Check The Crou
Posted: February 29, 2012 Filed under: inspiration, music Leave a commentI’m tired and busy, so only have enough energy for an embed:
Check out the grotty-ass-breath teeth on King Ju!
This thing’s gone international
Posted: February 26, 2012 Filed under: reviews 4 CommentsThere is a positive review of me from someone in (I think) Spain right here. My Espanglish est muy malo and Babelfish makes it into clumsy, stilted and somewhat silly English but I am happy all the same. I see from his Facebook page that the author, La Marca del Este, works at Pinkerton’s Detective Agency and studied at Miskatonic U., so he is clearly good people!
Life is good, then.
I am back
Posted: February 26, 2012 Filed under: douchebaggery 1 Comment
We are back from our brief cross-country jaunt. The dogs are very happy that we came and busted them out of the klinker last night and are still thanking us. That is the thing I really like about dogs. You do something shitty to them (like lock ’em up in the kennel for a week), and, rather than being mad at you , they apologize to you for what you did to them.
Swords & Wizardry
Posted: February 19, 2012 Filed under: games 5 Comments
My friend Jon C. is starting a “Swords & Wizardry” game which will (hopefully) kick off shortly after I get back from St. Louis next week. Some members of our game group seem to doubt that ‘old and simplistic’ games can be any good or any fun, but I am really looking forward to it.
Part of what I have been missing is the fun we had wondering, “what happens next?” back in the day and I miss games that put the players (and what they want to do) in the driver’s seat rather than the ‘story based’ games where elements are planned out beforehand or more complicated rule systems where players are rewarded with more options for gaming the character creation rules. It’s been a while. Thanks, Jon.
The illustration above right is one I did for “The Barrowmaze.” And, yes, the fighter IS supposed to look like ‘Alley Oop.” Alley Oop is the shiznit.
Newt or Shrute?
Posted: February 13, 2012 Filed under: douchebaggery, politics Leave a comment
One of these men is a scheming weirdo with a penchant for drama. The other is Dwight Shrute.
Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.
Mother Jones published a quiz with bizarre quotes and statements from either Newt Gingrich (former speaker and Presidential aspirant) or from Dwight Shrute (fictional weirdo character on ‘The Office’) and the taker of the quiz has to determine if the quote, expressed desire, etc., is from Newt or Shrute. Normally, you would think it would be pretty easy to tell if a quote, idea or aspiration came from a fictional characher on a situation comedy TV show, but, according to the people who published the quiz, out of the thousands of people who have taken it so far, there has been only a 45% rate of correctly identifying whether any given pearl or quote is from ‘Newt or Shrute.’
Actual question from the quiz for example: When debating the eating habits of T-Rex’s, this man explained, “I believe [the T-Rex] was a predator because I saw ‘Jurassic Park’ and he ate a lawyer and it wasn’t a dead lawyer.”
Was it Newt or Shrute? The answer may surprise you. Take the quiz.
This is my list
Posted: February 13, 2012 Filed under: art, publishing 4 CommentsIn response to Zak of PD&Dw/P*’s “More of this, please…” post, I offer a few of the images I find interesting or inspiring, chosen (somewhat) at random. These are pictures that have a ‘something’ I like; there are many more (I just snagged a bunch from my ‘good examples’ archive). I didn’t include certain artists already well known to the D&D public (like Trampier, Otus and some others like Rackham) since they would probably be familiar to anyone who reads this blog. And none of these are by me.
I wrote about this last year… in particular, here and here.
I’m not trying to give a last word on this; there is just a lot of great stuff out there.
I have arrived!
Posted: February 9, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized 11 CommentsGoodman Games just gave me my own page on the Goodman website: http://www.goodman-games.com/5070artpreviewpoag.html
Thus I join DCC RPG art luminaries like Doug Kovacs, Jeff Easley and Erol Otus. I’m sure there are others, but I have not found them yet.
Here they have pictures like this that I did for the DCC RPG; it features magic user who follows “Bobugbilz” ( a toad-like god) and, as a result of the evil magics he has been exposed to, has become a bit ‘toadish’ over time:
sketch a day 2-6-2012
Posted: February 6, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized 4 CommentsPage from the sketch-a-day journal in which I do whatever (but I have to do it every day). Top half is from yesterday, bottom half is from today. I just started with a one-eyed bird and the rest grew from there. Would like this in day-glo colors on black velvet and it’s viewing should be accompanied by bong hits.
The barbarian is going to try to chop up the wizard while 10,000 dead clones rot below.
Anarchistcoloringbook: Fragonard Museum
Posted: February 5, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized 2 CommentsJust a simple re-post this morning. If you are not already following “Anarchistcoloringbook,” why not? Great collection of weird stuff. This morning I saw this write-up on some 18th century flayed anatomical studies on a museum in the Paris called ‘The Fragonard Museum;‘ just one of the many great things anarchistcoloringbook has plopped into my inbox.
Creepy shit like this:
Here is the site for the actual museum in France: http://musee.vet-alfort.fr/.
Do I know how to be a famous artist?
Posted: February 4, 2012 Filed under: art, crass commercialism 1 Comment
I was reading Tony Dowler’s “Year of the Dungeon” blog the other day where he was writing about the art bizness and it made me think about my own ‘career.’ Currently, I make a little bit of ‘supplemental’ income on my art; it is very uneven and hardly a living, and, if I worked out an ‘hourly wage’ including the time I spend communicating with people, looking stuff up, etc., it would probably pay less than flipping burgers, but I love it, so I wouldn’t give it up.
I’d like to get better at the business side of things, however. For one thing, I think it would be a great spur to creativity. I’m also inspired by hearing that an artist I admire, Skinner, just published a new book: http://theartofskinner.com/blog/01-30-2012/book-release. I’m hoping I ordered early enough to get the bonus print.
So I have been doing a little bit of reading on the art biz. These are described as pertinent questions and are lifted from this article(http://www.artbusiness.com/wannafame.html):
(quote) Here’s more of what you have to learn in order to become successful as an artist:
► How to talk and write about your art in ways people understand, regardless of how little or how much they know about art.
► How to price your art and answer questions about your prices.
► How to make people appreciate your art and feel like it’s worth owning.
► How to respond when people criticize your art.
► How to know when you have enough art and enough of a selection to start showing and selling.
► How to show your art in ways that make it appealing to potential buyers.
► How to document your art in ways that increase its appeal to potential buyers.
► How to make sure that anyone who’s interested in your art is able to buy something, regardless of how little or how much they have to spend.
► How to sell your art outside of the gallery system.
► How to sell your art if it’s not the kind of art that galleries sell.
► How to find markets for your art outside of the gallery system.
► How to barter or trade your art for goods or services.
► How to present yourself and your art in ways that don’t sabotage your opportunities to make sales.