Werewolf Anniversary

Back in Spring I got contacted by an old, familiar company.  It was White Wolf Games.  My first true freelancing gig was with White Wolf just before I graduated from CCAD in 1995.  I then proceeded to spend the better part of the next six years being a work horse for the horror-based RPG company - illustrating for nearly all their World of Darkness properties: Vampire, Changeling, Hunter, Mage, and most notably Werewolf: The Apocalypse.  Indeed, much of who I am as an artist I can attribute to my years drawing and inking hundreds and hundreds of were-animals of all shapes and sizes and of all cultures and character.

The more I inked illustrations for White Wolf, the better I became - becoming a student of how Mike Mignola composed his images with line and large shapes of moody black.  Mignola's love of mythology and mythological paraphernalia and design motifs seeped into my own bones as I was called upon to develop the looks of each werewolf tribe (which were often tied to geography-specific history and mythology).  This attention to design and antiquities from ancient cultures still heavily persists in my artwork today.

And of course, I developed a pretty good ability to take pretty much any animal and anthropomorphize it - a skill incredibly useful in pretty much any fantasy game I have worked on since then.  Being able to draw a snarling, slavering predatory mammal head is something I barely go a week without having to do in some form or another.

But it's been a while - I can't remember the last Werewolf project I worked on, nor when that was.  It was probably around 2002 shortly after they restarted all their properties - which was shortly after they ended the previous epoch with "the Apocalypse".  Which was ok by me.  I felt that I had put my fingerprints all over their brand - with the new brand starting, maybe it was time for a new anthropomorphized-creature artist to step in.  Plus I was starting to do more and more color work and there just wasn't enough of that to go around with the mostly black-n-white books for White Wolf.  Since then, the only White Wolf project I have worked on was one short gig doing a slew of Changeling full-figure spot illos.

But then I get this e-mail from Rich Thomas (who seems to have been at White Wolf as long as anyone) saying that they are working on a 20th anniversary Werewolf: The Apocalypse book and that they'd like for me to do full-color figures for each of the 13 classic Werewolf tribes plus the 3 "lost" tribes.  The chance to go revisit those old lycanthrope friends, well, I just couldn't pass it up.  White Wolf helped me pay my bills for a long time. The art directors allowed me room to learn on-the-job and to experiment with all sorts of different b/w techniques - some of it worked well, some did not.  And sometimes my art strayed too far into being cartoony.  But generally I'd like to think I gave them some nice artwork over a great many books.  So putting my Werewolf:TA boots on again, was not only sweetly nostalgic and still comfortable, but also a pleasure.

Pictured in this post are a selection of my cleaner drawings of the 16 illustrations I did for the 20th Anniversary issue.  Enjoy!

NAME THAT ALBUM COVER!

Here it is, folks! The "Name That Album Cover" contest you've been neglecting your personal hygiene for! Be the first to "comment" the correct album title and band(artist) name for all ten and win the delightful prize bundle pictured at the bottom of this post. And also bask in the glory of winning a contest for which you successfully employed your nearly useless knowledge of album cover imagery. Bravo!

The drawings are listed from ONE (first) to TEN (last) so make your list accordingly when you submit it. There should be no need to make a random guess here - I picked albums based on the uniqueness of the cover image - thus so there is no doubt when you put the drawing and the original cover side by side. If you're uncertain, why, you're already on the internet - you can find out if you're right in like, two seconds.

Good luck!

The reward for completing this inane little exercise in album cover imagery recognition is quite the treat (unless you hate my artwork, then it probably is tantamount to getting kicked in the groin).  What you get is a copy of my book AGGREGATE with a personalized sketch on the inside - an 8.5x11 print of my cover artwork for the D&D book: Dragonborn - and, to sweeten the deal, an original painting from 2004 of an Eberron hobgoblin skulking about in his crazy get-up!  Pretty nice, eh?  Now go name those albums!

COMING SOON! NAME THAT ALBUM COVER CONTEST 2!!!

Some of you may recall my "Name That Album Cover" contest I had back in the Spring of 2011.  Some of you might be virgins to this. If you're unfamiliar, check out that hyperlink above - otherwise, here's the gist:

I have taken 10 album cover images and done a whimsical re-imagining as a pencil drawing.  These pencil drawings will be tributes to the original album covers but will not be exact representations - I'll have trimmed them down and put my own personal skew onto them in varying degrees but there'll be no doubt that they are a pencilly homage to their real counterpart.

