New Work for ‘Adventuras En La Marca Del Este’

I recently completed some work for publishers in Spain, ‘Adventuras En La Marca Del Este,’ for a new line of adventures they are publishing. These are eventually to be available in the US (and probably in English), but its great to have some more international credits to my name. I wish I had done better in high school Spanish class so I could understand more of what is going on. Google translate something that is to be desired it does leave. The title of the publication is “La Catacumba nefanda de Uztum el Maldito” which I think translates to English as, “The Nefarious Catacombs of Utzum the Evil Fucker” or something like that.

You can visit the above linked site for more details (providing you understand Spanish!) and more illustration samples. I still owe them a color painting; I will be continuing work on that this weekend. Below is one of my favorites… an old, blind alchemist working in her lab with her scribe and crooked-eyed assistant.

MAGIC MAT Commission

My friend Reuben plays ‘Magic the Gathering.’ I don’t know much about Magic (other than it involves cards with pictures of monsters on them), but some players apparently use a ‘place mat’ (sort of like a giant mouse pad) to lay their cards on. Reuben had a blank one and wanted me to illustrate something on it — he had another one that his wife had done for him and wanted to add to his collection. His only request was that the ‘focus’ of the work should be in the upper 1/2 to 2/3rds of the mat — apparently he likes to lay his cards along the bottom side of the mat, so if everything worth looking at is down there, it will soon get covered with cards.

I promised him I would make him a wonderful mat right away and then stuck it in a drawer and forgot all about it for about a year. The other day I decided to get off my ass and make the mat. I soon discovered that the rubbery, synthetic mat material does not take paint at all well — so after some experiments I started painting with the air brush.  The air brush is not a tool I have used very much, but if you can see in this picture, I used a ‘frisket’ (which is a sticky, clear material) to block off parts of the mat that I didn’t want paint to get on, then sprayed one color with the airbrush, cut a new frisket to mask off other parts, painted with another color, etc.  The mat didn’t take airbrush paint very well either, but it was at least better than the acrylic paint.  I also had a lot of trouble getting the frisket to stick to the mat, especially when I was trying to get it to stick to a part I had already painted:

 

Updates

Have been working on some more stuff for Goodman’s DCC (looking forward to that stuff getting released so I can go public with it), a cover painting for AFG by Tjoscanth/Paolo (finished but have one tiny thing to fix; hopefully will post tommorow) plus the job hunt and some other things.  Waiting in the wings is another private commission and a few more Black & White illustrations for Barrowmaze 2.

Someone asked, “How do you post updates if you are so busy?”  Three things:

1.  I sometimes write a post just to relax, last thing in the evening or with morning coffee, and then schedule it to ‘post’ at sometime in the future.  I don’t want them all to post at the same time because I fear that my pearls of wisdom will be lost in the flood of wonderful posts that you have all come to expect from Aldeboran.
2. There seems to be a delay in when I post something versus when it shows up on your blogger reader or whatever other feed you use.  Sometimes that delay can be hours or days.  Most other bloggers maintain a list of links to other blogs they like; I don’t know how it works or how long it takes for my blog’s new post to show up on other blogger’s ‘links of interest,’ but I am under the impression that most of the traffic on this blog comes from that source. So when you see a new post from me, it might already be hours old.
3. I like to write as a way of thinking about stuff (I also like to draw as a way of thinking about stuff). Sometimes it is just a way of ‘musing,’ like me wondering, “What would a man’s head on a cat’s body look like?”  I sit down to draw it to answer that question (answer: it looks a lot like a manticore without wings or tail spikes).  What I write (or draw) may not represent my ‘last thought’ on any given matter (including serious stuff).  It is all a work in progress for me.  But if I change my mind, I try to remember to update or post a retraction.