A recent commission. A couple of Half-elf adventurers, preparing for battle! He’s a Great Old One warlock whose patron is a big blue sun that appears to him but never speaks, and he summons his pact weapon by pulling it out of a black (blue?) hole. She’s a glamour bard who was raised in the feywild, and here we see in her in her Mantle of Majesty, just beating the world into submission with her radiant beauty.

Here’s a cool Curse of Strahd commission I recently had the chance to do. It was commissioned to commemorate the end of the campaign, and immortalizes the triumphs and epic fails of the party, such as taking over a town, punching your way out of a shambling mound, accidentally burning down a windmill with a bunch of kids inside, accidentally drowning a bunch of ravens who were actually people, accidentally blowing up a wagon, and taking advice from a talking sword.  And of course, Strahd himself looms over the whole thing.

Artistically, it was a big challenge to fit this many characters, with this many bits of “business”, onto the page in some kind of coherent composition, all while giving each character the “screen time” they deserve. I think it ultimately came out very nicely, but it took a lot of messing around to get it there!

D&D Party Exploring a Wizard’s Laboratory

Here’s a fun commission I finished up recently — a party exploring a friendly wizard’s laboratory. I love doing the group-portrait and action shots that I usually get commissioned for, but this was a really nice change of pace. I got to do a little storytelling, and come up with some fun wizard’s trinkets. It felt more like drawing a comic book panel, and since we’re between volumes of Mantamaji right now, I haven’t drawn a comic panel in a while.

 

Magi-Tech D&D Commission

Here’s a real cool commission I had the opportunity to draw — a D&D party facing off against the Big Bad Evil Guy, all of whom are sporting badass alien power suits with internal weapons systems that cast Magic Missile and stuff like that. Not the typical D&D illustration, but very cool nonetheless!

Eldritch Foundry Employee Portraits

Here are a bunch of portraits commissioned by the people at Eldritch Foundry, a cool new company that makes custom miniatures for D&D and other tabletop role-playing games. They had me do all of their employees as their D&D alter-egos!

 

A Dashing D&D Party

Here’s a recent D&D commission. The client gave me far more specific detail about the characters’ looks and dress than I’ve ever had before, which was great — lots of fun swashbuckling looks — but also challenging. Anyway, I think it came out pretty good!

Duergar Hunting Party

More D&D, more Underdark. These are Duergar, the so-called Grey Dwarves, a clan of dwarves who were driven to by a strange compulsion mine ever deeper, until they broke through into the Underdark, and found the source of their madness — the Mind Flayers, who enslaved them and
drove them insane with psionic experiments! The Duergar eventually escaped their slavery, but they were rejected by the rest of the dwarves, so they stayed down in the Underdark doing Underdark things. Here’s a few of the nasty bastards out hunting!

D&D Curse of Strahd Commission

Here’s a recent commission of a D&D party from a Curse of Strahd campaign. Curse of Strahd is set in D&D’s Ravenloft setting, which is like an old-school Hammer Horror, Transylvania kind of setting, and Count Strahd Von Zarovich is basically Dracula. In this illustration, Strahd is drawn with the likeness of the Dungeon Master, as he pulls the party’s strings!

The only couple of times I got to play D&D back in high school, it was set in Ravenloft, so this was a fun nostalgia trip!

Fang Breaker!

Here’s a really fun D&D commission I did recently. Really fun character –pyromaniac halfling rogue arsonist, fighting vampires with molotov cocktails and the the power of BRANDING — and it was a nice opportunity to do some cool hand-lettering.

My D&D Party!

After a lifetime of wanting to play and seldom getting the chance, I finally decided to buckle down, learn to Dungeon Master, and got a D&D game going with my lovely partner Becky and some friends of ours! Here’s a picture I drew to commemorate our first adventure. That’s Elven Fighter Paprika Jade (she of the shady criminal background), Human Wild Magic Sorcerer Sheveh Dalah, exile of the Clans of Ymorin, and Elven Ranger Wrae, refugee of the treacherous Elven Waste! Here’s to many more riotous evenings of goblin-stomping!

Here’s an extended family portrait commission! I’ve never done a single illustration with so many full figures before, much less one where every figure was a likeness of a real person (or dog!) Very challenging, but very fun and rewarding.

Colossus!

I was reminded of this old X-Men fan art of Colossus that I did a few years back, so I figured I’d post it. That logo is all hand-drawn, and I think it came out pretty cool, even if it doesn’t quite make much sense. Like, why is his name busting out and falling, so he has to protect those kids? Whatever! I also like the limited color palette I used. Back then I was a little shy with color rendering, so I experimented with these minimal styles. I should try some of that again!

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I’ve been on such a huge D&D kick lately, so here’s one of D&D’s most iconic monsters, the Beholder!