In order to win the contest, you will have to be the first to name all ten albums (and the bands/artists, too!).  The first person to list all ten in the "comments" column will win the contest and reap the sweet prize.

To answer your skepticism, none of the albums are mega-obscure bootlegs or German imports or anything like that - but they're not anything as immediately and universally recognizable as "Abbey Road" or "Thriller" or anything by Christian-metal supergroup Stryper either. You may get some right away but have to get an audiophile pal to help you out on others (I don't want this to be TOO easy!). 

That said, my first contest was won in about an hour so I have cast out the net for album cover images a little further this time.  If it looks like everyone is stumped, I'll start dropping hints - but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

What is the prize, you ask? A signed copy of my art book: AGGREGATE with a personalized drawing of your choice on the inside - and a signed print as yet to be determined.

Ok, so there's that. The Draw-Blogified album tributes will be posted at high noon (that's 12:00pm eastern time zone) next Wednesday October 24th and the contest will begin!  Until then, start thumbing through your 8-track, vinyl, cassette tape, and CD collections to get your juices flowin'!

Rousing Return to Ravnica Roughs Reach your Retina!

Here are two pencil drawings that became paintings for the first salvo of cards in the Return to Ravnica Magic:The Gathering block.  This first one is called "Hellhole Flailer" - a fitting name for a creepy-ass ogre covered in needly spikes and, well, flailing chains all about.  And, as you can see by jumping over to my ART BLOG, this dude probably DOES live in a Hellhole of some sort.  Or at least it is where he is currently employed.  "Looking to hire large-framed person to wear S&M harlequin outfit and flail chains.  Must be devoid of empathy."

This other one is a soldier token card.  It accompanies the card "Precinct Captain" - both final paintings you can see at THIS LINK. As you'll notice with your astute eyeballing, the tough-as-nails soldier can be seen in the background of Precinct Captain as can the captain be seen standing in the shadows here on the soldier card.  Not really much otherwise to say about it - I just like the drawing of this woman and her keen Ravnican gladius.

On another note, I'm not going to just make this the site where I post the pencil roughs while posting the final art on a separate blog.  I like having the two relate directly from time to time but mostly I just like the idea of this DrawBlog being only about pencil drawings and sketches while the Art Blog encompasses everything else.  Eventually, one or the other will merge into a new Steve Prescott website, but let's face it, I haven't attended to my website in nearly an epoch - and right now, that project is still sitting cold on the back burner.  My last active move on the website front was to purchase the domain "steveprescott.com" which suddenly became available!  Then I went back to painting...

Innistrad Concept Drawings pt2

One last post of Innistrad stuff.  Wish I had more (since I probably did at least 50 more drawings for this concept push) but currently, this is all I have in my possession to show.  These here are my werewolf designs.  There isn't a whole lot left to do with werewolves unless you want to get really wacky.  For Innistrad though, werewolves had to remain within a classic look.  So I took a werewolf I might draw for White Wolf's Werewolf:the Apocalypse game but hyper exaggerated the proportions.  Instead of sleek and super-muscles all over, these werewolves have smaller heads, elongated arms, tiny waists and hind legs, and smaller thumbs higher up on the wrist than a human hand (right about the middle between a human hand and a canine front paw).  Females are more svelte of shoulder and chest. Thought they came out pretty cool.

Wolves in Innistrad are separate from the werewolves and thus did not have to look similar.  I threw out a bunch of little thumbnail to see what caught the eye of the design team.  the one that worked best was the hairless-muzzled one at the bottom. I tried to picture a classically "horror" version of a wolf and seemed to recall seeing an old old artist representation of a wolf attacking somebody and the wolf was truly monstrous (not the elegant, primal beauties they are in the real world).  The wolf in the picture had no fur on its face and exaggerated teeth.  So I kinda rolled with that: bare, bulkier muzzle brimming with long teeth, and a nose that was more like a weird bear than a canine.

Here's another take on what humans might wear to battle in Innistrad.  Black iron being the metal most often used, I applied bits and pieces of spiked iron armor to their otherwise leather and cloth outfits.  Gotta protect the neck from those damn vampires (thus the high collars!)

