Game of Thrones – Approaching Lannisport

Approaching Lannisport is the second illustration I made for The Rise of the Dragon, the latest Game of Thrones illustrated book by George R.R. Martin.

First off, in reply to some, I know the Amazon title says “Volume One”, but I know nothing of it. I haven’t been contacted for a second volume yet, so I know as much as you guys.

Approaching Lannisport is set, like all other illustrations in the book, before the time of the Game of Thrones books.

It depicts king Aenys’ trip to the port city of Lannisport together with all his court.

Lannisport is protected by a ring of walls, high and strong. The city
is renowned for its goldwork and goldsmiths and produces a spiced
honey wine. Lannisport is policed by the well-trained City Watch.
The city has a great motherhouse. Like King’s Landing, Lannisport has
higher quality brothels. Merchants from Lannisport often trade with
their counterparts in the Free Cities.

This one still had lots of people in it, but at least they weren’t all supposed to be crammed in the foreground. As a result, the composition was a lot less troublesome than End of Regency.

Obligatory list of known characters: Aenys is the guy riding far away in the distance, with his King’s Guard knights at either side.

The lady on the far left is Princess Rhaena, and the girl at her right is her favourite Melony Piper.

All others are randos of the court.

Excerpt: It was on this journey that the young Princess Rhaena, now
fourteen, drew increasing attention from would-be suitors—though her
behavior was sullen for much of the progress, as her dragon [text cuts
off here]

Once again, I’ve been a good boy and I have kept the sketches. Well, at least the one that got approved.

Like literally every time I look at one of my illustrations after some time (this was completed about a year ago), I’m not at all satisfied with it.
Lannisport in the background should be affected by a lot more atmospheric perspective, whereas its values are pretty much at the same level of the bushes next to King Aenys.
Damn that really bothers me now.

Also, I could have managed the level of details A LOT better, focusing them more around the characters in the foreground and making the background more painterly. Again, this bothers me a lot. It’s something that happens when you stare at a picture for too long, and you stop noticing the mistakes.

Long story short, I would spend another day on it al least. Oh well.

Note to self: start scheduling a couple of weeks between the time you finish an illustration and when you submit it.
I say it all the time but I never do it.

In other news, The Rise of the Dragon made it to the New York Times best sellers.
It’s not like people bought it because of my drawings, I suspect George R.R. Martin’s name, or the Game of Thrones franchise in general, had something to do with it.
But still, the fact that it’s there is still a big source of pride somehow.

It’s still not clear to me why it’s been put in the “Advice, How-To & Miscellaneous” category though.
I guess How to Train a Dragon would have been more suitable for it.
i mean, we had to compete with the winner and runner-up Go-To Dinners and Atomic Habits, which doesn’t sound fair to me.

Anyway, nice to know that my Approaching Lannisport is there, in a respectable fourth place between The Woks of Life and The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and the Horse.

More Game of Thrones stuff next week.

by Paolo Puggioni

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

Game of Thrones – Desperate Attack

Desperate Attack is one of the latest works I made for the Game of Thrones TCG by Fantasy Flight Games.

As always, I have no memory whatsoever of which specific expansion pack/rulebook/product this was made for.

And as it happens regularly, this had been sitting in my hard drive for several months, until the day I did some housekeeping and went “aw, I don’t think I posted this on my website, shame”. So here we are.

Now, Desperate Attack describes the fruitless attempt of Loras Tyrell to take Dragonstone, which – if memory serves – ended with his ass being handed to him, and his pretty face being disfigured forever.

I remember being mildly displeased by Loras Tyrell’s demise back when I read the book. But considering the massacre of major characters occurred up to that point, I have to place this about mid-height in my list of favourite dead Game of Thrones personalities.

In fact, the list goes abut this way, from most emotionally devastating to least.

– Robb Stark
– Ed Stark
– Catelyn Stark
– Hodor
– Khal Drogo
– Lord Varys
– Jorah Mormont
– Oberyn Martell
– Edd
– Pyp
– Yoren
– Ygritte
– Rickon Stark
– Syrio Forel
– Jory Cassel
– Maester Luwin
– Jeor Mormont
– Beric Dondarrion
– Lyanna Mormont
– Osha
– Myrcella Baratheon
– Robert Baratheon
– Maester Aemon
– Shireen Baratheon
– Mance Ryder
– Loras Tyrell
– Danaerys Targaryen
– Jojen Reed
– Olenna Tyrell
– Theon Greyjoy
– Rodrik Cassel
– Wun Weg Wun Dar Wun

So, all in all, sorry for Loras Tyrell, but at least he wasn’t beheaded in front of a crowd, or burned alive by a dragon, or gutted by a boar, or had his throat slit by an betraying ally, or ran over by a crowd of undead, or skinned, or torn apart, or poisoned, nor had his head crushed barehanded by an impossibly strong dude.

