Russ Nicholson

 

Russ Nicholson, one of my favourite RPG artists ever since I first encountered his work back in the '80s, has died.

I didn't really know him personally, though we did have some brief and fleeting online interactions. He was always very supportive of the efforts of aspiring game artists, and always had something useful to say.

Condolences to all his family and friends.

DollMask

White pencil on black paper. Approx. A4.

Sluggy the Slimy Slug-Monster (revisited)

Continuing with colouring in some old line drawings as a substitute for actual creativity, this is one I did a couple of years ago to try out a new brush pen I'd just bought.

Eyes, Mouths and Tentacles, a Winning Combination

I originally drew this in 2009 in a little A7 rice-paper notebook I made.

Now I've Photoshopped it all into glorious technicolour, because why the hell not.

Slicey Leggy Scuttly Buggy Critter

Now here's a little something that I happened upon when I was looking through some old drawings. I must have done this about 1983 or '84 I think, and I'm pretty sure it was heavily inspired by creatures from The Dark Crystal.

I can't think why I didn't finish it off, since it was so close to completion. Maybe I had to go somewhere or do something, and just never got back to it.

I don't know that I'm all that happy with the position of the unfinished claw.

Demon (collage)

There's a little bit of painting in this image, but for the most part it's digital collage, overlaying elements from various photographic images to end up with this.

Mara

Brought to you via the magic of insomnia.

There's a creature in Alan Garner's book The Weirdstone of Brisengamen called the Mara.

This is inspired by it to a certain extent, though it's not quite how I imagined the creature from the book, which would have been a lot less human-looking.

Swallow-Whole-er (thumbnail)

This thing would be a swallower-whole-er. It has a hugely expansible maw with little grippy fangs all the way back down its throat, to hold on to prey it's in the process of swallowing. Clearly the gullet and abdomen would also have to be able to expand to hold anything, say, human-sized, but I see no problem with that.

It's a creeper, an ambush predator, so probably not much chop in a stand-up fight. It's the sort of thing that would sneak up on stragglers in the dark and gobble them down without, hopefully, alerting anybody too dangerous.

It has a venomous sting on the end of its tail. I guess it would probably use that to silence and immobilize its prey before beginning the swallowing-whole. I imagine swallowing something as large as an adult human would leave it somewhat torpid and sluggish of movement, so it would probably want to drag such prey to a place of safety before eating them.

Krita - magic in the dark

There is a free, open source image-making app called Krita that I have just discovered, and this is an early result of playing around with it. His proportions are a bit out of whack; I didn't do any preparatory drawing and just leaped straight in.

It seems to be aiming for the same sort of niche as is currently filled by Corel Painter, and though it's not (yet) as capable as Painter, it has definite potential. Krita could do with some fine-tuning of its user interface, and its brush design capability, though considerable, is a bit opaque to the casual user.

One point where its textural painting falls down is that the texture is defined by the brush, so if you resize the brush, its texture also gets bigger (or smaller), unlike Painter in which a texture is applied to the "surface" you're drawing on, so it remains consistent even when you resize brushes.

Anyway, I'll be keeping an eye on Krita. My most recent version of Painter is VIII, and I certainly can't afford to upgrade to the current version, so something free and good has definite appeal.

Update: October 2023

Krita has advanced enormously since I wrote this, eight years ago. I'd now recommend it whole-heartedly; it's truly excellent.

Toad demon

I've recently upgraded my copy of Photoshop to whatever the current version of CC is — about 15, I think — and I'm slowly finding my way around the new tools and capabilities. Since my last version was CS3, there are a few of them to search out. I must say, although I was sceptical at first, a $10/month subscription turns out to be a lot more cost-effective (and affordable) than paying $600 every few years to upgrade.

This guy doesn't use much in the way of new tools except for some of the newer brush definitions.

As I look at it now, it's a bit flat. I probably should do something about giving it a bit more three-dimensionality and weight, but whether I can be bothered labouring any more over what is, at best, a pretty mediocre picture — well, maybe. probably not.

Or then again, maybe.

Babau

I doodled away at this while I was watching some entirely unrelated TV show (Agents of SHIELD, as it happens).

It's a critter from the 1983 AD&D Monster Manual II, a minor demon called a Babau.

The thing is, I still think of anything out of the Monster Manual II as being a new-fangled, possibly suspect, creation that may or may not be worthy of inclusion in the hallowed precincts of D&D. I guess that's because the book didn't appear until I'd already been playing AD&D for a few years, and I didn't even see a copy until the very late '80s. By the time I saw it, TSR was in its death-throes and was putting out a hell of a lot of pot-boiler garbage.

I didn't finish its right hand; I got bored with drawing and stopped. I might finish it off some day, but I wouldn't count on it. It will certainly never get any taller, because I ran out of leg-room on the page.

