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.

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.

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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 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.

Ghoulraiser

This is a sketch I did for the Magic: The Gathering card "Ghoulraiser" for the freshly released gothic-horror set: Innistrad.

There's nothing particularly fresh about this scene. Just your ordinary zombie-with-a-shovel helping his pals out of the dirt to go clubbing. But, along with the previously posted "Daybreak Archer", it's one of the few preliminary drawings I have done lately that is a little bit more refined than a thumbnail. The other preliminary drawings I have done for this set were fairly loose thumbnail sketches that I took straight to the paints. That sort of approach is not my usual process but this particular set called for more attention to composition, mood, and atmosphere more than details. Which was a fun departure for the most part.

Daybreak Archer Sketch

This is the rough drawing I did for what became "Daybreak Archer" for Magic: The Gathering. It was drawn smaller than I usually do when I'm trying to work out a composition for a painting but sometimes that helps. If things aren't working right in the drawing phase, I'll switch sizes to get a different look. Usually I go down in size since the images for Magic are only a couple inches wide in the end product anyway. Plus, going down in size will simplify shapes and it ends up making it easier to piece together something that works. That's what happened here (though this isn't quite "thumbnail" in size - it's about 6 inches wide I think).

On occasion I will ditch the thumbnails and jump into drawing out an image at full size or nearly full size. For me sometimes the little rough thumbnails aren't helping and I need bigger pieces and some important details put in before I can "see" where it's going. When that happens, it is usually because I feel a certain facial expression (or a similar "mood" detail) is the key to the whole image. If I can just nail down the right face, I can piece in everything else.

What's that you ask? Was there a background for this piece or was the mysterious bow-gunner just on a field of white? She's in a forest - the trees were added much later in the process and so never were part of the original drawing.

INTERLUDE II

On my Rottface News blogsite, I have posted links to what some of my talented friends from art school days are currently up to. Well, I MADE these friends in college - they are still close pals today. What is interesting is how diverse our creative paths have gone yet essentially fueled by the same creative drive. So go on and give it a look.

To catch your eye, I have put up a Magic: The Gathering rough for the Zendikar set. "Soul Usher" it be. She's rubbing a medicated salve onto the warrior's scalp.

After my last "10 THINGS TO BE THANKFUL FOR BESIDES THE OBVIOUS" entry, I will be kicking off a month-long series for February that should be pretty fun - so keep checking in!

Oh yeah, and as always, if you like my pencil marks, perhaps you'd like my book? Take a LOOK.

SKETCH-OF-THE-DAY 094

Leading up to GenCon, I thought I'd chuck a Magic: The Gathering drawing up on the ol' drawblog. This drawing is for "Fauna Shaman" and the finished painting (which you can see over at ROTTFACE NEWS) is one of my favorite that I have done for Magic. Yeah, you can argue that maybe it isn't my best piece - but a lot of the feelings I have for my artwork comes from how much fun I had creating it. In the case of Fauna Shaman, I had loads of fun.

In fact, I knew going in that this would be a fun painting so I made it a much bigger image than necessary. The cropline for the actual card art is roughly through the middle of Mr. Toad.

Anyway, if you're wondering what my status is for GenCon, again, go on over to ROTTFACE NEWS and waste some more time reading my writings!