Well, that closes the book on the Innistrad stuff I currently have access to.  One day I'll have the rest of the work I did on this concept design project and I'll post some more.  For now though, I next will move on to posting some Return to Ravnica sketches - and then another "Guess the Album Cover" contest!  Stay tuned......

Innistrad Concept Drawings pt1

Hope you're not yet sick of Innistrad posts - because I still have more to show!  I think I linked to some of the concept art I did for Innistrad before.  Much of that was probably pencil drawings with some digital color plopped on.  Here are a few of my pencil-only contributions of the work Mike "Daarken" Lim, Steve Belledin, Richard Whitters, and I did in concepting the Magic: The Gathering world of Innistrad.

Above are some samples of humans.  They hold no high status in this world - they are essentially the part of the populace constantly at odds with the rest of the denizens of Innistrad.  They are the prey species - the wildebeests, if you will.  But they aren't push overs.  However crude and utilitarian their clothes, armor, and weapons are, they've got spirit!

Oh man, working on the blue-aligned alchemist humans were fun! I unfortunately didn't get a chance to do up one in a final illustration but at least I got to dabble a bit at this stage.

The vampires are the uppity, fancy-clothes-wearing, nobility of the realm.  One of their unifying visual cues was wrought iron design work and filigree worked into both clothing and weapons.

Here's another vampy dame - a cleric.  probably blessing a keg of blood at a sweet vampire frat-party.

If you dig this Innistrad stuff, be sure to slide your internet butt on over to my Art-Blog and see some of the fully painted work I did for set.  Fun stuff indeed!

Sexy Treestump Attire on sale at Kohl's!

Want to wear a little something special for your special someone tonight?  Try a boiled leather thong bikini with metal and demon-horn trim, a mystical floor length half-skirt, bark-textured thigh-high stockings with 23-lb shit-kicker boots, boiled leather vambraces with rune relief antique gold trim, and to top it all off, magical glowing tree stump pouldrons!  All on sale NOW through Sunday at Kohl's!

Accessories also available.

Goblin Banana Hammock

Here's a goblin crotch-shot!  Because, ya know, I figured your day wouldn't be complete without getting an eyeful of goblin crotch.  Actually, I had to make sure that was less of a focal point in the final.  I added some leather straps to kinda break that little area up so that the card didn't have to be renamed "Goblin Banana-Hammock".

Oh, and make sure you check out my new "Art Blog".  I have posted a a bunch of my work for Magic: The Gathering's Innistrad expansion set and still have more to share!

Magic: The Gathering Grand Prix Columbus Ohio!

Here's a rough sketch for "Zealous Conscripts" - posted to give me reason to mention the following:

For any of y'alls that have interest, you probably know about this already but next weekend (July 20, 21, 22) I will be attending the Magic Grand Prix in Columbus, Ohio as a guest artist along with Steve Belledin.  It's your chance to get cards signed by two Magic artists named Steve in one Magic event!  Ya just can't pass that up, no sir.  How can you go to your grave knowing you missed out on double-Steve card signing action?  You can't, so be there!

The event is at the Columbus Convention Center - we're scheduled to sign all three days.  Both of us will be selling artist proofs, prints, original paintings, books, and, of course, convention sketches.  We might even sell locks of our hair braided together into bracelets complete with friendship beads!  Anything goes!!!

One last thing that has nothing to do with the above information - be sure to check out my Art Blog - different from this here "Draw" Blog in that it pretty much encompasses everything else of mine outside of the world of pencil drawings.  The latest post is about some tattoo art that has my fingerprints all over them.  

The Elderlimb!

This is the drawing for what would become "Elderlimb" for set 17 of the World of Warcraft TCG.  Treants, treefolk, tree-people, whatever they are, they're always fun to draw.  Always.  Should there ever be a day when it is no longer fun to draw anthropomorphized trees, that will be the day I hang it up.  And then probably hang myself since, obviously, I have been taken over by nano-parasites and therefore have become a threat to humanity.

Be that as it may, I had fun with the tree guy and the painting didn't come out half bad either.  As with most Warcraft art, I got to muck around with gaudy colors and see what happens.  Go take a look at the final piece on my draw-blog's sister site: Prescott Art Blog for an eyeful!

