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.