He died doing what he loved: storming a castle with his sword held high and all that.

Good for you Loras.

Game of Thrones – Aegon Targaryen

As I promised last time, here’s my depiction of young Aegon Targaryen for Game of Thrones latest Chapter Pack, The Shadow City, by Fantasy Flight Games.

Now, I was about to write “hey, this is the second time I draw Aegon, the first being this one in the book World of Ice and Fire”.

Luckily I did double check before writing that, and as it turn out I was being wrong.
I mean, wrong all along, even when I was working at this illustration.

First, the Targaryen I drew back then was Aerys the Mad. Of course I knew it at the time, the names just got mixed up in my mind after so long.

That left me with the question “bloody hell, who is this guy I just drew?”

The only Aegon I remembered was the son of Rhaegar and Lyanna Stark, whose head was smashed in by The Mountain when he was just a baby.
That clearly couldn’t be it.

Intrigued, I went as far as looking for a family tree of the Targaryen family.
As pretty as it is, that left me with even more questions, as there’s a whole bunch of Aegons in that family tree, and none of them rang any bell.

I eventually looked up his entry on Wiki of Ice and Fire (yes, I should have done that first thing), and that left me flabbergasted, as I had NO MEMORY WHATSOEVER of all this after reading all the books. Twice.

Once aboard the Shy Maid, Tyrion is introduced to Griff’s son, “Young Griff”, a young man who dyes his hair blue in memory of his late mother, who was from Tyrosh. He is a lithe and well-made youth, with a lanky build already as tall as Griff. Tyrion notes that the boy’s eyes seem to be dark blue, but look black by lamplight, and purple in the light of dusk. He has long eyelashes. […]

[…] After being rescued from the Sorrows, Tyrion admits his suspicion that the youth is claiming to be an incognito Aegon. The young man explains his apparent survival to Tyrion while they play cyvasse. According to his account, the infant killed during the Sack of King’s Landing was a tanner’s infant son born at Pisswater Bend, a street of King’s Landing. The child’s mother had died at birth. The tanner sold his boy to Varys for a jug of wine, since he already had other sons, but had never tasted Arbor gold. Varys arranged the swap between the two infants. Elia received the tanner’s son, whom Tyrion dubs the pisswater prince, while Varys took custody of the real Prince Aegon.

So, moral of the story is that if you have a memory as shitty as mine, the world looks new every time you open your eyes in the morning.

Also, I can save in books by keeping just a dozen at home, and then periodically going “aw, I’ve never read this, cool”.

by Paolo Puggioni

Game of Thrones – Ser Gerris Drinkwater

A couple of days ago I was delivered my contributor’s copy of the Game of Thrones Shadow City chapter pack by Fantasy Flight Games.

As usual, I giggled with delight, both for the free stuff aspect of the thing and, I have to admit, for the good memories that the smell of newly printed cards evokes in nerdy old me.

Anyway, Ser Gerris Drinkwater below is one of the characters I illustrated for Shadow City, here he is.

Again, I didn’t trash the sketch:

As you can see, the coloured version changed a little bit from the sketch, it was flipped, his position changed and so on.
I had no memory of Ser Gerris Drinkwater from the books, so I had to resort to A Wiki of Ice and Fire this time as well.

Gerris is tall and lean and comely, with blue-green eyes and sandy, sun-streaked hair.
He has a swordsman’s grace and a courtier’s wit.
His confidence is often close to arrogance.
Gerris does not speak the Volantene dialect of High Valyrian as well as Quentyn Martell.

Gerris wears an expensive cloak of soft brown wool lined with sandsilk.
Ser Barristan Selmy thinks Gerris is shallow and a worse warrior than Ser Archibald Yronwood.

One thing I’m chuffed about is that Ser Gerris Drinkwater was picked for the bunch of cards displayed in the product page.
Although, I have to say, my favourite illustration of the whole pack is the guy right above and to the left, Scheming Septon by Aleksander Karcz.

Anyway, as always here’s the Shadow City Chapter Pack in all its glory, look how pretty it is. Look at it!

Next week I’ll post the other illustration of the pack, Aegon Targaryen.

by Paolo Puggioni

Game of Thrones – Peace and Prosperity

The illustration below belongs to the bunch I made for the Game of Thrones expansion Sands of Dorne, by Fantasy Flight Games.

I actually received the box set quite a while ago, but I got distracted by something shiny and I forgot to brag about it.

