Mountain

Mountains are not my favourite thing.
They are tall, and proud, and pretentious.
If mountains could drive, they would drive a SUV.

However, there is a lot to learn by painting snow.
The shifts in hue and saturation are subtle, and require a lot of observation. There are strong blues on the surfaces untouched by direct light, and warms, and highlights.
And I love the randomness of snow scattered on rocks and cliffs.

Anyway, this comes from one of the lunch break sketches I did a while ago.
With all the freelance work I’m doing at home after my day at Jagex, I have to confess that lately I don’t have much brain energy left. This means I can’t focus on studies and proper practice as I normally would, and developing an old sketch like this can be a way to relax while still being productive.
It also means I struggle to find creative names for my files, apparently.

As usual (yes, doing something twice makes it a habit), I’m also posting the process.

by Paolo Puggioni

Song of Ice and Fire Artwork: A Thief And An Ironman

Some other artwork I made for the Game Of Thrones RPG

The first one is a classic of Fantasy Art: a thief doing thief things on a lock.
For some reason I choose a more “painty” approach with this. Unfortunately the composition is not as it had been planned at the beginning: the layout had to be turned from landscape to portrait after it was already finished and I’m not entirely happy with it now.

The other depicts a class of characters peculiar to the Game Of Thrones books.
Ironmen are fierce people from barren islands ravaged by storms. They are fearless warriors, sailors and pirates, playing at throwing axes at each other when they’re not pillaging coastal settlements.

When I made this I hadn’t read as much about them as I have now.
I would probably draw them differently now, this one looks a lot like a Viking, with not enough of their unique details.

by Paolo Puggioni

Catelyn Stark

Another drawing from the first set I made for the Game Of Thrones RPG.
This one was was quite hard, I have to confess I have some troubles at drawing horses.
Horses have stupid legs, full of knees!

The Catelyn I depicted here is not the same you see in the Game of Thrones books, or in the series.
She is young here, not yet married to Ned Stark, her face void of all the troubles she would face in the future.
Or, well, of all the prodigies I can’t spoil!

For some reasons I set the scene in a snowy landscape, thinking of Winterfell rather than Riverrun, where Catelyn would likely have been during her youth.
However, despite Riverrun being further south, it gets some snow every now and then, so I figure it doesn’t really matter.
Neither the Art Director at Green Ronin nor George R.R. Martin complained about it, so here she is.

by Paolo Puggioni

Another Game Of Thrones Illustration, A Sellsword

I don’t know exactly what part of the books this drawing refers to.
There are several rogue warriors and sellswords in Game of Thrones, I guess this would be a generic, less important villain.
The brief was about a sellsword showing off a severed head (which I would assume he dutifully separated from the rest of the owner).
I took the chance to experiment with lighting, I’m quite happy about how it turned out.

by Paolo Puggioni

A Game Of Thrones, Artwork From the RPG

I’ve been allowed to publish some of the artwork I’ve recently done for the RPG of A Game Of Thrones by Green Ronin (yay!)
In the next few days I’ll upload some illustrations from the first batch of inside art.

This is Balerion the Black Dread, the biggest dragon that ever lived.
According to the brief, his teeth are as long as swords, and his mouth could swallow a mammoth whole.
As a Concept Artist it’s difficult to imagine a better thing to work on.

It was been great fun to do, even though I have to admit I completely messed up the assignment and I had to redraw it from scratch after the first feedback.
Dragons in George R.R. Martin’s world have no arms. That is, they obviously have hind legs, whereas their arms evolved into wings, as it happens in bats.
I honestly hadn’t thought of that (Dragons in other settings can be quadrupedal with wings as a further set of limbs) and I’ll make sure I’ll get this clarified next time I’ll be asked to draw one.

Anyway, I’m posting the one that got rejected below. It’s not that bad, there are just two spare arms in the composition 🙁
Thanks to Green Ronin for allowing me to post this so soon.

by Paolo Puggioni

Painting Black Skin, A Shaman

Painting black skin can be quite tricky, at least for me. Dark skin gets highlights in a completely different way from White or Asian, and can go all the way to white. It’s difficult to get it right.

I started this painting a couple of days ago, as nothing more than a doodle. I had just finished a freelance assignment, and after the incredible amount of refinement and detailing I had put in it, I just wanted to paint something just for fun, as loosely as possible.
So I randomly got a sketch from the series I posted a while ago and started to develop it a bit further.
Then I got stuck, I had just painted an Oompa-Loompa.

I started again, and managed to paint someone with an orange artificial fake-tan. I was getting close.

The third time I removed most of the reds and got the base colour almost right. After that, most of the work was done. By looking at reference pictures I noticed that dark skin bounces back a lot less light than white skin (duh!), apart from some areas around the eyebrows and nose, which are more reflective.
Painting the rest was just fun, and since I kept the layers I also exported a gif of the process.

I couldn’t help noticing that most of the creative part (the fun bit) is done in the first two-three frames, the rest is pretty much polishing.
I must ponder on that.

Towards the end – hey, all this took less than two hours, that’s unlike me – I felt the urge to think of a more creative name than “untitled1.psd”, and I just didn’t want to call him “Black Guy With a Fuchsia Headscarf”.
So I painted a few tacky ornaments on his head and there you go, a Shaman.

by Paolo Puggioni

Sketches, Just Some More

I’m up to my knees into my freelance assignment, which is kind of cool because I’m quite enjoying it.
Plus – I know I shouldn’t be the one saying it – but what I’v done so far is also pretty cool and I can’t wait to show it around:)

On the other hand, for a week or so I won’t be able to post anything other than my warm up sketches, I’m afraid.
So there you go.
Again, some of them are just scribbles, some others might be transformed into something.
Next week hopefully.

by Paolo Puggioni

The Lich – This Time With Colours

The Lich is the King of the undead world, no one argues about it. Where people’s opinion is split about the scariness of Slow Zombies vs. Fast Zombies (the latter being obviously the scariest), the Lich holds the position of the undisputed badass.
A Lich could bully around even a Vampire, and I’m not talking about frickin Edward, I’m talking about a real, old, pissed off Vampire.
A Lich could take on a Vampire any time, they’re that scary.

So, I meant to make some experiments colouring the pencil sketch I did a few days ago,then I thought than any colour other than blues would have made it too “merry”. So well, I went with a pretty classic palette. I hope I made it badass enough.

Also, since after all those years I dared to open the Animation Window in Photoshop, I put together all the WIPs in a practical Gif.
It moves!

Thanks to fellow redditor Pit107 for the idea.

by Paolo Puggioni