SOULSPARK WORLDWIDE RELEASE MAY 7TH!

Yes yes, not a post with cool pencil drawings in it but, HEY, I've been busy. Been busy helping to create this kick-ass app game for IOS mobile devices called SoulSpark! 

The game will be released worldwide Thursday May 7th and it will be free to download.

I did all the illustration work for the game - some 71 characters and creatures - plus another 78 illustrations of maps, icons, weapons, equipment, and splash screens.

Still not sold? Check out this kick-ass video trailer!!!

Like I says, it is free to download so do check it out. If you're a fan of strategy, deck-building, and intense action wrapped up into a real-time game of card battles featuring delightfully fun artwork, I'm guessing you'll fall in love with this game. And if that's the case, help us spread the word of SoulSpark!!

Midwestern Over-Saturation Tour 2015!!

I apologize for posting a non-pencilsketch post on my blog that is exclusively about drawing BUT this blog gets way more traffic than my other blog and I'm looking to get some public appearance news out there.

So yes, starting at the very end of February and ending in mid-August, I will be appearing at FIVE shows (and one college presentation) - all within a 6 hour drive radius of Central Ohio. Despite the appearance, this is not a conscious attempt to saturate the midwest and make everyone sick of seeing me but I'm assuming that's how it will feel by the end of Summer. Never-the-less, here's a breakdown of everywhere I'll be in our beloved 'flyover' territory:

First is a fledgling convention called ShumatsuCon that is right here in Columbus, Ohio. It's a small convention that is essentially everything geek culture: movies, comics, games, cosplay, animation, etc. The show is February 27 through March 1. You can find more information HERE. I encourage you to check it out - but if you're only interested in seeing me and/or my artwork, I will only be there on Saturday February 28th so plan accordingly!

Second up is Magic:The Gathering GP Cleveland! The dates of the event are March 13, 14, and 15. I'll be there all three days signing cards, doing painted alters, selling prints and APs, and doing playmats sketches - the usual Magic artist stuff.

My next appearance after that isn't until the first weekend in May and it's not even in the US! I'll be at GP Toronto on May 1, 2, and 3 for my first ever Magic event in Canada! I'm pretty excited about this one - I haven't been to Toronto in over 25 years - which was probably the last time I was in Canada, too.  So all you Northern North Americans, come on by!

After GP Toronto, I'll have a couple months to prepare for mighty GenCon which is always a great time. If you're a gamer of any sort and love a good geeky/nerdy convention spectacle (and especially if you live within a reasonable traveling distance), GenCon is a must-see. GenCon is July 30th through August 2nd. I'll be there all four days selling art, prints, sketches, playmats, books, etc. Tons of other great artists will be there as well - the artist guest of honor is Tony DiTerlizzi! For more information, go HERE.

Last on my Midwestern Over-Saturation Tour is GP Detroit which is just two short weeks after Gencon: August 15-16. As with the previously mentioned Magic:The Gathering events, I'll be signing cards, doing painted alters, selling prints and APs, doing Playmat, sketches, and all that film flam. PLUS, one of the exclusive GP Detroit playmats will be done by me so get there early and make sure you get one!

And so will endeth my Spring and Summer appearance schedule. Anyone outside of the MidWest and doesn't feel like traveling for any of these shows, well, I'll just have to catch ya somewhere else someday.

Hallowed Spiritkeeper

Here's the sketch for Hallowed Spiritkeeper for Magic: The Gathering.  If you're familiar with the card, you see that I flipped the drawing when I went to paint the final.  In this instance, I have no idea why I did that (it's been almost 10 months since I think!) Sometimes I will just get a feeling like I'd like it better if the subject was facing the other way. Other times it is because I drew up another illustration at the same time and both had similar poses or something.

You can check out the final painting HERE.

Oh yeah, and if you're in the market for collecting Magic originals, well the painting (NOT the sketch) is currently up on eBay right now. Go have a look HERE!

And just so this post isn't left with only one sketch, here's a bonus drawing. This one for Siege Dragon (also not for sale).

Hey Sweden!

