A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying podcast

Teaser image

I ran a real-play game of A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying for the ladies of the podcast Close the Door and Come Here. Inspired by this page of the Goblins webcomic, I illustrated the party to get the podcasters excited about the game. Most had never played a tabletop game before, and were unsure of what to expect. The full resolution image is a Patreon exclusive.


You can listen to the adventure here: episode 1 and episode 2.

thumbnail of chainmail brush

While painting the knight I made a chainmail brush in Photoshop to speed things up. It's actually quite simple; it's just the highlight of one ring. When used with enough spacing it stamps down the rings in a row. Work on a dark base for shadows. But be sure to follow normal patterns of chainmail: the chain rows lay horizontally, and flip the brush around so the rows face the opposite direction (so a row of right-facing rings is below the row of left-facing rings).

Initial sketch

I didn't know I was going to take this art to full painting phase. It just started with a morning sketch and I kept going when I heard the response from the group. Eon turned in her character at the last minute, so she was drawn last. You can see the maester originally had a cohort, who was secretly an undead minion, ala Qyburn. But that was dropped as I warned her of the ramifications if such a secret was discovered in-game.

If you're interested in playing the adventure with your own gaming group, here is the pdf homebrew module. It's short and encapsulates the essential themes of Game of Thrones. The adventure is called The Second Whitewalls Rebellion. The notes will be a bit different when you ready them, as I improvised throughout the game and especially at the end.

Sunday D&D character illustration: Syrano d'Cannith

Photoshop speed painting to illustrate a 'Dungeons and Dragons' player's character. Started and finished in one sitting.


This time I wanted to have a more dramatic pose inspired by the Marvel comics drawing lessons that always stress dynamic elements in characters like foreshortening.


Here was the description:
"...human, who after a disturbing magical accident, almost died. In order to save his life a Renegade Mastermaker [3.5 ed] ended up replacing a very large quantity of this guy’s flesh (and both of his arms) and added adamantine plating as construct grafts. 
...he will be wearing pants and boots (blue pants preferably, of the kind you'd expect to see a shirtless wizard wearing,) and would have a completely hairless and a partially fire-scarred head. He'd have no metal from the "collar bones" up and there would be visible human flesh in the left arm pit to the waist on the left side of his stomach, not much, mind you, but some. Also, the left hand (the only one you can really see in the picture, would be a metal-and-wood five-fingered hand."

Influences and resources:

Freddy Krueger from Nightmare on Elm Street, Jonah Hex, Robocop, Overtkill from Spawn, Dr. Doom, Iron Man, Baxter Stockman (cyborg version not the fly version) from TMNT, Borg Queen from Star Trek First Contact.

Warforged are a player race in D&D Eberron campaign setting.

Sunday D&D character illustration: Goliath Awesome

Final version

Figure sketch

Photoshop speed painting to illustrate a 'Dungeons and Dragons' player's character.


Here were the requirements: 
Goliath (4e race), grey skin, dark markings, white eyes, bald, bit of an evil streak, big even by goliath standards. 
His years as a ranger show in his wildness.
He wields dual Lightning Bastard Swords, but they are never in sword form. He essentially just carries two large lightning bolts.
Fury and rage embodied with the destructive power of a storm.
And scars, one of ears is missing/mostly gone.


Influences & resources: 'God of War', obsidiandawn.com, Theokoles from 'Spartacus: Blood and Sand'

Without effects (large sized)

Sunday D&D character illustration: Dragonborn Fighter

A little late this week. Been having shoulder problems.

Photoshop speed painting to illustrate a 'Dungeons and Dragons' player's character. Scion of Arkhosia Paragon Path from Player's Handbook 2 is what gives him the dragon wings. I don't believe dragonborn normally have tails though, that was specific to this character.

Reference and inspiration: Frank Frazetta, Dragon Age, bats.

Sunday D&D character illustration: Assassin Hawk Master

Photoshop speed painting to illustrate a 'Dungeons and Dragons' player's character. Influences: Ben Wootten, Dark Knight Returns (Frank Miller), Assassin's Creed

Sunday D&D character illustration: Druid Riding a Lizard

Photoshop speed painting to illustrate a 'Dungeons and Dragons' player's character. This one gave me a chance to work in a limited color palette, which I haven't done very much.
Her weapon is the Totem of Thorns from the D&D book Heroes of the Feywild.

I skip a lot of steps to do these speed paintings, which may not be such a good habit. For normal painting my process usually goes: thumbnail > sketch > ink > color composite > base colors > render shading. But for speed I make a quick value painting in black and white and then jump straight into color... that's it, just two phases. Gotta get it done and move onto the next piece.

Sunday D&D character illustration: Thrikeen Monk

It's Sunday, but my church is developing the art skills.
This speed painting was done to illustrate a D&D player's character. a Thrikeen Monk of Silvanus. The Thrikeen are player races in the Dark Sun campaign setting. Mantis people are weird.

I tried a new technique for this one: paint at 25% zoom to keep the picture in view as a whole. And a few other methods mentioned in the tutorials from the artist Daarken.