Ranarh's Art Blog

I've created the characters for a Star Wars RPG group for a client via deviantArt. They were joyful to paint and were delivered separately, and the group's gamemaster used them on individual binders for the players. Each character was done as follows: collaged the pose from photos and images according to the descriptions. Created loose marker sketches in Painter, followed by a tighter line sketch, and flat colours, which was send to the client for approval. After that, the silhouette was cleaned up with the lasso tool in Photoshop, and masks made for the entire figure as well as important pieces, like weapons. A first lighting pass with the airbrush on an overlay layer set the light. Each character was then finished using mainly the Worn Oil Pastel, Concept Art Jitter Smooth Chalk, and the Blunt Tip Marker.

I recently created the poster for the short film Hurricane, and was commissioned with creating a second poster as an alternative. https://www.hurricanethefilm.com

A new painting done with traditional media. End of the Line is A3, acrylics on paper with cotton thread (the leftovers of which of course became a cat toy).

Illustrations I did for the recently published Surmakar book for the Splittermond RPG by Uhrwerk Verlag. Surmakar is - obviously - a desert region.

My ongoing cooperation with author John Enitsu about illustrating his novel series Rhoenoak ( http://www.Facebook.com/RhoenoakBookOfficial ) has brought forth some new artworks. Enjoy!

Sketches done in ink pens over pencils. I was busy playing a computer game and partially inspired by that - the costumes and armours were all really pretty, and extremely detailed. I lean towards the clean and simple in my own designs, so I thought to switch to the other extreme, and to create these overloaded designs with way too much going on. Not all of them have a theme, but you can see how those that do came out better, like the baroque vampire hunter or the scarred warrior.

I recently did this poster for the dark comedy Hurricane, set in the paranaoid 50ies, that premiered in LA in October. I worked with director Christiano Dias, who was a wonderfully constructive critic all the way, to emulate the look of vintage film posters. Find out more about the film here: https://www.hurricanethefilm.com

Odin, the Norse god of wisdom and magic, and king of the Asir, gave his eye to gain knowledge from drinking from the well of wisdom, hung himself to invent magic, and keeps the severed head of the giant Mimir conserved with herbs to ask its counsel. The many attributes of gods are fascinating to depict; Odin here has both his ravens, the spear Gungnir that returns after being thrown, and the golden ring Dreipnir that replicates itself eightfold every nine days. Most paintings show him old and grey and focus on his missing eye, but what I always liked most about him is his unquenchable thirst for knowledge and understanding. I wanted to show that longing, making him lean forward to drink wisdom from the dying lips of a slain giant (who, being the oldest beings in the world, are also the wisest). Mimir I wanted to look somewhat inhuman, and really big, even if it's also said that Odin has the head with him at all times. I guess he'll have to use his godly strength to haul it aro...

Bob Sellers Jr. just published his book Blood-Lines. The collaged cover includes one of my illustrations. Take a look: Amazon.com Blood-Lines and Bob's blog

The Dakardsmyr region expansion for Uhrwerk's RPG Splittermond was published earlier this year. These are my contributions to it. The region is full of swamps and brimstone mines and cities slowly sinking into the swamp - it sounds pretty horrible to live at, but nice to paint ;)

A small series of acrylics sketches/paintings. All were done on differently toned papers and mostly from leftovers - paints from a previous painting, coin rolling paper, and some piece of paper that was left from a larger sheet I cut up. Underlying sketches were done in charcoal. I used the idea of head and hand on my sketchbook's cover and liked it, so I pieced some more together from photos. They aren't meant to be finished pieces. The ink outlines were applied with a brush and blown around with a drinking straw.

We set out for a session of the pen&paper RPG of Dragon Age, and I felt the need for tarot cards for the player characters, like those for the companions in Inquisition. It came in handy that those are small, and I could try a technique I wanted - painting over printed sketches before finishing digitally. I made pencil sketches in original size at 7×12cm in my sketchbook, cleaned them up and printed them on Canson 1557 180g/m² paper, broke out my worst watercolours for gritty effects and gave them some washes (gouache and watercolour pencils were also involved), scanned them back in and finished them digitally. It then turned out that despite using a printing template, it was quite difficult to align the fronts and backs in the print shop, but it was finally managed more or less, and laminated for endurance. Regrets: I would have liked them to be more art nouveau-ish, and, despite my massive use of digital masks, I'm note sure that the decoratively textured but clean look ...

More illustrations for the novel series Rhoenoak by John Enitsu.