Look how pretty it is:

I LOVE everything about the fact that illustrators get to receive an actual physical thing to put on a shelf and look at.
I like the smell of the new cards when you open them, I like too browse the other illustrators’ work, I even like the postman going “something from the States for you”.
You kind of loose that working in video games, with Playstation online store and all that.

Anyway, Sands of Dorne has been sitting on my shelf for a couple of months now, so it’s about time I share the illustrations in it.

The one below is called Peace and Prosperity, and it depicts one of the gates of King’s Landing, during on of those brief hiatus when people weren’t killing each other.

It’s a bit of a bummer that the final version of the card cropped a lot from the original, but hey, it happens.

For the guy in the foreground I took as a reference an old master’s painting, if I remember correctly.
Unfortunately that’s as far as my memory goes, so in lieu of more details about it I can only offer the original sketch.

As part of the feedback, I had to move things around and rearrange various elements, so the coloured version differs from the sketch a little bit.

Interestingly, I wasn’t really sure about what kind of crest the banners at the gate of King’s Landing would display at this point of the story.

This is when Geoffrey was king, and I didn’t know whether the flags of the city would fly the Lannisters’ flags or those of the Baratheons.

The art director was very happy to start a discussion about it, and as it turns out, at that time they would use a hybrid banner with the crests of both houses.
The more you know..

Anyway, more Sands of Dorne illustrations next week.
Oh, as usual, made with Krita.

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 – Valar Dohaeris

As I said in my last post, The Archmaester’s Key, Game of Thrones last chapter pack by Fantasy Flight Games, has recently been released on FFG’s store, and I had the pleasure of illustrating Valar Dohaeris, one of the cards of this expansion.

As the name suggests (if you are a Game of Thrones’ nerd as I am), the illustration is set in Braavos, and it depicts the Temple of The House of Black and White, which is where Arya Stark spends a considerable amount of time both in the books and in the HBO’s series.

I have to say, the chapters about Arya were among my favourites while reading the series, so working on this was even more enjoyable to me.

In case anyone’s memories were fuzzy about this place, I happen to have the relevant bits handy, straight from my brief:)

Slowly her eyes adjusted. The temple seemed much larger within than it had without. The septs of Westeros were seven-sided, with seven altars for the seven gods, but here there were more gods than seven.
Statues of them stood along the walls, massive and threatening. Around their feet red candles flickered, as dim as distant stars. The nearest was a marble woman twelve feet tall. Real tears were trickling from her eyes, to fill the bowl she cradled in her arms. Beyond her was a man with a lion’s head seated on a throne, carved of ebony. On the other side of the doors, a huge horse of bronze and iron reared up on two great legs. Farther on she could make out a great stone face, a pale infant with a sword, a shaggy black goat the size of an aurochs, a hooded man leaning on a staff. The rest were only looming shapes to her, half-seen through the gloom.

Between the gods were hidden alcoves thick with shadows, with here and there a candle burning.
Silent as a shadow, Arya moved between rows of long stone benches, her sword in hand. The floor was made of stone, her feet told her; not polished marble like the floor of the Great Sept of Baelor, but something rougher. She passed some women whispering together. The air was warm and heavy, so heavy that she yawned. She could smell the candles. The scent was unfamiliar, and she put it down to some queer incense, but as she got deeper into the temple, they seemed to smell of snow and pine needles and hot stew. Good smells, Arya told herself, and felt a little braver. Brave enough to slip Needle back into its sheath.

In the center of the temple she found the water she had heard; a pool ten feet across, black as ink and lit by dim red candles.

I don’t really remember if I decided to make the pool larger than ten feet as an artistic licence, or just because as an European I only speak Metric.
Regardless, it was supposed to be the focus of the composition, so it is indeed slightly larger than it’s described in the books.

I’m saying this just in case you are a Game of Thrones fundamentalist and you feel compelled to point this out to me in angry emails:)

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

Game of Thrones – Time of Plenty

Time of Plenty is the second illustration I made for Game of Thrones’ Lions of Casterly Rock.
If you want to have a look at the first one I posted, it’s right here.

The brief read: In a blood orange grove in Dorne, a pair of Dornish peasants (one male, one female) pick oranges from the trees. Each of the peasants carries a large basket full of oranges, and the trees in the grove are bursting with fruit.

So this is what I came up with:

I remember that when I read Game of Thrones, Dorne left me with images of Andalucia, or Southern Italy, maybe Sicily.
So that’s pretty much where I got my reference from.

I meant to add some Dornish city in the distance (as you can see from the sketch), but in the end it looked too cluttered so I decided against it.

Again, this was one of the first actual drawing I made with Krita, so I did struggle a bit to get the foliage right.
In fact, I had to make a whole new set of brushes specifically for this drawing.
As soon as I have some time I’ll make them all available for download, likely next week.

by Paolo Puggioni