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!).

Conceptualizationism

Where have I been for the last two weeks? Been out at Wizards of the Coast in Renton, Washington working with five other artists drawing up concept designs for a Magic:the Gathering set that probably won't come out until Spring of 2013. This is my third Magic concept push and my fourth concept push out at Wizards (I worked on Eberron back in 2003 I think it was?). Even though the very basics are always the same (designing races/creatures/landscapes that fit into a Magic game) the angles and challenges are different and interesting. And it's always a great time.

I got to work with a crop of excellent artists in Richard Whitters, Pete Morbacher, Eric Deschamps, Adam Paquette, and the venerable Todd Lockwood and we teamed up to pummel the concept board with all sorts of designs. Designs of which I DEFINITELY can't talk about lest I get flayed and fed to mandrills. Someday, I'll get to post the images though and I can't wait because I think they're really fun drawings.

Alas, someday very soon I'll post some "lost" Lorwyn concept drawings that didn't quite cut the mustard as far as what was needed - but are still some decent drawings. These drawings are from almost 6 years ago.

But since we're talking concept drawings here, I'm posting a couple stray concepts that didn't hit the right note for the LAST Magic push I did - the one that would become "Innistrad". I forget what these were aimed at - they were early on and we ended up heading in a different direction. At least they get a second look here on my blog!

Randomness

Here's another sketch page just to move the pencil around and try to catch some drawing rhythm. I took a good week around Christmas off and away from any sort of creative outlet. Needed to recharge. But, as usual, when I had to get back to it, I was rusty. That's all it takes sometimes - five, six, seven days. Anyways, this helped me a little bit get back into the saddle.

Throwin' a bone.

Ugh, what a holiday season it was for me. I say "ugh" not as in it sucked but as in it was just a whole heck of a lot of work. Including non-freelance job projects, I had creative work going on right up until when i went to bed at 3:00 am Christmas eve!

Here's my laundry list of projects that I started and finished in the uncomfortably snug span of hours between Thanksgiving and Christmas:

*One D&D cover (and a none-too-easy one at that)

*Three Magic:The Gathering card paintings

*Five fairly intensive black-n-white pieces for an undisclosed M:tG project

*Scanned and laid out a book of my daughter's artwork (through Blurb.com) as a present for my wife

*Illustrated and designed a custom beer label

*Made an exotic tent-fort for my daughter for Christmas (with help from my wife's parents)

Somewhere in that mess I was able to go to a couple parties, drive to Cleveland to see Chris Cornell in concert, and get a few hours of sleep. Christmas day came along and I found I had no looming deadlines and nothing of immediate concern - what a joy to just be with my family and eat and not frazzle myself with the thought that "I need to get a certain amount of this or that done by the time I go to bed later than I should."

So goes the life of a freelancer, eh? It's all good though. All the projects were fun and worth it. I just wish there were like two more weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas is all!

So, as you can now see, squeezing in a draw-blog post was pretty far down my list of priorities for the past four or five weeks. Things have settled down now - but I find that I have a tremendous lack of anything worthwhile to post right now. No new sketchbook doodles and no preliminary drawings worth sharing. I had to go back dig up this (2.5 year old?) piece - a sketch I liked because of how snaky the girl's pose is and her accidentally cute profile. The painting turned out to be a mess though. So, here's a bone I'm throwing out until something better comes along.

Speaking of something better, I'm eyeing another guess-the-album-cover contest on the horizon. Aw yeah.

She Really Grinds My Gears

A friend of mine enlisted me to embellish on a tattoo he has had for the last 15 some-odd years. It's the Loony Tunes Marvin the Martian holding a "FORD" flag and drinking a Coors. Just kidding - though I have indeed seen tattoos as mindbogglingly idiotic as that. No, the tattoo has a couple people getting run through gears and he wanted a few more around the edges. Here's one of the less "gear-mangled" figures I did for that - polished up a little bit to put on this here draw-blog.

Limited Edition AGGREGATES!!!

I posted a couple of these L.E. drawings a couple weeks back but the post was skimpy and lonely so I decided to delete that one and make it a foursome for this much NEWER post - though really I don't have anything new to say. Other than check out these fun drawings!

Well, my workload is getting into a thick spot now. Time to buckle up and saddle up and soldier on and put the pedal to the medal and bite the bullet and separate the men from the boys and all those other things people say when they have to stop getting distracted by Facebook and blogs and go do some friggin' work, fer Gad's sake.

But on the edge of this madness, I'm able to scan some drawings from my recently sold Limited Edition Aggregates (my book of fantasy pencil drawings). I've sold nearly all of them now. I might even be done with the Limited Edition thing before Christmas! If you have interest in buying one of my books with a signed and numbered original pencil drawing on the title page, ya better make your move!