Guess who is coming to Stockholm in October! That's right, 80's hair metal shredsters: Dangerous Toys! And they're going to be playing all of ABBA's greatest hits!

All right, I have no clue what Dangerous Toys are up to right now - I made that shit up. However, what I'm NOT kidding about is that there is a Magic Grand Prix in Stockholm October 24-26 and the visiting artist will be me and fellow acrylic-slinger Jesper Ejsing.

We'll be there signing cards, selling prints, selling artist proofs, doin' sketches - all that stuff. And oh yeah, Jesper and I teamed up to do a dual-artist playmat exclusive just for GP Stockholm that you won't want to miss. If you want one of those kick-ass playmats, better book your trip to Stockholm post haste! (I'll post the artwork for the playmat in upcoming days here).

Finally, check out my sweet sketch of everything that Sweden is known for: gummy red candies shaped vaguely like fish, meatballs, stylized viking helmets, their own flag, and bikini teams (even though the Swedish Bikini Team is an American invention). Finally, if you look closely, you can see that this platinum-haired lass is totally atheist.

Just kidding Swedes, I already dig your country and I'm sure I'll think it kicks even more ass after I have visited it in about 3 weeks. One thing though, when you come up to say hello to me and Jesper, male sure you wear your bikinis.

More Teaser Art!

I've been away for what seems like most of the last two months. Well, it "seems" that way because it has been. I was back out at Wizards of the Coast for three weeks in May doing conceptual design work for an upcoming Magic:The Gathering set. Then I came home for a few days and went back out the door on vacation.

But now I am back and pushing full force on these little stocky creatures and characters for the upcoming game: SOULSPARK.

As of right now I am working predominantly on the colors because I am mostly done with the drawing part. I still go back and retool details here and there as I see fit but I can consider the drawing part finished.

The drawing part did prove to be quite a challenge though. Not in amount of drawing that had to be done - but fitting the subject matter into the right style.  Each piece had to hit just the right note on many levels.

One factor I had to contend with was fitting them into a roughly playing card shaped dimension (a stocky vertical rectangle). Thus the restraint on their silhouettes not straying too far from the core. That meant that wild flourishing "action" poses or weapons that projected way outside the central area had to be held in check for the most part.

Obviously, the exaggerrated proportions was really the key factor in the look of these. For the humanoid characters especially, I had to get just the right amount of stockiness on different parts of their bodies for them to not look like fat dwarves. The first 12 or so drawings I did actually weren't QUITE on the mark with this and I only saw it after I hit my groove later on down the line. I subsequently went back and retooled many of those first drawings to bring them up to date so to speak. Even more difficult was fitting animals into this style!

There is also a tone for the artwork that had to be reached. It's something hard to describe in words - it's more of an "I'll know if it's right when I see it" kind of thing but essentially I wanted these to be cool and kick ass, but with some humor and whimsy, too - a smaller target area than you might think. Many times I erased and redrew monsters that were too dark and not that note of playful-cool that I wanted. Likewise I redrew many pieces that veered too far into "silly" territory.

As I went along in the drawing phase and came upon all these tricky hurdles, I had to smile to myself that these were all my own parameters for the look and feel.  All the extra hours of redrawing and erasing and redrawing and struggling through were of my own making! Which of course is why I loved doing it, why I love the results, and why I think that my enthusiasm will show in the final product and help make the game successful.

____________________________________

Another reminder that I will have a table in the GenCon Artshow this August. SoulSpark's release date has been pushed a couple months into October but I am hoping to have some promotional material available in Indianapolis for the show. I'll of course have an array of other items of interest: original artwork, prints, artist proofs, art books, etc. Hope to see you there!

Time To Start Teasing!

Haven't posted much on either of my blogs as of late. That's due to mostly lack of time but also lack of sharable content. At least, content that is pertinent to the now and the few-months-from-now.

That is because I have stumbled into a fantastic and fantastically fun project that is a bit of an adventure. And though still in essence a fantasy game, it is most definitely unlike anything I have done in my career so far.