Also, because I have to drop tiny little reminders every once in a while, if you're new to this site and/or new to my pencil drawings and you like what you see, perhaps your interest would propel you to buy one of my books: AGGREGATE: The Art of Steve Prescott.  Contact me at steve2@rottface.com if you're interested!

SALVAGE

 Here is a very mildly interesting post about half-assed problem solving!

For this Magic:The Gathering card (titled "Silent Blade Oni"), I was to simply draw a cool-looking demon-ninja creature on a rooftop at night.  The drawing at the top is what I squeezed out - a pretty fun little piece with some cool details and I thought the angle worked really well.  Unfortunately, coincidentally, and almost creepily odd, the pose, angle, and composition were all but exactly the same as a sketch for a different card by a different artist which was turned in and approved before I sent in mine for approval!  Seriously, the similarities were crazy.  Anyhoos, the other dude's sketch had already been approved so my art director had no choice but to ask me to change the angle or the pose or both. 

While I won't hesitate to erase a drawing if I have an inkling of doubt about whether it works well, this was different in that I was pretty invested in the drawing.  I liked it.  I was already picturing how I was going to color and paint it.  So I went about finding a way to salvage as much of what I liked as I could in order to separate it from that other illustration.   First I flipped it horizontal-like.  Then I tilted the camera-angle which really shouldn't have worked on the figure at all if you think about it - but somehow it did (which I'm not sure says anything very good about my drawing here!).   I then redrew everything else around the figure.  And that is how you do shit.

The final piece ended up looking like THIS - though not quite as dark as it looks here.

Jabberwocky!

As a favor for a friend, I drew up my own version of a Jabberwock from the famous poem made up of gibberish words.  I can't recall when I last read that poem - perhaps I never even have read it until recently - but I always thought I had an idea of what a Jaberwock looked like.  Turns out that my preconceived notions were all based on the original accompanying illustration - but the poem itself is exceptionally vague about what a Jabberwock looks like stating basically that it flits around in the trees, has claws and teeth.  Obviously, that leaves it wide open for interpretation.  I was going to go for a scarier, creepier look for this thing but, with a name like Jabberwock, I figure it had to be at least a little more "weird" than "creepy".  So anyways, there ya go.

Lorwyn Concepts 5

I still have a few more Lorwyn concept drawings to toss out there, yes I do! In this three-pic installment you will lay thine eyes upon my design for a Shadowmoor merfolk. Where Lorwyn merfolk were like fish-like mermaids, when the world got all dark and sinister by Shadowmoor, the merfolk became more like mermaid-like fish. We needed to figure out a way for them to be able to travel and fight while NOT in water so I took a page from walking catfish and gave them little clawed fins and a eel-body with which they could slither up onto land and hack away at some enemies.

The third piece is a grouping on Shadowmoor boggarts lookin' all creepy and vaguely like somebody dropped some bat and goat DNA in the bowl by accident.

Two more things, I am going to be launching a sister blog to my draw-blog. It will basically encompass everything that isn't pencil drawings and sketches. I'll post current finished artwork as well as stuff dug up from the deep dark past, step-by-steps, insights, and various things for sale. Speaking of that, since I'm in the middle of a Lorwyn revisiting, I'll be posting all my remaining original artwork with sale prices - expect that at some point this month.

Also, I haven't mentioned my book of pencil drawings in a while: AGGREGATE: The Art of Steve Prescott. I have sold out of the limited editions but I still have regular signed (upon request) copies for sale. If you like what you see on this blog, you'd probably really enjoy the book. Check out a very tiny taste on my website placeholder page HERE!

Lorwyn Concepts 4

Here is another small batch from my Lorwyn concept drawings circa 2006. Not seeing this above "coal hound" since, well, pretty much since I drew it, it was cool to rediscover it some 6 years later. Not sure what exactly the angle for the coal hound was - probably some sort of "red" creature - maybe even a replacement for wolves. Whatever though, it didn't make it into the style guide nor, as far as I have seen, any of the cards in the Lorwyn black. I do really like the drawing though - would have been a cool addition to my Aggregate book!

Not sure what the hell this leafy fellow was intended for. A lot of the concept designing phase was just throwing up ideas and seeing what the design crew thought. This leaf dude might have been some sort of elemental or possibly some sort of freaky elf/plant hybrid.

