ANGRY TROLL LADY KILLS 8 TOURISTS AT ANCIENT RUIN SITE

"There's a really angry blue woman mutilating some tourists!" said Marcus Antanapala to the emergency dispatcher. He made the call after a bluish, tusked woman with ridiculous cleavage erupted from a ruin site and rained terrific clawed blows down upon the idiotic onlookers as they attempted to take pictures with their cell phones.

"Does she have tusks, armor protecting her knees and forearms, a fairly big rack, and is exuding a sense of total 'Grrrrawesomeness'?" asked the dispatcher.

"Um yeah. How'd you know?"

"OK, sir. She's a female troll from World of Warcraft. I'll send a black-n-white to check into it. Have a nice day, sir."

Guy that fights dragons.

Just a heads up to everyone - I'm about to enter a maelstrom of furious work that'll take me into June. The chances that I get some posts up on my Draw-Blog in the next five or six weeks may be as slim as Donald Trump is annoying and douchey. Luckily, I still have a reserve of preliminary drawings I can tap for just such occasions.

That said, here's a portion of a drawing I did for a Magic: The Gathering card called "Silver Knight". Almost all of the cropped out parts were extensively overhauled in photoshop after I scanned it in. I even changed his helmet and a few other details once I started painting it, too.

To see the final piece, you'll have to "friend" me on Facebook or wait another 43 years when I finally relaunch my website.

SUNSHINE and WARM WEATHER ANTHEMS

Ah Spring. Lovin' it. Spring in Central Ohio is usually, day-to-day, either gloriously sunny and summerlike - or gray and cold like November. Knowing that the latter is heading out the door like a stumbling, oafish drunk that has yorked on someone's shoes and generally overstayed his welcome, I choose to focus on the sunshine and the upcoming long, lazy days of Summer - the realm of cookouts, camping, roadtrips, fresh veggies from the garden, and blessed vacations. And as I sit here listening to cheesy (but potently nostalgic) hair-metal of yore on Pandora, I am reminded of the music of the season, songs that became part of the soundtrack of Summer. Even though the days of completely carefree gallivanting are over, I still love songs that remind me of Summer whether they are literally from Summers past - or new songs that just sound like songs that should be played while driving with the windows down on the way to a beach. Summer anthems, baby. Here's just a tiny smattering of songs that, for whatever reason, stir my zeal for the sunshine months:

Peggy Lee - "It's a Good Day"

Steel Dragon - "We All Die Young"

Walt Mink's whole album "Miss Happiness"

Johnny Cash - "Ring of Fire"

Hans Zimmer - "You're So Cool" (True Romance soundtrack)

Coldplay - "Clocks"

Delta Spirit - "Trashcan"

U2 - "Beautiful Day"

Poison - "Every Rose Has Its Thorn"

Pretty much anything by The Sundays

OneRepublic - "Good Life"

The last one by OneRepublic I just heard on the radio earlier today and is what inspired this post. And laugh all you want at Poison - but how can you sit in a car on a beautiful day and NOT sing along to that?

Share with me your own Warm Weather Anthems and crack a cold one, friendo - those days are comin' up fast.

Btw, the drawing above is another oldie - plucked out of my White Wolf vault - I believe it's from a Mage: The Ascension book. I had to go THAT far back to find an appropriate pencil drawing to accompany this post!

And one last thing for those of you that don't know yet - I has me a little book called AGGREGATE and it has all sorts o' fun pencil drawins in it. Have interest? E-mail me! - steve2@rottface.com

A LI'L CLASSIC D&D FOR YA

I unearthed a fairly old drawing of a scale-mailed halfling trying to look tough in some ancient and perilous cavern. I'm too lazy to go find out which long-forgotten D&D book it was in. Geez, I make it sound like this was from the 80's or something! No, it was probably from around 2007(?) - but it seems like decades ago. Nothing special here - just a little spot illo piece that I thought was worth posting just for fans of really classic D&D subject matter.

Subsequently, the final painting I did for this piece was a big pile of crapola. It was one of those instances where I had something in mind, it didn't work, and I wasn't able to recover. Such results I colloquially refer to as "turds".

Post-CONTEST Post

So, the very first drawing I did when I came up with the album cover contest idea was this drawing here. It's based on what I thought was the cover of an album I have. Turns out, long long ago when I first bought the CD, I had reinserted the little album book with the inside artwork facing out and had never switched it back. Only when I looked it up on the ol' internets did I get reminded that it ain't the cover! So, anyway, simply for shits-n-giggles, this drawing is a tribute to the INSIDE cover of what album?

Oh what the heck - first to guess it right gets an envelope full of free crap.

NAME THAT ALBUM COVER!

Here it is, folks! Here are all ten album cover tributes! Be the first to "comment" the correct album title and band(artist) name for all ten and win the original artwork pictured HERE. And also bask in the glory of winning a contest for which you successfully employed your nearly useless knowledge of album cover imagery. Hoozah!

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, 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!

NAME THAT ALBUM COVER! - set1

All righty, folks. Here is the first five (of ten) album cover tribute drawings. As stated before, I have taken ten existing album covers - carefully chosen for their iconic/memorable imagery (but not too iconic and recognizable!) and reworked them in varying degrees of artistic license. But there is no doubt that they are referencing the source material - none of them will "kinda" match a particular album cover. Side-by-side with the original, it will be obvious.

Once again, feel free to make comments and crack wise, but keep your answers/guesses to yourself until I have posted the last five images which will be next Tuesday (March 29th) at 11:00pm Eastern Standard Time. First person to "comment" the correct band/singer and album title for all ten wins the original artwork shown in the previous post.

Good luck!