It is extremely exciting on many levels. Besides being outside my comfort zone of my usual array of TCG art and RPG manual covers, I have a tremendous amount of creative freedom - plus, I will retain rights to the artwork. The work done for this game will certainly be a career highlight - and possibly, if the game proves popular, will become a major part of my life for quite some time.

Vague enough? Yeah, I'll leak out more about the game in greater and greater detail the further along we move. But besides the drawings at the top here (of which they are but 3 of some 75 or so - eventually full-color), I'll dish out a few other tidbits: I'm working with a company in Denmark. My art director and liaison to the Danes is fellow acrylic-using goblin-painter Jesper Ejsing. And finally, the game is set for a late Summer or early Fall release so expect lots of promotional stuff at my GenCon Art Show booth in August. You didn't know I was going to be at GenCon this year? That's right - I'm back! August 14-17, baby!

Pssst!…..Check it out!

About 4 years ago I worked on a bunch of concepts for a project I shall not (yet) disclose. As far as I have ever seen, the project never reached a final phase and was shelved early on in the creative process. Never-the-less, the company involved might get a bit ruffled and cause me financial distress should I blab about it openly so I'm going to remain annoyingly vague about what it was I was doing these drawings for.  I have since lost my contact information for the art director I worked with - and talking to the legal department I know will most likely get me a disappointing answer. So I shall remain for now like a seedy stolen watch dealer in the shadows of a grimy alley - showing my illegal wares to those interested.

I actually forgot about these drawings until just recently and was pleasantly surprised at how much fun they are still. Which, of course, made it a little more painful that I can't share them. The rarely-present risk-taking bad boy in me convinced the rule-follower that we should pick out a couple of the more vague drawings just to give them life outside of my closed sketchbook.

So here are two of maybe only 25 drawings I did for this. There's probably no way in Hades that you could guess what product these were concepts for - which maybe adds to the excitement.  If you were one of the very few I talked to about this project a little more openly, you best keep your comments to your damn self! The rest of you feel free to enjoy this meager sample and wonder about what was the greater scheme going on here.

You may also feel free to comment on my open innuendo about "showing my illegal wares".

Sketchbooks Through the Ages

A colorful array of all 13 of my sketchbooks from past to present. 

I can't decide which is better: the duct tape binding fix on sketchbook 1 or the masking tape fix on #2.

Obviously I have been drawing a long, long time. But I didn’t start keeping a true sketchbook until I got one as a freshman in college as part of my initial freshman year package of art supply crap. That was Fall of 1991.  Even then, it took me a bit to warm up to the idea of having a book of blank collected pages to scribble, doodle, and draw on when the whim presented itself. In retrospect, I was doing sketchbook stuff for years before college - in the form of drawing all over my pages of notes in high school.  Algebra, Pre-Calc, Social Studies, History, Physics - all those notes were festooned with little drawings and doodles - in some cases there were more drawings on a note page than notes. Funny thing is, my sketchbooks in college represented the same thing - a place for drawings AND class notes.  Though the favor had been tipped irreversibly in favor of drawings - notes pushed to the margin. Literally.

A random spread from sketchbook 1 - circa 1991

So my sketchbook collection (pictured at the top) began in 1991. These are my SKETCHBOOK sketchbooks.  That is to say, I have eight other sketchbooks, larger ones of the same black, hardcover variety but I use them mainly as places for fully realized line drawings that get scanned and go on to become paintings or other finalized illustrations.  They do not include all the really fun mindless doodles, free-drawing, and idea-forging that these here have. Thus, I don’t count them as true sketchbooks. Why do I make this distinction, I have no idea. But I do.

A spread from sketchbook 2 - circa 1993 I think?

On all but two I noted the date I started each sketchbook. I started my latest one on January 2nd of this year - number 13! That’s 12 going on 13 in 22+ years - I guess that makes my average about one sketchbook per 21 months or so. Some artists burn through sketchbooks like crazy - I go through spurts where barely anything gets added for months and then 1/3 of a book gets filled in the span of 3 weeks because I’m working on some large-scoped project or something and I churn out pages of sloppy thumbnails and loose gesture drawings to work out some action pose or what-have-you. That doesn't mean I go a long time without drawing - it most likely means I am applying my drawing and/or creativity elsewhere.

