Before there was Clip Art. . .

Doing presentations in graduate school in the early nineties (aka the dark ages) meant black and white over heads, not powerpoint (or keynote for you mac users) presentations, with photos and color graphs and builds and animations and imbedded video files. It was primative. Toward the end of my schooling, powerpoint became more common. Hell, I can remember glass slides (although I have sleeves of ppt slides that I will never ever use again but can not bear to throw out).

The point? Since I there was no such thing as clip art and I could draw, my friends were always asking me to draw little pictures that they could include on their overheads. Recently I found a book of such drawings.

The "take home" message was a favorite expression of a professor of mine (who loved to verbally spar with me, in a collegial way) and the caricature bears more than a passing resemblance to him. Score one for me (and my sartorial splendor!!).

And the reason the guy doing push ups has a ball and chain on his leg is because my buddy was giving a lecture on proper exercise at a correctional institution. He said they loved it.

Gahlmaar the Fallen

Probably the most vile villian of the D&D campaign I ran with my college room mate was the fallen ranger, Gahlmaar (version 1 is what the raw pencils look like; version two is the b&w version). He is the ultimate sore loser as he betrayed his friends, his god and everything he believed in simple because he felt disrespected and under utilized. In a pique of anger, he slew the unicorn god, Elasmothera, and violated the sacred grove (now the forsaken Heart of Stone). He took Its horn as his weapon and symbol and wears its skin as his armor. He rules his huntsman with an iron fist. Basically, he is one nasty, indignant SOB.

Re-Learning to Paint in Pastels

Ocean in Purple (pastels on paper 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 in)

Simple Spring (pastels on paper 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 in)

Back in the mid-nineties when I was trying to, essentially, "re-learn" how to paint in pastels I started by making small paintings (5 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches). What do I mean by re-learn? When I was in grade school, I just painted and drew and had fun. I took some lessons and improved. The work was quite good (wish I had some proof of these comments but all those originals are lost). My high school had a commercial art program and I thought I would become a professional artist. Well, that did not happen. I dropped out of the program, graduated high school, went to college and earned a non-art bachelors degree and pretty much did not paint or draw for about 5 years. My art skills atrophied incredibly.

But I missed drawing and painting. So, I began small. Above are some of the first pieces that I tried. Not very good but, as the legend says, they were not The beginning, but they were A beginning.

More old D&D artwork

Beyond the Otyugh I also did a host of other drawings for our game. Unfortunately, only a few of these still exist. Have no idea what happened to the original pen and ink drawings. Above we have the pen and ink drawings, "George and the Dragon", "Goblin" and "Draco" (man, was I awful at naming files).

For me, it is fun to look at these again and think about that time in my life but also look at how my art style has evolved, from technique and media to subject and quality. From high school to early college I was in love with line work (thank you Ronin by Frank Miller). While I never fully embraced "speed lines" I did so love cross-hatch. I still do, though on those rare (but hopefully increasingly) occasions, use cross-hatch as primary shading technique. Just not as much.

I am going to post a few more old pieces and then hopefully get to some new, original work. That is the plan at least.

Otyugh from waaay back when

Wow. I had did these drawings back in college for the D&D campaign my room mate and I ran. I lost the originals but had them scanned into my old Mac IIci (the height of cool in the early nineties). I have not been able to open the files in years.

Fast forward to now and with my new iMac and Photoshop I have open these files for the first time in probably 10 years. I think these would be great projects for me to learn how to layer colors in photoshop.

Here is my version of a crazy otyugh. To be honest, not sure if this is a swipe, an amalgamation or just me. Looks pretty cool, tho'. Waddya think?