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Showing posts from February, 2017

Charcoal Portraits

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New pieces for my RPG character folder. All done with charcoal and chalk on A4 paper. An Iktotchi jedi temple guard from Star Wars: Edge of the Empire. A young Maraskanian pirate from the Dark Eye. A stealthy assassin from the Dark Eye. A world-class archer with a dark past from the Dark Eye.

Garbage to the Rescue

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As a beginning or starving artist, you look at pro artists' studios and wish you had all that great stuff they do. It'll come. For now though, there's a lot of handy not-so-pretty things around the house that cost you next to nothing. Here's some of my helpful garbage. Foto-frame glass plate. Glass withstands any medium - no amount of tape, acrylics, glue, or whathaveyou can harm it - and it's easy to clean when wet. I use it as my work table surface. This sheet is from a 40×60cm frameless frame; those come with smoothed edges, so the risk of cutting oneself is low. Such thin glass breaks easily though, and should be handled with care. I often bump the corners, which can be fixed with small bits of tape. Freezer bag. As any painter I put generous amounts of paint on my palette, and don't want to waste it. So I stick the whole palette into a freezer bag and tape it shut. It can keep paints useable for several days (larger amounts for weeks even). So

All good pirates...

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...listen to their mothers. This quote from Dola's sons in the Laputa film is a recurring joke in crime families throughout fiction, and it always makes me laugh. I wanted to paint a classic subject, and dared the extra twist of an old wrinkled lady, which isn't seen so often in current fantasy. Acrylics on paper mounted to board, 40×30 cm. I'd like to get a good, heavy metallic frame for it, but I don't have the wall space to hang it up anyway.