest and (my invention for no reason) the detachable sleeve of his tunic. I also quite enjoyed designing the tall headgear of the high priestess and the mitre helmet of the sorcerer. That one especially! I really enjoy how it shows his painted forehead and how it's using his own hair to attach itself to the head. (look closely, there's a knot of dreadlocks at the top, going through the tiara)

Now what are those heavily embroidered flappy flaps going through the ring belt on the noblewoman? No idea. :) Any suggestions?

Thanks a lot for reading! I hope you'll enjoy the plates when they're all printed in the Guide. I know I will spend a lot of time gazing at them lovingly. ;P

Grapes of Wrath

I don't get to do personal pieces these days. I don't have the time to draw or paint everytime I think of something cool, in fact it's mostly not worth it.

But some ideas stick with me, crawling in the back of my skull. Some of them scratch their names on the wall and I can't get rid of them in any other way.

I have to paint them.

Many of these are quite silly, or strange, like this one. A painting idea is like a minibus full of stray thoughts, hopping on and off before and even during the painting itself.

Guardian of the Grapes

• I've watched the "Somebody I Used to Know" music video by Gotye, as everyone on the planet has, only I was a bit late to the party and it was old news already. I was fascinated by Kimbra's voice and more importantly by De Backer's makeup. The pale paint leaving only his (rather fascinating as well. Those teeth!) mouth gaping open and almost obscenely red. It reminded me of how red wine dyes the mouth and lips blue or purple. 

          If you're the last person on Earth who hasn't seen the video:  

                 

                      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UVNT4wvIGY 

• I've been reading books by Gregory Keyes, and most notably "Waterborn" influenced me quite a bit. I won't go into detail about the plot, you can read that on Wikipedia:

                      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Keyes

   

          The world full of gods and people interacting with them in a very common and regular manner appealed to            me.  

• About a year ago I realized I actually liked red wine. So I read up on wine-making a bit, looked at photographs of vineyards.

For some reason, an image of the singer in makeup, but warped into inhuman form with dark godly eyes emerged in my mind. And so did the words - "guardian of the grapes".

And I knew who he was. A lesser guardian god, protecting a sacred grove of olive trees, among which wild grapevines grow. 

He's scary at first, hulking large, with knobbed joints and clumsy limbs. His eyes are beyond the point where large pupils are cute, they're already quite creepy and alien. He's not evil though, he doesn't hurt people. He just wants to be left alone. If only those pesky humans didn't like his grapes so much!

And that's it. I knew exactly what he was, what the situation was - a group of girls tried to pick grapes in the grove without performing an appeasing offering first. The guardian is blasting out of the bushes, vines tangled around his arms, smashing everything in sight and trying to scare them away.

I painted this in the past two months, not having time for proper painting (yay for university! :)), doing ten to twenty minutes here and there. Today I felt it was finally there. I may tweak it some more, but that's the good thing about personal pieces. It only needs my approval right now. ;)

(painted entirely in ArtRage Studio Pro as always)