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

3 points on pauldrons in fantasy illustration

I'm sorry about the unimaginative title!

My armour posts seem to be among the most popular ones and I just got an idea for another one today.

Pauldrons are difficult, I won't lie. Armour in general is very hard to understand and to draw. And an illustrator usually needs to come up with acceptable yet innovative designs on a regular basis.

I won't even talk about massive Warhammer marine/Warcraft pauldrons, or pauldrons with giant spikes, those are a bit obvious and I'll leave them for an even less inspired post in the future.

There are three things I want to address. Let's look at the amazing drawing I put together five minutes ago:

(click to enlarge if you wish)

1) Single pauldrons held by body straps

This is all for the sake of coolness and asymetrical design. Single pieces of pair equipment probably were used here and there, but more because of the lack of the other piece rather than any deliberate purpose. It's also much easier to strap and set up a pair of pauldrons. As we've no doubt seen many times, these pauldrons are magically held on the body by (often really crazy) webs of straps and belts. Often they'd make it very difficult for the person to move.

Everytime I see this, I have to question the sanity of people who'd choose to wear only pauldrons and no other armour, for whatever reason. Is it ideology or bravery like with the berserks? Well then a pauldron is just as armour as any other piece.
Is he supposed to be a "light" build? Some kind of a rogue? Why on earth a pauldron then? It's not like the shoulder is the first place anyone would attack, or a bodypart one needs to protect above all others. I'd wear a cuirass, or a padded jack in that case.

To me this is the equivalent of a chainmail bikini - a dinosaur of fantasy illustration we should forget.

2) Pauldrons on hinges

I wonder who came up with the idea. Some unfortunately placed rivets on an original armour might have deceived him. Or maybe he just thought this was how it worked.

Pauldrons are not riveted to the cuirass. No.

Still, fantasy armours repeat this design over and over.
You even see it in movies (and boy oh boy, does it show how uncomfortable and awkward it is!)
 - I'm looking at you, Dungeon Siege!

also games like Dragon Age:

And man, does it NOT work when you make it into a costume!

(that poor actor had to pretend he could lift his arms comfortably)

So how were these things attached to the person? They were usually tied onto the cuirass/gorget/padded jack at the shoulder/neck. No, it doesn't flop around wildly, you can always put a strap going under the arm to hold it in place.
Putting the weight on the shoulder is a good for mass distribution and it doesn't get in the way of any movement.

3) Pauldrons wide enough to make you stuck in the door

Pauldrons are not just any massive bowls you stick on your shoulders. There are many different types and shapes, all very specifically shaped to fit the body very tightly and closely. You want to be a small target, not a huge one. You don't want it to change your balance.

I get it, wide shoulders make the silhouette seem powerful. I beg you, do it with the actual shoulders and then put pauldrons on those, don't put massively wide protruding pauldrons on narrow shoulders.

Illustrations like that remind me of American "football" players stuck in that harness of theirs. They have padded shoulders, because they want to tackle people.

There's no shortage of large "shoulder pads" in historical armours, but they're designed in a way that makes them cover a large area while remaining fairly close fitting:

I've posted mainly medieval plate armour as examples of how it "should" look. For a good reason - most fantasy is still based on our limited view and understanding of medieval Europe. Sure, it's changing, we're adding Asian and other influences. But the majority of knights, paladins and other armoured characters still wear "knight armor".

We could speak about more "primitive" shapes and designs like the tube-and-yoke armour, or the lorica segmentata. But we won't, not today. :)

I'd like to stress this is not a hate post, meant to tell all illustrators how dumb they are. Far from it!
The portrayal of fantasy armour IS getting better and better all the time.

These are just my personal pet peeves with pauldrons, that's all. Now you know how to do it LESS WRONG! ;P

A BONUS POINT! - Redundant besagues

Have you seen stuff like this before? I'm sure you have.

Those funny looking discs around the shoulders, or the armpits. Preferably painted on amazon warriors clad in mail bikini.

How? How do those make ANY sense at all? These things are called "besagues" and they're meant to protect the wearer from blows or blades slipping between the pauldrons and the cuirass - into the armpits where dem arteries are.

I only wish the artists hadn't forgotten to pain the cuirass and the pauldrons on in most cases.

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As always, if you have anything to say - SAY IT in the comments! :) I want to hear it.