Since
I got the art photographed, I thought I’d post the two paintings here and share
some thoughts about them with you. Luckily, I keep pretty good records of all the
jobs I do (which is just smart when you are running a freelance business), so I
know the approximate dates the paintings were done. I also date my paintings next to my
signature, so that helps too.
SWAMPLIGHT
The
first painting this collector owns (which he actually bought from another
collector) was used for the cover of a 2nd Edition Advanced Dungeons
and Dragons adventure module called Swamplight. I don’t think there was much of an art
description with this assignment other than show a lizardman shaman in the
swamp with a magic effect happening.
Now,
bear in mind, this painting was done early in my career in 1993! I actually hadn’t done all that much painting
other than some painting in high school and maybe a job or two prior to this,
so my experience with it was limited. I
was heavily focused on pen and ink work at the time, so this isn’t exactly the
best painting in the world, but I still kinda like it – at least what I was trying to accomplish.
With
the module being named Swamplight, I
wanted to hit home the idea of some kind of glowy light happening in the swamp. In typical Baxa fashion, I wanted to come up
with something dramatic. And drama comes
from putting your hero in imminent danger and having the viewer feel the
emotions from the predicament. So I
focused the scene on the lizardman, our hero, instead of some long shot
landscape of the swamp.
I
created drama several ways. First of all
I created an implied threat in the form of an unnatural glow (the “swamplight”)
and bubbling coming from under the water in close proximity and behind the main
character, as if something was sneaking up on him.
I
brought the “camera” low to emphasize the vantage point of the light (attacker). A worm’s eye view of this sort and a one
point perspective pointing skyward, highlighted by the lines of the tree trunks,
adds movement and drama to a scene. It
also “points” from the threat directly to the victim’s reaction on his
face.
As
you can see, none of this is by accident; it’s by design. That’s what a good illustrator does: he tells
a story in an image. Sometimes I think
about this stuff very intentionally, and sometimes it comes to me more
intuitively.
Emotion
comes mostly from the viewer relating to what’s happening for the hero. So I decided to have the lizardman facing
away from the viewer, but twisting around at the moment he notices the
threat. This creates movement and a
sense of action with the figure’s pose, and his look of surprise hits home the
story.
I
love, love, love designing characters, so I wanted to come up with my own type
of lizardman, so I made his head more like a real lizard and added a cool
dorsal fin like that of the dinosaur dimetrodon.
When
I do a sketch, I seldom do a ton of roughs.
I usually visualize the scene and pose in my head until I see something
I like then start drawing. I might do a
one rough if it’s a tough pose, and sometimes I do a color comp for myself to
work out the main color scheme. Sometimes
I’ll pull some reference; sometimes I won’t (usually to my disadvantage). Here’s the sketch, pretty much the way I did
it on the first pass. There’s just
enough detail to get it approved and for me to know where I’m going with
things.
At
this time in my career, I was painting in acrylics, which is the medium I used
for Swamplight. The painting is 18” x 24” on illustration
board. Here’s the cover of the module:
FLYING ELVES
In
January of 1995 I became a staff artist for the Chicago based game company Fasa;
the guys responsible for Battletech, Shadowrun and Earthdawn. I was given a lot of freedom to work in
different styles and it afforded me the opportunity to experiment with painting
in oils.
I
had always loved the look of oil paintings and tried to achieve it a bit in
acrylics, but felt it was nearly impossible, so it was time to switch. I never had any training in oils in college
or elsewhere, so I was on my own. I
asked a few friends about it and some of the sticky points like oil mediums,
drying times, “lean over fat”, etc. and dove in.
I
still had some hesitation around using oils, and I heard about “water soluble”
oil paints, or alkyds, and thought that might be an easier transition from
acrylic paints. So I decided to paint
with Grumacher’s MAX water mixable oil paints, and as it turns out, I still use
them to this day, only now I use a typical oil medium instead of water for my
medium!
The
other painting the collector bought from me was painted in 1996 for a Dragon
Magazine Issue #233 article call “On the Wings of Eagles”. The paining, Flying Elves, is 16” x 21” on gessoed watercolor paper. I’m really not sure why I painted on paper, I
just did.
I
was always in love with the buttery and fluid brushstrokes of painters like
John Singer Sargent. I thought the way
to achieve that look was by painting thickly, with a lot of paint on the
board. So that’s how I began oil
painting - I used stiff ox hair brushes and laid the paint on thick! The MAX paints were perfect for this approach
because alkyd oils dry much quicker than regular oils.
Flying Elves was the perfect
example of my “thick period”. You can
see, especially in the details below, how thick I laid on the paint. I also deliberately focused on the direction
of my strokes to add an almost sculptural element to the image.
I
don’t paint nearly this thick anymore, but still enjoy letting those supple and
energetic brush strokes show in my work.
Here’s the sketch and the article page:
It
just so happens that I also painted the cover of Dragon #233 with a painting I
call Forest Queen. Not super fantastic, but I got across the
idea of a forest queen surrounded by her animal friends in the forest. I was trying hard to create a serene mood
with a warm wash of sunlight through the trees.
This oil painting was pretty big, maybe 24” x 36” on masonite and was
bought a couple years ago by another collector.
Tom
