Happy Halloween!

Yesterday, Annie wanted us to have Halloween masks. I took a 9×12 sheet of bristol, painted on it with a brush pen, cut eye holes, etc., and viola, masks. This one (for Annie) was my favorite. The mask has creative possibilities I may have to revisit in the future.

MAJOR CORRUPTION!

This is what happens when you mess around with things better left alone.

The Excellent Travelling Volume

James M. has been producing a magazine for M.A.R Barker’s Tekumel called “The Excellent Traveling Volume” and has asked me to provide a few illustrations. One of them presented an interesting problem: how do you draw a creature that is ‘made of light’? The answer turned out to be to draw everything around it and just leave the paper blank.

The dude in the front in the marching band type hat isn’t the subject of the picture; he’s just there to show you how fucking bright the ball of light is. The hat is, admittedly, bizarre… but that’s how they roll on Tekumel.

DCC RPG 4th Printing Kickstarter is LIVE!

Get all the details here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1409961192/dcc-rpg-4th-printing

I guess Goodman Games is almost sold out of DCC Rule books, because Joe has announced that they are going to print it AGAIN! This reprint includes everything from the original, plus a few edits for typos, a new sample adventure and some other details and stretch goals, including variant covers, a super-deluxe silver foil leather cover, etc. Get the details on the link above.

I’m currently slaving away on drawings for the 4th edition… we are shoehorning MORE art into this already profusely illustrated tome!

Peter Mullen did one of the new variant covers which I am really enjoying:

horned metal pig stencil

It’s been years since I last cut a stencil. I always forget how much work it is… but, given what you can do with a stencil, so worth it.

Hey Mister Wizard…

What are you mixin’ up in that beaker, huh?

Friday Night

One of my favorite ways to spend some time with my muse.

Escher Hands

A number of years ago I worked at a commercial photography studio as a photographer. We were all supposed to come up with a ‘creative’ image to inspire our ‘friends’ at our sister agency in order to get new clients. Towards this end, they wanted us to come up with sample images that would ‘engage’ the creatives at agencies and get them to hire us to help them shoot their next ad campaign. After pitching dozens of ideas and getting shot down on each one, I finally just went to my studio space and made the above image. Those are my hands and it is a reference to the famous M. C. Escher drawing of ‘hands’ (reproduced below) that has graced the dorm room walls and T shirts of American college students since dorm rooms and T shirts were invented. Everything else I had proposed had been considered, ‘too weird.’ I showed the above work to my studio manager and he said, “I don’t get it.”

“It’s based on that M.C. Escher drawing,” I said. “It’s supposed to be about the creative process.” I showed him the original drawing. I didn’t think M.C. Escher was unknown or obscure and I thought the idea of hands drawing themselves, at an ad agency, wouldn’t be ‘too far out there.’ Since an ad agency came up with Starkist’s “Charley Tuna” (a fish who wants to be eaten), hands that draw themselves and then pop out of the paper and become real seems pretty positive to me.

The studio manager looked puzzled. “Who?” I showed him the drawings of Escher online and told him Escher was very well known and popular. I thought most of the people at the agency would know who M.C. Escher was and I was baffled that he didn’t know who Escher was.

He looked at the drawings without interest and said, “That is weird. I still don’t get it,” and walked away. We continued to photograph cans of beans, rolls of paper towels and packs of tube socks until the studio went out of business a few years later. It’s not as if I didn’t try.

The original by Escher