Tales From The Smoking Wyrm #4 Kickstarter is now live!

 Tales From The Smoking Wyrm issue 4 Kickstarter is now live. Check it out, and hopefully you'll see something there that might entice you to support it. This zine supports Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC) but it's presented in such a way that any Old School Rules (OSR) player or fan can find something useful and interesting with it. 

I drew this gnome fellow.

I am once again doing art for this zine. I have some spot illustrations within it and I am contracted to do more. However I am not able to show any of that here at this time. Yet. However if you keep an eye of the Kickstarter campaign, our website, and our Facebook Group ( Tales From The Smoking Wyrm) you might see more.

Onward Retainer! is my regular comic strip-thing that I am happy to say is returning in this issue as well. I get a kick out of these characters and their misadventures and writing and drawing them has been a highlight of the year for me. At this time I have scripts written through issue 10 and the story for #5 is already done. (It's nice to get ahead!).

Halfling Paladin (TFtSW #1)

 This is my "come back" piece. For many years I simply lost interest in the art that was my driving passion in the '90s and first few years of this century. There were many factors as to why this happened: 1.) burnout, 2.) disenchantment, 3.) Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition, and 4.) a serious relationship. Allow me to expand upon these points:

1.) My life was work and art for almost a decade with only fleeting episodes of time spent with friends, and I had done A LOT of art up to that point. 2.) ...and I wasn't getting anywhere with it. My attempts to break into comics/illustration were all fruitless and these leads that did bear fruit ended up dying on the vine. I wish it had galvanized me into pushing myself harder but these disappoints ended up  breaking my spirit. 3.) D&D 3rd edition. That game sucked me into it big time, I spent a vast amount of time coming up with scenarios, reading and mastering rules, etc. It was a lot fun, but it was a lot of work. All the way up until 4th edition launched, at which point we stopped playing it.  The time I spent on that was time I was not doing art, and quite honestly I didn't miss it. 4.) And finally I was in a serious relationship that also pulled me away from the art table.  That was all before 2010, the year that relationship ceased. Over the next few years I confess to being a lost soul. Trying to find myself and a purpose. I sank so much time into my work and it was difficult to get back into art. A girlfriend I had in 2012 got me motivated into painting again, which broke my long dry spell of no art production. My current love is now my muse and motivation and she got me to paint the painting for my son's room and the Presto painting. Seeing these works the guys working on Tales From The Smoking Wyrm were most persistent in dragging me back to the world of black and white illustration. And at the moment in the summer of 2019, I had just lost my job, and the promise of pay for art motivated me to at least try something out.  So I did, and this is the result:

It was my first brushed ink drawing at this size since 2002. And I was quite satisfied with it when I was done and it motivated me to do more. The Wyrm guys were thrilled with it and used it in their first issue. In fact they asked me to do more. Lots more! And I have been drawing ever since. 

Work In Progress shot, halfway through the inks!

AC

AC, 8.5" × 11" Acrylic. 

 

I did this one in the mid '90s, around the time that a friend was getting me to produce art for a Vampire: The Masquerade fanzine that he was hoping to produce. I was reading a lot of occult stuff at the time for inspiration. The stuff I was doing was mostly black and white ink drawings, but I wanted to do something darker.  The only way I knew to do that at the time was via the medium of acrylic painting. 

Anyway, this is a painting that I'm not sure why I did it, I was just compelled to do so. About a week after I finished the painting, while reading through a series of books that collected old Fortean Times articles, I came across some interesting writings about Aleister Crowley and the Golden Dawn. Fascinating stuff. Now, Crowley had a wider/jowelly face than this chap and a heavier brow, but never-the-less, the photo him showed him wearing  a smoking jacket like this... coincidence? Perhaps?

This painting used to creep me out. I had it displayed on my easel in my bedroom for a long time, and would wake up with this evil bastard looking at me.

I still like this a lot (although that crooked window still bothers me). I'm still satisfied with the overall work almost 30 years later. I wonder what an updated version of this would be like? Sure my understanding of clothing folds and shadow maybe better, but can I still catch the same vibe? I may have to take this challenge some day. 

Presto

Presto, Acrylics, 11''x17'' canvas, 2014.

This is the painting we used to announce the pending arrival of our first child. Ultrasound pics are usually grainy (at best) and somewhat obscure, so we didn't want to share those images to the world. My solution was this painting. Using the ultrasound pics as reference along with an online image search on embryos, I was able to come up with image. It's got a Michael Whelan 2010 Starchild crossed with Alex Gray vibe to it which appealed to me. I called this painting 'Presto' at the time as the lyrics* from the Rush song Presto kept popping into my head as I was adding in the cosmic stuff. 

Well, the painting worked and all who saw the initial announcement were quite thrilled with the both the painting and the news it brought. A process we need to repeat in the next little while before time runs out... 😉

Here is a work in progress shot, with a light source shining directly on it. It really kicks up the brightness and intensifies the light, and is a bit closer in brilliance to seeing it in person.

Work in progress shot.

* "I am made from the dust of the stars, and the oceans flow in my veins."