Game of Thrones – Blue Graces

Blue Graces is one of the illustrations I made for Game of Thrones back in 2019.

At the cost of repeating myself, I have the memory of a goldfish, so I have no idea whatsoever of what particular expansion this belonged to.

I have to confess I was curious at some point, and I didn’t want to start yet another post with “sorry”, so I did check the throng of packs I’ve worked on.

Long story short, I couldn’t find this card in the first 80% of packs I individually opened and browsed.

So, well, I stopped because I had other stuff to do and I ran out of time to do it. I guess we’ll never know.

Like that joke of the inmates who escape prison and climb 99 of the 100 fences to get out, and then go “fuck it I’m tired, I’m going back”.

Anyway, for those who never heard of the Blue Graces and are itching to discover what they’re all about, say no more! I’ll explain.

The Graces are priestess of Slavers’ Bay in Mereen.

They live in the majestic Temple of The Graces, and they are divided into different orders, conveniently identifiable by the colour of their robes.

All of them have made a vote of chastity, a part from the Red Graces, who serve in the Pleasure Houses and whose job description demands no chastity at all.

The Green Grace is the head priestess of the temple, and I happen to have drawn her as well at some point.

The Pink Graces are the personal attendants of the Green Grace, while the Blue Graces are healers and surgeons.

For this illustration in particular I meant to depict a common scene, almost of routine, with no drama.
That’s why I chose warm fuzzy colours for the background and the skin tones, which also made a good contrast with the robes of the Blue Graces.

The wounded guy they’re tending to is just a random soldier who’s being patched up after a fight in the arena, so I made him turn around and shifted the focus on the healers, who are the main characters of the composition.

And lo! I even found the sketch I did for this. Nothing ground breaking, but that’s how I started this illustration..

And since I went through the trouble of upsetting all the Game of Thrones packs on my shelf, here’s a picture of it for bragging rights, once it was back in order.

by Paolo Puggioni

Academy of Wonder

I made Academy of Wonder quite a long time ago for Lost Spheres Publishing, as part of an expansion for the Pathfinder campaign setting.

Since I’ve been posting mostly Sci-Fi/Star Wars related images for a while, I thought it was a good moment to break the trend and slip some Fantasy in the middle.

I made this back in 2017, so I have to confess that I have no more details about how the project looked like eventually.

This was the product’s Kickstarter page, where Academy of Wonder was first published.

And this is the product’s page on DrivethruRPG, in case anyone is interested.

Despite the fact that it sat on my HD for almost four years, I’m quite fond of this artwork. It was the very first thing I did as a freelance Illustrator when I got back from the UK.

I had left SUMO Digital only a week prior, half of my bags were still to unpack, my Cintiq had a nasty crack on a corner due to careless movers, and my skin was still olive-grey due to the prolonged lack of sun.

Luckily I had quite a lot of work lined up, and this was first on the list.

Between some concerned thoughts about the new lifestyle, the chores and paperwork of moving from one country to another, and daily visit to the local beach, this was the first thing I made as part of a my new life.

Now that I think of it, my desk at the time was still in the darkest room of the house, right next to my bed.

If there’s one advice I can give to whomever is planning to work from home, it’s that you should never have your work station in the same room where you sleep. For some reason, moving from the bed to the chair doesn’t quite convey to your brain that it’s now time to do stuff.

Even if you go to the trouble of putting clothes on, the lack of a dedicated workplace makes things a lot more difficult, and I had to move all my gear elsewhere almost immediately.

Anyway, I remember that people at Lost Spheres Publishing were gracious about the little time I needed adjusting to new new situation, and the project went smoothly enough.

I meant to post the sketches too, but I just found out that in my Academy of Wonder folder, all files named Sketch01 to Sketch04 are the same version of a colour rough. So well, it looks like I wasn’t quite there yet with organizational skills.

I’ve made improvements since then.

By Paolo Puggioni

Ser Justin Massey

This is one of the (many) illustration I had the pleasure to make for the Game of Thrones game over the past year or so.

It’s part of The March on Winterfell by Fantasy Flight Games, and although the expansion isn’t out yet, the image is already displayed on the product’s page, so here it is in all its slightly higher res glory.

For those who – like me – don’t remember Ser Justin Massey neither from the tv series or the Game of Thrones books, here’s all I know about him, diligently pasted from his entry on the Wiki of Ice and Fire:

Justin is a large man with pink cheeks, blue eyes, and a mop of white blonde hair pale as flax. The fair knight has a neatly-trimmed blond beard. His tunic displays the triple spiral of House Massey.

Justin, who has a pleasing manner and a ready smile, often tells jokes with a glib tongue.
Stannis Baratheon refers to Justin as “the smiler” and Clayton Suggs considers him a “prancing fool”.

I might have made him slightly fitter than it was supposed to be judging by his description, but the art director was happy about him, so that’s how he officially looks like now.

And since I’m a good boy, I didn’t get rid of the sketch this time.