Sci-fi space marine doodles from sketchbook 4 - circa 1995 or '96

A spread from sketchbook 5 - thumbnails for a 

World of Darkness:Hunter book on the right.

Circa 1998

I’ve been referring back through these sketches a lot in the last few years. First when I was collecting content for my book AGGREGATE.  I went over each sketchbook trying to find the most fun drawings out of hundreds and hundreds of pages.  Most recently I have been having to go back through the last four or five rather frequently to seek out random sketches for Magic: The Gathering card art.  Yes, some of the paintings I have done came from relatively small drawings in one of these smaller sketchbooks - essentially up-sized thumbnails that I figured were refined enough to go straight to the paints with. But people inquire about them and are often interested in buying them so I have to go track them down and discern whether they are worth selling.

My obnoxiously geeky sketchbook cover for #4

Looks like a teenager's bedroom door. Except I was 23.

You can see that it didn’t occur to me to decorate the exterior of my sketchbook until book 4.  Book 3 looks like it has a pen-and ink drawing for a cover but actually it is just the first page - the cover did not last very long and thus, that was the first and last time I bought a spiral-bound sketchbook. But since then, it has become part of the ritual for starting a new sketchbook.  I don’t put much time or thought into decorating the cover though - I usually just grab whatever acrylic paint I happen to have an excess amount of and just wing it.  Obviously my favorite is Book4 though. That one I started the Summer before my last semester in college - 1995. It shows the most personailty and show a slice of  that era of my life: a collage of random pop culture magazine pics (White Zombie, Salem’s Lot, Total Recall, Predator2) and a sticker from my friends’ band Wrinklebomb - all lovingly laminated in packaging tape.  Actually, the packaging tape is a good idea - that book’s cover is still holding together nicely!

Some doodlin' from sketchbook 8 (circa 2005) with a tiny little thumbnail for my

Dragons of Eberron book cover on the lower right.

There seems to be at least one Predator in every sketchbook. This one

is in sketchbook 10 (circa 2009-2010) along with some thumbnails for some random painting.

 My favorite aspect of this little collection of my sketchbooks is how they chronicle (through no foresight or planning of my own) definitive moments in my career and life - noteworthy evidence of certain projects, ideas, and certain times.

There are lots of traces of notable college projects in the first 4 sketchbooks, sketches of my parents’s cats, even a random drawing of one of my coworkers when I worked a couple summer months at a movie theater (1993 - the summer Jurassic Park came out!). There are countless inside jokes that I shared amongst my college pals not to mention copious movie-reference sketchs from Aliens to Predator to Tombstone, Star Wars, Geronimo, and Conan (we geeked on movie stuff all but constantly).

A spread from sketchbook 11 (circa 2011) that shows a rough of "Yule Ooze" on the left 

and some thumbnails for Innistrad cards on the right.

During my third sketchbook (sometime in late 1994), my professional illustration career started off with a handful of pages of pen and ink drawings I did specifically as portfolio pieces to show to White Wolf. That sketchbook ends with thumbnails and roughs for my very first job with them for a book called World of Darkness: Outcasts. It also randomly includes a travel journal from when my friends and I went camping in Appalachia for Spring Break.

At some point in my 6th sketchbook was when I started doing work for Wizards of the Coast (2002). At least 2/3 of that sketchbook contains all the concept drawings I did when I worked on creating the world of Eberron (early 2003). It also has a couple pen and ink illustrations I did for centerpieces that my wife and I made for our wedding.

Sketchbook 7 has loads of drawings and roughs for D&D miniatures and sketchbook 8 is when I started working on Magic: the Gathering (2005-2006). Sketchbook 9 marks the time when I started this blog. And, well, you get the idea.

A page of heads n' faces from sketchbook 12 - circa 2012-2013). What, no predators or naked ladies?

In no other way can you look at an illustrator's career and development as intimately as you can when you peruse that artists's sketchbooks. It's like a (insert cliche deep thought metaphor here) - and that's a fact. Here's hoping all you artists out there don't take these little collections of your artistic growth for granted. Save them and keep 'em around - sprinkle some dates in there if you can remember to. They're valuable in a way you might not be able to understand until you're able to look back on 22 years (or more) of them.

