Thursday, May 14, 2009

I got to paint an Undead Treant!

Here is a piece I have been wanting to share for a few weeks now and it's finally out so I can post it :) It was for the cover of Dungeon magazine. It was pretty complex but tons of fun to make. The main focus was the blackroot treant which is standing above the viewer, ready to stomp on em, in a crystal coliseum with the shadow of a green dragon on the wall and a stained glass window at the top of the ceiling.

I was really inspired by pollice verso by Jean Leon Gerome.
A big thanks to Chantal Pare who was kind enough to let me use one of his patterns from his site for my inspiration for the glass window. Also thanks to Jon Schindehette who was fantastic to work with and who really helped me make this piece successful. I have included a few steps that I did along the way just for fun. Enjoy.

Here is a really rough sculpture that I made of the face on a blackroot treant to make sure I got the lighting right. It was fun to make, my son even helped too.



... and this is the sketch...



mid way thru...



...and finally done. Someday soon I'll do a full blown tutorial.



And below is one of the interior art illus. that I did for that article. Here is a bit of a story about this image. I had the opportunity to spend a week in North Platte Nebraska at the High School as a guest artist in late April and had a fantastic time. However, I didn't realize that there was an overlap between my time at the HS and my deadline on this round of work. So I would spend all day at the HS and then rush back to the hotel about 4pm work on this image until 1 or 2 in the morning each night. But in the end it was a great time and it all worked out, and I got all the images done on time. Anyway enjoy...



All images © Wizards of the Coast

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