Ende and Xayide

Michael Ende is definitely one of my favourite authors. His fantastic creativity and poetic storytelling, with a deep philosophical content that's easy to understand even by small children the way he tells it - it's marvelous. A friend gave me Momo a while ago and I read The Neverending Story again; I can only advise fantasy artists to do the same. Where Lord of the Rings is epic and heroic like the sagas of old, The Neverending Story is amazing in its new and previously unseen ideas.

This is Xayide, the evil witch that tries to turn Bastian to her will. Her description just screamed for an illustration: She has bright red hair in a curious hairdo, marble skin, and is clad in purple; one of her long-lashed eyes is red, the other green; she sits in her carriage, made of coral, and blows rainbow-coloured smoke from a pipe with the shape of a snake's head. Done in Painter 11.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fallout X-01 Power Armor Re-design

Image
[english - deutsch unten] Fallout Enclave X-01 Power Armor Re-design. Done for a client who was aiming for a series over time, showing a progression of engineers from the D.C. Wasteland on a more mecha-styled side. I had no idea about that from the job offer, and it was quite the challenge, since mecha isn't exactly my forte ;) But I learned a bit, and appreaciate the Power Armor even more. Although I was personally always partial to the Outcast Power Armor. [deutsch] Ein Redesign der Power-Armor-Rüstung aus Fallout. Der Kunde wollte eine zeitliche Entwicklung zeigen, wie Ödland-Ingenieure die Rüstung mit mehr Mecha-Flair weiter entwickeln würden. Das hatte ich aus der Jobanzeige nicht geahnt und so war es eine ziemliche Herausforderung, weil Mechas eigentlich nicht gerade mein Ding sind ;) Aber die Arbeit daran war cool, und ich schätze die Rüstung jetzt noch mehr; obwohl ich immer eine Vorliebe für die Rüstung der Ausgestoßenen hatte (und vermutlich habe ich alle Namen gr
Read more

The 9 Circles of Hell

Image
For the upcoming game Hell's Arena, this infographic of hell depicts the nine circles according to Dante's timeless masterwork, the Divine Comedy. The premise was to make it informative but keep it gritty and maybe look for a new way of doing it, so I chose to make the circles themselves the tortured souls - I really had to switch off all empathy reading the punishments, being kept in burning coffins, torn apart and eaten, being incinerated and resurrected into eternity - but according to Dante, it's all fair. Who knows. I looked at a lot of Keith Thompson's work for inspiration, and drew it with pencils on A3 paper before colouring it digitally.
Read more

Iron Teeth Map

Image
A fantasy map I did for the Iron Teeth novels by Scott Straughan. This will appear in book two of the series, to be found on Amazon, https://www.amazon.com/Goblins-Tale-Iron-Teeth-Book-ebook/dp/B071LHHY85/ I really enjoy using brushes that emulate messy mediums. Painter's Liquid Ink brushes produce strokes that flow together like tiny pools and can be made to look like old, haphazardly drawn maps. And there is a dragon in a ruined city. Really cool commission.
Read more