Roon of the Hidden Realm

This is the rough for "Roon of the Hidden Realm" for Magic: the Gathering. Many of my drawings that are on the way to being paintings become a patchwork of adjustments and multiple pieces of drawings - stitched together in good ol' photoshop. This is because I tend to "feel" out a drawing as I am drawing it.  I'll start with the main focus which is usually a single figure or two figures - if I can get the feel and action of that to look right, I'll start to build off and around that.

On a drawing like this one for Roon, I'll start in a large sketchbook.  In feeling out the pose and action, I often run out of room to finish the drawing so I'll scan what I have, print that out as a slightly smaller version, then finish the drawing out to roughly the appropriate size ratio with background and everything.

Then BACK to the scanner and back into photoshop where I deliberate placement and proportions, etc.  Sometimes looking at the image on a computer screen helps me see little things that need to be tweaked - I'll adjust the size of a figure in the background or maybe bump the horizon line a tad - rotate a weapon a smidge so it isn't interfering with some other component of the composition - and so on.  In the case of Roon, I did a little of all these things.  I played around with whether I wanted Roon to be bigger or smaller in the frame according to how much of his whacky staff was going to be cropped off at the top and adjusted the building behind him this way and that to get it to feel right in the composition - all in hopes that I can get it all into a good, well-reading balance that makes for a potentially exciting painting.

You can see the final painting HERE on my art blog.

Oh, and the final painting is up for auction on Ebay through January 13th. Feel like owning a nice piece of original Magic artwork? Check it out HERE.

Planeswalker Sketch Crds

I just posted five new auctions selling a full set of the SDCC Variant Planeswalkers plus one original sketch card featuring one of the featured Planeswalkers. You have until about 10:00 am eastern time zone next thursday to make your bid if you're interested!

Lilliana
Ajani
Garruk
Jace
Chandra

Here are what the sketch cards look like. I did these drawings on blank cards and adhered them to a valueless old magic card so that they could have that nice iconic Magic the Gathering backing - makes it look pretty nice. Don't try to peel the cards apart to see what card I glued to - it's not a Black Lotus, for cryin' out loud!

By the way, for those of you interested in purchasing original Magic: The Gathering artwork, I have posted a price list of my available Magic originals HERE.

Jack Plane

I haven't posted any pencil stuff in a while so here's a little sumthin sumthin just to break the silence.  This was drawn just this week for a friend who is devilishly keen with carpentry stuff.

Eberron Revisited! (Kind of)

Hey, remember Eberron? It's still close to my hear because I was one of the concept artists that helped give visual cues to all the cool stuff found in the D&D off-shoot. I did a lot of interior art specific to the various Eberron books that came out in the mid-aughties - many of which I unearthed in my studio during my latest clean-up and containment surge.

This isn't a revisit to Eberron where I post a bunch of Eberron drawings so much as a ham-fisted attempt to get some of you Eberron fans out there to buy this old artwork I found and give it a better place to while away the rest of eternity than a shabby box in my studio.

Over on my Art-Blog I have posted a bunch of these old Eberron pieces including an epic panoramic cover painting of the dragon continent of Argonessen done for the Eberron book: Dragons of Eberron.

Any purchases over $300 also get an original Eberron-specific drawing such as the one at the top of this post!  Contact me at: steve2@rottface.com with any interest or questions!

AUTUMN NEARS!

Fall is almost here and for the sake of this draw-blog post, that means two things!  Football and ILLUXCON!!!!

Firstly, here's a sketch of a beefy football player.  The Cleveland Browns are my team so this here's a Cleveland Brown.  That said, you can rest assured that he is about to fumble (which will be returned for a touchdown) and that he will also probably have a season-ending injury.

But anyway, yeah - football is upon us.  I like football but I'm not a fan of things that signify the end of Summer.  I like Summer. This Summer especially has been a delight.  But oh well, guess it's time to grimace and watch my favorite tomato can humiliate northeast Ohio again.