There are still a couple of illustration that I’ll be allowed to post before these Game of Thrones expansions are released, which I’ll do over the next few days.

by Paolo Puggioni

Game of Thrones – The Archmaester’s key

About a year after I’ve worked on it, The Archmaester’s Key Game of Thrones chapter pack has finally been released, and as it always happens Fantasy Flight Games was so kind to send me a copy of the printed cards.

I’m quite chuffed that the illustration I made for this chapter pack was also on FFG’s store product page🙂

Working on games for so long means that I should be used to seeing my work being published ages after it’s been delivered.
Yet, so much stuff has been going on since then that I almost struggled to remember what this chapter pack was about.

Reading the old briefs I remembered this was the last job I did with FFG Art Director Deb Freytag (who left the company soon after), with whom I had some really pleasant work relationship over the years.

I also realized that I’m an idiot, as I think I lost the original file for the only piece of art I made for this Game of Thrones project, so I’ll be able to post just the lower res one.

On the good side, this realization (that I lost files a few months ago, not that I’m an idiot), eventually led me to the good practice of running multiple, automatic, redundant back-ups, so losing artwork will hopefully be a thing of the past.

More Game of Thrones art next time.

by Paolo Puggioni

Pathfinder – Ranger vs Dragon

This is an illustration I made for one of Paizo‘s Pathfinder books, the Player Companion: Dragonslayer’s Handbook .
As a matter of fact, I’ve been lucky enough to have worked quite extensively for the people at Paizo during the past few months.
Which, by the way, is the reason why I haven’t been posting on this blog as often as last year: between these and other freelance assignments I’ve been unbelievably busy!

So, in theory there would be a whole lot of new stuff I could pick from my hard drive and brag about.
In practice, very little of it has been published, so I’m afraid most of it will have to wait to see the light of day.

This is for what I believe was the second assignment I got from Paizo. Which, by the way, is one of the clients I recently enjoyed working with the most .
The setting is still Fantasy enough for me to be in my comfort zone (I keep being asked to draw Fantasy stuff, have you noticed?).
However, both the visual style and the game itself have a strong personality on their own that makes it both challenging and enjoyable to draw for.

Moreover, I must add that the requested revisions are always minimal and the process admiringly smooth, which again makes my work for Pathfinder even more pleasant.

But I digress, back to my dwarf.
This is one of Pathfinder’s iconic characters. If you want to know more about him have a look here!
When I got the assignment I had to read the brief a few times, as I thought the aspect ratio of the canvas was some kind of typo.
It wasn’t.
I had never drawn anything on a canvas that tall and narrow, which made the composition of the first few sketches quite awkward.
I eventually settled with these.

I would have personally picked the first from the left, as the head and neck of the dragon had in my opinion a more interesting shape.
However, I must admit the big mass of the dragon and the smaller one of the hero have a better balance in the final one, so I’m quite happy with it too.

It looks like I’m good to post some more Pathfinder illustrations from the bunch I’ve already done.
So well, you’ll see more in the next few days.

by Paolo Puggioni

The Djinn

A Djinn is one of the most prominent figures in Arab folklore and, currently, number two on my list of things to do, once again inspired by the people from Reddit.

I suspect the iconic Djinn exported into the Western tradition is but a washed out version of the more complex one of the original mythology.
Where I assumed Djinn were some kind of humanoid guys with vaguely demonic faces, by what I get from Wikipedia there’s a lot more than that.

Together, jinn, humans and angels make up the three sentient creations of Allah. Religious sources say barely anything about them; however, the Qur’an mentions that Jinn are made of smokeless flame or “scorching fire”.[1] Like human beings, the Jinn can also be good, evil, or neutrally benevolent.

According to traditions, the jinn stood behind the learned humans in Solomon’s court, who in turn, sat behind the prophets. The jinn remained in the service of Solomon, who had placed them in bondage, and had ordered them to perform a number of tasks.
“…and there were jinn that worked in front of him, by the leave of his Lord,” (Qur’an 32:12)
“And before Solomon were marshalled his hosts,- of jinn and men and birds, and they were all kept in order and ranks.” (Quran 27:17)

A few traditions (hadith), divide jinn into three classes: those who have wings and fly in the air, those who resemble snakes and dogs, and those who travel about ceaselessly.[14] Other reports claim that ‘Abd Allāh ibn Mas‘ūd (d. 652), who was accompanying Muhammad when the jinn came to hear his recitation of the Qur’an, described them as creatures of different forms; some resembling vultures and snakes, others tall men in white garb.[15] They may even appear as dragons, onagers, or a number of other animals.[16] In addition to their animal forms, the jinn occasionally assume human form to mislead and destroy their human victims.[17] Certain hadiths have also claimed that the jinn may subsist on bones, which will grow flesh again as soon as they touch them, and that their animals may live on dung, which will revert to grain or grass for the use of the jinn flocks.

Reading this I was quite tempted to come up with something crazy. Unfortunately I’m afraid that a guy with a dog’s head and perhaps wings would be, albeit undoubtedly interesting, scarcely recognizable as a Djinn, whose iconic representation in our culture is that of a muscular guy with bracelets and a vaguely middle-eastern look.
I’ll stick to this for the time being, but I’ll certainly explore the Djinn myth some other time.

In the meantime, here’s some sketches.