The little fire-dudes below are silly, yes - but part of a interesting development during the design push. Originally, there was no specified race for "red" (other than goblins, to an extent). But at one point during the weeks I was out there, it was decided that us artists needed to come up with some fire elemental folk. At first, we thought this was to fill a creature or elemental spot and so we drew up some very simple little fire/rock weirdos. Turns out, they actually wanted a race that can have a culture and weapons and ornamentation, etc. I recall being frustrated and stumped for the better part of a day and a half with these fire folk - because nothing we were coming up with seemed to fit the fairy tale Lorwyn world even remotely. Then Jeremy Jarvis Finally broke through with a cool design (that look almost nothing like these little brazier critters!). His design would go on to become the excellent flamekin you see in all the Lorwyn and Morningtide artwork. Thank goodness, because these dudes are a bit dingbatty.

Lorwyn Concepts 3

Shame on me. Back in the Spring of 2006, I was (and still am 6 years later!) totally enamored with Tony DiTerlizzi's newly released "Spiderwick Field Guide" and his phenomenal take on sprites. Amidst all the great artwork of Tony's in that book, I just loved the sprite fold-out the most. So when I went out to Wizards of the Coast to concept design Lorwyn, and one of the races that needed to be visually established were faeries, I knew EXACTLY the kind of look that would fit the slightly skewed semi-playful world. I didn't have Tony's book with me, but from pouring over those pictures so much, I had the gist of what they looked like and how I could kinda skew them slightly to fit into Lorwyn.

Well, I wish I DID have the book with me then - so I could have seen how close I was to totally copying my friend's excellent designs!!!! Ugh. Alright, I didn't rip-off any one of his little sprite folk specifically - but the sensibilities involved with insect physiology mixed with slightly human characteristics to make playful and cool-looking creatures is all Tony.

In the end, Lorwyn faeries were more waspy (like that one malevolent-looking wasp faerie at the top) and less all over the insect spectrum like my other drawings. So my territory invasion on DiTerlizzi sprites didn't go all the way to print. But still, I feel a bit bad for being so blatant without knowing it. It's not my style to borrow so liberally - only to channel whatever it is that is inspiring me. I should blame Tony, actually. His sprites were too fun to draw and I suppose I just couldn't help myself. Yes, I think I'll go with that. The defense rests, your honor.

If you haven't seen or purchased "Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You" by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, I can't recommend it enough.

Lorwyn Concepts 2

Here is an attempt at a black-leaning treefolk - a sinister deciduous bastard that awoke in the "Shadowmoor" set. It's just fun to draw gnarly branches!

And secondly, a couple very very early versions of what would become the much more human-looking Kithkin. I think the vaguest early description was that Kithkin (or whatever we were calling them at the time) were simply the replacements for humans in Lorwyn. And we went from there.

These early Kithkin concepts were probably done in the first day or two of concepting. In that stage, at least for me, I'm just throwing down anything that seems like it might capture the flavor of the setting to see what the art director is looking for. It's the buckshot approach - fire off a large spray of smaller drawings to see what hits the mark and go from there.

Lorwyn Concepts 1

As per my promise, I'm going to post a series of my pencil drawings from when I worked on the concept design push for what would become Magic: the Gathering's "Lorwyn" block (which includes Morningtide, Eventide, and Shadowmoor, as well).

These drawings are from all the way back 2006. Wow - has it been six years already? Anyway, the artist team I was on included Omar Rayyan, Warren Mahy, and Jeremy Jarvis. Good times all around but there were plenty of obstacles we had to either hammer out or at least pound on for a while to see if there was anything there.

The first sampling I am posting is a cute little concept for a blue faerie or elemental - and the Lorwyn version of a goblin (boggarts). I think we actually went less pig and more mutated goat/bat with the look of the boggarts. But these gross pig dudes were fun to tinker with. Definitely tapping some Mike Mignola with this design.

Conceptualizationism II

Here's another old concept drawing that didn't go anywhere. I believe it was an attempt to see if elves might have a spot in a gothic horror setting. The idea was eventually laid to rest I think because of game mechanics or something in the development but I think there could have been a visual way to incorporate elves into a setting with werewolves, vampires, and zombies (not that this particular drawing is it though!).