Dračí Doupě II - Bestiary

What an imaginative title!
I was asked to paint the cover image for the new Bestiary for Dračí Doupě 2. (an RPG I've worked on before)

A bestiary is a book full of beasts. Oh, wait! It's like the Monster Manual. There. Now you know.

The scene was supposed to depict a battle of two ancient creatures - Kostěj the Immortal and the Spideress. Kostěj is a bit like a lich, only Slavic and with his own style. He maintains an illusion of a handsome knight, but if you touch him, or break his spell some other way, you see his true rotting form. He rides a magical steed.
The Spideress is an ancient spider demi-goddess, awoken from her Cthulhu-like slumber, possessing cultists and building a lair in an abandoned underground temple.

And they fight.

You can see the front in a larger version on my DeviantArt here:

http://merlkir.deviantart.com/art/Battle-of-the-Ancients-337716550

And this is what the wrap-around looks like.

As usual it's painted mainly in ArtRage, some bits were added in PS. The cave is inspired heavily by the Macocha chasm:

https://www.google.cz/search?hl=cs&safe=off&q=macocha&bpcl=38626820&ion=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&biw=1680&bih=961&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=36ajUKbtD8TtsgbtkoAw

Fabulous hats and feathers

A short post today. I hope I'm allowed to show this (Jeff will let me know if not, I'm sure) - it's a page from my sketchbook, which I drew during the Splash conference last weekend.

(You can see me draw it a couple of times! :))

The sketches are of the Feathered Queen, a character I'll be painting for the upcoming "Guide to Glorantha" book. This character has been drawn and painted before, most recently by none other than Jon Hodgson:

http://jonhodgson.deviantart.com/art/Sartar-Kingdom-of-Heroes-Cover-318113350

I wanted to do my own take though. I didn't have any reference on me at the time, so there aren't that many Scythian/American Indian elements present. And the design will be different in the final painting, but I'm glad I explored the idea of fabulous feathered headgear and what shapes it could have.