Good grief I haven’t written here in a while. As usual, the excuse is that I’ve been super busy, although I found the time to work on a personal piece that features cowboys in a standoff. More on this later.

Anyway, a very late happy new year everyone.
I understand most people have made new year’s and new decade resolutions.
I hadn’t.

The fact is that I realized pretty early in life that I have a very short attention span, and even with the best intentions I don’t work well with long term personal projects.

Paid work is different, but personal projects? I usually cheat with those without a second thought. Especially if I can justify them with “aw I work so much, I need to chill now”.

Or if another amazing personal project comes along.

So, I got as far as the 13th of January without a new year’s resolution, and I was fine with that. Then, as it happens, an idea popped to my mind, born from the realization that I’ve been doing much of the same for a while and I need to change a few things.

It’s not really a resolution, more like a master plan, I’m confident I’ll be able to stick with that.

I won’t share many details about it now, but my Master Plan™ involves among other things a bunch of new artwork made in a certain way, so I thought of a few settings to experiment with.

I started with an Old West piece.

As a rule, I’m not a fan of the iconic Old West setting. In fact, I kind of hate it.
Sure, I’ve seen all the Sergio Leone Movies a billion times, and they’re all awesome, but that’s different.

It’s the setting I’m not a fan of. I don’t like games that have the “old west level”, as if it were some kind of original spin. I don’t like when tv shows have that thing where they go back in time in Dodge City and meet Doc Holiday or whatever.

I was never a reader of Tex Willer, I never owned a toy Colt, or played cow boys with my mates as a child.
I always thought that using Old West as a setting was kind of lazy, pretty much like the Ice Level or the Lava Level in 80% of platform games.

In short, a cowboys standoff wouldn’t normally be my thing.

But, I decided to start off my Master Plan™ with something out of my comfort zone. Something I actually dislike. So there you go, despite everything, cowboys in a stand off.

To make it more fun for myself I used some nice and vibrant lighting, although on a fairly standard and super-rehashed composition.

It wasn’t so bad, in the end.
I guess if I go on drawing things I’d normally dislike, next thing I would be doing some Abba fan art.

by Paolo Puggioni