Now, Illuxcon.  Never will you be able to see so much glorious traditional fantasy artwork in one spot at one time.  It's a annual fantasy art convention where a phenomenal crop of contemporary fantasy artists all set up and show off some truly masterful artwork.  For yours truly, it's always a humble-fest.  I go there every year and consider myself very fortunate to be among such great artists. Often times I wonder if there was some clerical error that got me into the show!

This year, Illuxcon has been moved from its usual November slot to September 11-15.  And it's also been moved from it's comfortable confines of Altoona to a new city further east - Allentown, PA.  This should be very exciting for everyone - I know I am damn excited.  And nervous!  And ill prepared!

A few things.  Illuxcon is split into three "shows".  There's a Main Show that goes on all five days.  There's a "Weekend Salon" that is just the two weekend days - and an evening showcase that is thursday and friday nights.  I am part of the Weekend Salon so I'll only be set up for all day Saturday and all day Sunday.  But don't let that deter you from enjoying all the IlluxCon has to offer for all five days!

Lastly, I did an interview with "Hipsters of the Coast"at a recent Magic: The Gathering GP.  Mind you, it has been word-for-word transcribed including all the "ums" and "uhs" and broken sentences I tend to use when I'm blathering on and distracted by answering questions in a bustling convention hall while signing cards. It makes it a bit of an awkward read and my short answers make me seem like a big jerk. Maybe I am a big jerk but I promise I wasn't trying to be on this particular day!  Anyway, there's some insight in the interview and I talk about my most sucktacular Magic card, too.  If you're into transcribed interviews with distracted, nonsensical fantasy artists, this is right up your alley!

Damn Dirty Apes

Just thought I'd post a little something since, ya know, I haven't posted much of anything in quite a bit.  This is the sketch for a painting that never came to fruition.  It is actually the precursor to my illustration for the Philadelphia Magic GP playmat (the one with the three-headed chicken monster).  This was my first idea but it was deemed not zany, crazy, or whacky enough.

It will probably never become a painting but it was a fun idea that kind of took shape while I drew it.  I started with the vague idea of apes in fantasy regalia.  But when I drew it, I liked the vapid/dejected look of the gibbon so much that I decided that he would be the catalyst.  In his hand is not a banana (as originally drawn) but a banana-like tooth from the water beast on the right.  See the little bloody hole in its gum line? The idea being that the banana-hungry gibbon saw the teeth and just had to have one - much to the discomfort and rage of the water beast.

PLANESWALKERS

So this week MTV Geek posted a teaser for the Magic: the Gathering promo Planeswalker cards that I was lucky enough to get to do the artwork for.  The five super-rare cards are to be unleashed to the slavering Magic fans at San Diego ComicCon this July.  The teaser showed the Garruk black-on-black promo card as an example of the nifty graphic quality of the cards - completely different from what one normally sees on a Magic card.

Despite the extremely graphic pos-neg quality of the artwork, I did do these traditionally (well MOSTLY traditionally - there was a bit of digital tweaking and cleaning-up that went on after I scanned them in). As such, there was just as much preliminary work and post work as there would have been had I just been painting these, believe it or not.  I had to plan them out as black and white graphics - establishing bold shapes and elements while letting go of lines and halftones to describe the forms and details.  It was most definitely a "less-is-more" approach - a different and challenging way of creating an image that I wasn't used to but welcomed never-the-less.

But before that, I had to draw up the right poses for each planeswalker and still establish them as drawings first - with all the appropriate details even though most of those details would get dropped out or covered up. So here's my preliminary work on Garruk as well as Jace.  As far as I know, an image for Jace's card hasn't been released yet but the same image is being used on t-shirts that are being sold at WalMart right now - some I'm thinking it is ok to show the sketch here.

One last thing, there has been a bushel of inquiries about purchasing the original artwork for these planeswalker pieces (apparently, non-digital planeswalker art is hard to come by!). That said, I'm going to be selling all five together in an auction on eBay in the coming month.  Don't worry, I'll post details about that when the time comes so, if you're interested, stay tuned!

