Category Archives: Fan-Art

Drawing the Monster Manual #13: Grell!

#13 in my quest to draw the entire 5th Edition Monster Manual: The Grell!

Lucky number 13, and I couldn’t have rolled a cuddlier little guy. What the hell is this thing? A beaked brain with barbed tentacles? Gross. But also undeniably awesome. Of course it’s from the Underdark!

I’m struck by how many D&D monsters are just a weird combination of different animals and different body parts. Hey, don’t mess with what works, right?

Drawing the Monster Manual #7: Mummy

Number 7 in my quest to draw the entire 5th Edition Monster Manual: The Mummy!

I’ve been trying to get through at least one of these a week, but I had an extremely busy week on a personal level, not to mention the fact that for some reason I struggled with this guy. I guess I had trouble finding a way to do the wraps that I was happy with — and with a mummy, if you don’t have the wraps, you don’t have anything! But then I remembered that one of the points of this project was to not be too precious with it — with over 200 creatures in the Monster Manual, I just can’t afford to! So I knocked it out and moved on. But ultimately, by the time I got the color on there, I think it came out alright!

 

Drawing the Monster Manual #5: Thri-kreen

Number five in my quest to draw the entire 5th Edition Monster Manual — the Thri-kreen. I don’t even know what to say about this guy. A large majority of D&D monsters are either taken directly from traditional folklore/mythology/horror sources, or are at least inspired by the same. These guys are just crazy desert-dwelling bug people. I believe they come from the Dark Sun setting, which is a sort of gritty fantasy post-apocalypse sort of thing. I actually recently completed a commission of a Dark Sun party that featured one of these guys, so I had already figured out how to draw them, which made this one easier!

Drawing the Monster Manual #4: Banshee

Number four in my quest to draw the whole 5th Edition Monster Manual: The Banshee! According to D&D lore, a Banshee is the spirit of a female elf who, in life, used her beauty for evil ends, and in death is cursed to roam the place of her demise, weeping and wailing, reliving every moments of her life with perfect recall. In the Irish mythology that the Banshee derives from, she’s called a “fairy woman”, and the possible reasons for her curse are more diverse.

Drawing the Monster Manual #3: Griffon

Third in my series of creatures from the D&D 5th Edition Monster Manual, we have the Griffon! It’s interesting how many monsters are just mashups of different animals! I guess that is pretty monstrous. I used to be terrible at drawing animals, but somewhere along the line, I guess I got to be pretty alright. A couple years back I illustrated a children’s book about an island full of tiny people who ride seagulls, so I really had to dig into how to draw birds, which came in handy here!

Drawing the Monster Manual #2: Medusa

Second in my series of randomly-rolled-and-drawn monsters from the D&D Monster Manual, we have a Medusa. I had a minor obsession with Greek mythology as a kid, and I always thought Medusa was so cool. She was the only one of the Gorgons that ever got any press, really. I guess this one’s not necessarily THE Medusa. (And funny enough, in D&D, a Medusa is a completely different thing from a Gorgon, which is a kind of metallic bull.)

 

I plan to start formatting and providing these for use as paper miniatures once I’ve got a decent stack of them. If you use, or are interested in paper minis, and you have any thoughts or suggestions for me about what you want in a paper mini, please let me know!

Drawing the Monster Manual #1: Hellhound

I’m starting a series where I roll a random monsters from the D&D Monster Manual to draw, with an eye toward providing printable paper minis once I’ve got a big enough selection. Hopefully I can eventually do the whole thing! Here’s a Hellhound. I haven’t had the pleasure of running one of these guys yet, but my main group just hit level 3, so it might be time to throw a bad doggie at them!

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!

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!