Recent Illustration – Tomb of the Claw

acrylic on paper, March 2025

When I was working as a commercial photographer and grip, we would often use colored gels to color different light sources in order to get them all to a similar hue. Green gels were used to correct Tungsten lights to the kelvin reading of fluorescent lighting and magenta gels were used to correct fluorescent lights to the color of Tungsten lights. But you could also use these sorts of gels for creative effects — when photographing things for catalogs (really boring work), I used to experiment with exotic but subtle color effects — a little magenta gel on a key light from one side and a little green on the key light from the other side would create colored highlights. I wish I still had any of those photos – god knows where they are now. In this painting, I took that effect and applied it to the painting – the lime green light from the elf’s staff contrasts with the bright magenta light from the spell caster’s magic.

Revenge of the Rat King

Revenge of the Rat King 2025

Facing the Future – “The Pack”

Finished this drawing yesterday. It is a continuation of a series that are both a fun personal project and part of the promotional materials for “Mutant Crawl Classics.” Absurdist post-apocalypse fiction has been a part of my creative life from the beginning. As a child, I was fascinated by reprints of Jack Kirby’s “Kamandi; The Last Boy on Earth!,” the Planet of the Apes films, “The Omega Man” and similar stuff. TSR’s “Gamma World” ripped the roof off of my imagination.

This is the fourth drawing in the series – the three previous are shown below. The drawings feature returning characters – headphone guy, the woman, lizard guy and the cat. I fist drew headphone guy back in 1988 or so – he was the “mascot” for an industrial punk noise band I was in… but A) one of the guys involved in the band ended up destroying our friendship and driving me to quit the band with his endless appetite for spite and manipulative narcissism and B) I am not now nor have I even been good at music. Drawing these helped me feel like I reclaimed a lost or stolen bit of my creative past. The fourth image is artwork I originally drew for the band in question – it was used on posters, stickers, etc., and after the band and I parted ways, they released the below single with my (uncredited) artwork on the front. There is more than one band using the name – the one I was (briefly) a part of was active in St. Louis in the late 80s, and, after jettisoning me as a member, the band moved to Chicago where they lasted into the 1990s.

MAGA House of Horrors

This is a recent thing I did… the final image has a lot of text added and this is obviously for a political campaign… since the campaign has not launched yet, I’m not sharing the candidate’s info yet but she is running for office against a MAGA candidate. I was originally doing this as an illustration on hot press watercolor paper but ran out of time so I colored it digitally. Digital color is not my favorite but I think I did a pretty good job with this one (except for the sky… but most of that is going to be covered by text). It is a halloween themed illustration that will illustrate all the horrors that await the residents of her district if her Maga opponent is elected – medical debt, infrastructure, women’s health and reproductive rights and education are the key issues.

Caverns of Thracia

Goodman Games recently announced Janelle Jacquays’ “Caverns of Thracia” book(s) on backer kit: https://www.backerkit.com/…/caverns-of-thracia…

Above is a painting for the “end sheets” that I recently did for this book. The scene portrays the villainous Immortal King roasting some player characters in one of the ruined underground temples. The Immortal King’s companion, a summoned earth elemental, gets an arrow to the face and a spear in the back.

Wicker Man

This one took a lot longer to do than I thought it would but I am pleased with the results. Obviously, I have to thank The Wicker Man film (1973) and Julius Caesar – who apparently is the first to write of the wicker man being stuffed with sacrifices and burned by the druids. Lack of archeological evidence indicates this was probably anti-Druid propaganda… never trust the kings and generals. #stefanpoag #illustration #blackandwhite #penandink #dccrpg #dyingearth #osrart #dccrpgart #weirdfantasy #goodmangames

More Dying Earth

I finished these three drawings in 2022… think I have shared bits and pieces of them here and there but here they are presented in their full glory. All three are title pages for The Dying Earth DCC RPG from Goodmangames.com.

Dying Earth

I haven’t put anything up on this site since the end of last year… which is lazy of me but I don’t think this site gets a lot of traffic. This is a cover I did for a Jack Vance inspired Dying Earth adventure published by Goodman Games – “A Journey to The Manse of Erudite Wonderment” or something similar was the title last I heard — as is common in publishing, what I think the title is when I am working on it is not the title by the time it comes out in print.

This painting was one of the early examples in my recent love affair with purple.

Lost Luggage

Above is a recently completed illustration for an as-of-yet unannounced publication. Like most of my illustrations, it contains references and call-outs to things in my own life as well as inside jokes that are probably only funny or interesting to me. The work is supposed to appear in black and white…

… but was drawn with pen, pencil, black and colored ink as well as white gouache. One of the things I am experimenting with is to try to preserve as much of the original drawing as possible. In the past, I would draw something in pencil or non-repro blue, then ink over the pencil drawing, then erase the pencil or deselect the non-repro blue in the scan in order to “clean up” the image (i.e.: get rid of the original drawing). Traditionally, this is what most illustrators have done. But I have often found that the drawing under the finished inks are frequently as interesting as the finished piece… so now I am experimenting with a new process where I do a lot less erasing or hiding of the original marks…

By comparing this original scan of the pencil to the finished piece, you can see that the final ink (above) has a lot in common with the original pencil but has additional layers of tone and darker darks. I’ve done a little bit or erasing on the final, but, as you can see, the underlying pencil imparts a lot of shadow and texture and shape to the final — the drawing tells the story of its own creation.