CHRONICLE

A few months ago I did a handful of pencil illustrations for a small-production project called "Chronicle", a game designed by Timothy Nanzer.  He let me have a nice amount of breathing room as far as my takes on some usual fantasy tropes - always a welcome thing.  The above sour-faced antagonist is a hobgoblin. And he lost his balloon so step off.

This lumpy-mugged brute is an orc and he's sick of your knock-knock jokes.

If you're interested in finding out more, go HERE for the website or HERE for the facebook page.

Do NOT lick the carnivorous toads. Public service message.

Priestesses often look down their noses at infidels.

Tim and his game will be at Origins at the Columbus Convention Center in Columbus, Ohio on June 13th through the 15th so come and check it out!

The Toad God needs a burger.  Now get on that sesame seed bun, scum.

Some Ravnica Under-Drawings

Just to bridge the time until the next post of interest, here are a handful of my roughs that went on to become paintings for Return to Ravnica Magic: The Gathering cards.  Pictured above is the line drawing for "Gem-Eye Drake".

Below is the line drawing for "Crowned Ceratok" (one of my favorite pieces from this Return to Ravnica block).

And lastly, here's the drawing for a card called "ShowStopper" which is coming out very soon in the "Dragon's Maze" set for Ravnica.  Apparently, the final card art will grace the official playmat for Grand Prix Kansas City in July.  Oh yeah, and guess who is gonna be there to scribble on them all with  his trusty Sharpies? If you guessed "some tool" you are CORRECT!

Speaking of Grand Prix appearances, I'll be at the GP Providence in Rhode Island June 7, 8, and 9! If you're a lobstah-eatin' chowdah-head that happens also to be a wicked Magic fan, I'll be seein' you there!

GOBLINZ!!! 7

One last Goblin post.  I still have drawings from this defunct project left but they aren't really worth sharing so truly, this is the last of my goblin drawings.

Above are some examples of goblins from the Kung-Fu faction.  Highly skilled in being calamity-causing sub-par martial artists, these goblins fling themselves into frays and supply their own Bruce Lee inspired sound effects.

The goblins have a police force, so-to-speak.  But, let's face it, they don't really excel in keeping order.

Here are some gene-splicing "experimental" goblins.  Why are the genius goblins doing these experiments? Nobody knows...

And finally, the plutonium bomb faction goblins have somehow found a way to animate plutonium.  Not sure they really meant to, but now they have themselves a plutonium golem which goes around wrecking things and then contaminating the scene with radiation.  (Notice the plutonium bomb mechanic for scale!)

All images are copyright©Wizards of the Coast.

GOBLINZ!!! 6

It's been a while, but I still have more goblin crap to share so I hope ya ain't sick of it yet.  In Goblandia, there was, of course, need of a mining faction to hastily and dangerously extract mineral resources for the depths of the world's crust.  Mining goblins obviously spend a lot of time down in the dark pick-axing and shoveling and drilling away.  Their eyes are pale like a cave fish and they're often not even as intelligent as their surface-dwelling brethren - probably because of the lack of adequate ventilation and thus, not enough oxygen to the brain. The drill borer is one of my favorites from the whole goblin series.

There is also a bioengineering division which experiments in complex biosciences - but with rudimentary understanding and tools.

Being foolhardy and distractedly industrious, goblins are prone to war.  War leads to escalation of weaponry - which leads to goblins figuring out ways to use plutonium.  Here is a plutonium bomb mechanic.  Radiation suits were not thought of yet.


Side note: over on my Art Blog I have a post about illustrating specific actions for Magic:The Gathering cards as well as, if you're interested, a complete list of all the original Magic:The Gathering paintings I have left and are for sale.  Prices included in the list.

Also, must I remind you still?  I have a book chock full of pencil drawings sure to delight your eyes and offend your parents (if they are offended by malevolent fantasy creatures and the occasional bare bosom).  The book is called AGGREGATE .  It is $25 (plus whatever shipping costs might apply).  If you like what you see here, you'll definitely like my art book so pick one up while I have some!  Contact me at: steve2@rottface.com to make an order.