Ranarh's Art Blog

Last year I was hired to create fifty illustrations including the cover for a puzzle book. The format was unusual because it was going to be triangular, like a mountain, because the overarching story between the riddles was a tribe of dwarves trapped by the magical queen (a bearded lady with a golden hat). Sadly, the book wasn't made, but I am still proud of the works I created for it. My first drawing to get the job of a dwarf. You can see my dwarves aren't actually very small. I enjoyed giving him some biker accents, because I imagine dwarves to be a lot like truckers and construction workers.    The design is still recognisable in the main protagonist Günther, who is younger and cleaner than this guy. When we discussed the style of illustration for the book, I came up with a few options. Everyone loved the idea of fully coloured acrylic illustrations; since it was to be the publisher's first book, we decided to go with black and white traditional ink in the end, with col...

When I have some time to spare I like to create very small pieces, just to paint, without them being particularly well thought-out; often inspired by whatever media I am consuming at the time - in these pieces you will find a lot of GRIS inspired ones, for example. My go-to medium for them is ink, that I started using because of the Inktober challenge and have become rather comfortable with. To not overthink matters I tend to use leftover papers, not all of which are suited that well; these are torn from a colouring block that well-meaning people gave me for a birthday once. So most have a serrated edges from their perforation, some I cut to proper square format (don't you hate it when they give the paper format without the perforation, you think, 'nice, it's square', and then you tear them out of the spiral block and end up with a just-so-not-square-any more sheet? Maddening). At least there are many of them, I am still making my way through the second block; they buck...

A drybrush drawing on 65×50cm paper. It's based on one of those sketches you doodle and that just work; I put some effort into making the twigs interesting. The paper behaved very much like I hoped - quiet and obedient despite the wet medium - although it didn't like me using a tiny bit of wash on the hands, but it lay down again. The original is available on Etsy, https://www.etsy.com/listing/561310180/branching-hands