Ranarh's Art Blog

Several weapons for the NOVA rpg. The blades and bow are a friend's character's weaponry - a two-meter lizardwoman with twenty-pound swords - while the Sombre is completely made up for fun, and the München III is a recent acquisition of the group.

Landscape illustrations for the Dark eye roleplaying game, which recently appeared in the Historia Aventurica sourcebook. These are the mystical stone oak forest of the kingdom Andergast, one of the prosperous cities of the Horasian Empire, and a view of the seafarers' nation Thorwal. Copyright Ulisses Medien & Spiel Distribution GmbH , 2014

Ranarh is a character of mine that came to life in a roleplaying setting, and which I liked enough to use as my online alias. She's feisty, trigger-happy, loose-mouthed, and playful, and overall a good guy. I started designing Ranarh when my skills could barely keep up with my imagination; the character underwent several re-imaginations, according to what happened in the game - from rebellion against oppression to death sentence being converted to military service and finally the flight from said military's grey eminences. From the colour scheme, expressions board and hair style decisions to early concepts with the setting's epomynous fremai creatures (dumb, but good eats), with her cherished lightsaber and combat armour, various onboard uniforms and space suits of different weight classes, to the final, new ID used as avatars for my online presences.

Some speedpaintings I did the last weeks for Genius Loci, the fantasy world I'm building. Check it out in my other blog, Starmaker's Gaze . I try to make the world blog nicely structured, but that also means that if I don't have anything of greater substance to say about the painting, I don't usually post it there. If you're interested in more speedy paintings and sketches, check out my sketchbook thread on conceptart.org as well: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php/278955-Ranarh-s-sketchbook

No, I still have no own youtube channel (making videos of myself painting is scaaary), but Markus Lappalainen has made a wonderfully transcendent piece of music, which is accompanied by my painting Eastern Path. Check out the music on youtube:  http://youtu.be/R_wXPQpuDoU

Artwork I did over the last year for Ruthless Destiny Chronicles. My work included several maps of different times, faction insignia, race sheets and the logo. Find out more about RDC at  http://ruthlessdestiny-strife.blogspot.com/  or on deviantArt  http://ruthless-destiny.deviantart.com/

There are some pieces of advice you will be told by everyone. The usual reason is, they really are true, and so important it can well stand some repetition. So, I'll repeat this: Never be afraid to use reference. And if something's wrong in your picture, fix it right away. It won't grow out, it won't go away, and no amount of beautiful rendering can make up for errors in anatomy, composition and perspective. See the fullsized tutorial on deviantArt:  http://ranarh.deviantart.com/art/Making-of-The-Tale-Nahil-and-Remor-495563668

Years ago I was commissioned to do this dragon painting and was unhappy it didn't live up to my expectations. So, I did it again, and this time it's much better. That being said, structuring and texturing tube shapes is possibly the worst there is...

Costumes concepts for the Far Reaches Open World RPG ( http://voyagergames.com ). The desert people make their clothes from the blue diodoro bird's feathers, which provided some interesting details for their traditional costume; pirates are always lovely to make for their overestimated individuality; and I jumped at the opportunity to design ice planet suits, with a bit more technical detail than I normally care for.

Susanna is a sci-fi character that has both magical an psionic abilities, which I tried to show with fractals on her hands and head.

The planets of the roleplaying setting The Pearl Worlds. In shown order: Coroa, Labareda, Esmeralda, Ventura, Quintal, Seda, Fidalgo, Safira.

A little something about painting black or white objects. Check out my other tutorials on my deviantArt account: http://ranarh.deviantart.com

I created these space art pieces simply to try out some methods for painting lens flares. It's long been a joke in the digital art scene to never, ever use the lensflare filter, although it's not even that bad, but very limited. I will write a tutorial soon on creating lensflares by hand.