Swarms of Sabre-Toothed Piranha-Chicken!

I'm thinking smallish, about the size of a chicken, and appearing in swarms of a couple of hundred or so.

That should provide a bit of fun, with the prospect of barbecue if anybody survives.

Insectoid warrior critter

Here we have an insect-man with a whole lot of sharp things, ready to stick them into some other critter at the drop of a hat.

I drew it for no particular reason, but now that it's here I can think of no good reason why these guys shouldn't start causing plenty of trouble for my hapless party just as soon as possible. I suppose I'd better start thinking about what sort of stats an emotionless insectoid killing machine should have.

Demon Doodle

There's a lot of sitting around and waiting at polytech right now; for reasons best known to themselves, the powers that be have decided that we need a whole hour for lunch, and also they've combined two classes into one so we spend quite a bit of time waiting for the tutors to finish with the other group before coming over to tell us what to do.

Fortunately I have an ereader for reading things on, and a notebook for scribbling things in. This is one of the latter.

The medium is black ball-point pen. It's a demon thingy of some kind.

The image, as so often is the case, can be clicked upon to bloatify.

Hirelings

Looking back over some old — sometimes very old — campaign journals, I note that hirelings are most notable by their absence. It seems to be taken for granted in all the old-school rulebooks that PCs will hire flunkies to do their heavy carrying and what-not, but we almost never did as far as I can find.

Maybe it's because we were always too cheap to pay wages, but I think it's more likely because we were a bunch of softies who felt guilty at the inevitable demise of such fragile creatures, for whom we felt a responsibility of care. It's bad enough having to constantly replace horses, especially if (by some miracle) they'd lasted a couple of adventures without being gutted and eaten by some hideous abomination.

It's a pity really; the addition of a miscellaneous group of sometimes questionable reliability or loyalty, largely reliant on the PCs for their very survival, can add an interesting social element to running a party. It actually makes Charisma useful, instead of becoming the inevitable dump-stat. And if, as we were, the players are basically decent types who played basically decent types, the very vulnerability of the hirelings to a ridiculously dangerous environment can provide the DM with a host of side-quest ideas.

NOTE: The picture to the right, of Bearer No.4, was one of the very first things I coloured in Photoshop 2, but I can't for the life of me find the coloured version, so this will just have to do. The one to the left is a recent thing that I doodled in Painter VIII.

Adder-wyrm

Adder-wyrm

HD: 1-3 hp
AC: 5 [14]
Attack: Bite 1-2 pts, claws 1-3 pts
Move: 12"
Save: 18
Special: Venomous bite, climbing, camouflage

These shy, diminutive creatures are hunters and scavengers, about the size of a chihuahua, preying on any insect, reptile or mammal up to about the size of a rat, or feeding on the remains of any larger animals they may find. They are not particularly aggressive unless cornered, and will (if possible) flee from anything larger or more dangerous than their prey; if they attack a larger creature, it will be solely so that they can escape, and they will not persist if an escape route presents itself.

Their needle-like fangs can inflict deep puncture wounds, and the bite is venomous: a paralysing and  necrotizing poison that numbs and eats away at the surrounding tissue, leaving it dead and gangrenous. A bite to a hand or foot will, over the course of a few Turns, will leave it numb, useless and stinking. A bite to the head or neck can easily kill the victim.

The adder-wyrm has gecko-like pads on its spatulate toes, allowing it to run up sheer surfaces and even across ceilings. Like a chameleon, it has an extensible tongue that it can use to attack flying insects and the like, and it can also change its colour to match its background — when motionless, an adder-wyrm can be quite difficult to detect.

The retiring nature of the adder-wyrm means that it usually presents no great threat to adventurers, but they will sometimes creep into a bag or pack in search of food, and may sometimes be surprised during the search of a chamber.

Adder-wyrms live in all sorts of environments short of arctic cold, and in the tropics they can become something of a pest, as they breed more successfully the warmer and more humid the climate. They are often found underground when food is plentiful.

Adder-wyrms make very poor pets, but might possibly serve as a wizard's familiar.

Wizard

Another old picture. A creepy bald wizard this time; you just know he means no good.

Sandman

I have shown this image before, but not here, so here it is.

This is a critter I drew for my AD&D campaign some considerable time ago. Apart from some camouflage ability, there was nothing particularly special about them; they were pretty much just generic orc-replacements for a desert adventure.

However, that's not to say they couldn't be made a lot more interesting if one were so inclined.

The image can be inflated merely by clicking on it. What a marvellous age this is in which we live!

NOTE: The image is skewed because that's how I drew it. I don't remember why I did that.

Siegfried Slays the Dragon Fafnir

I was looking through some old sketch books and found this — I drew it some time in 1985, when I was "working" at the Lyttelton Library on some student job scheme or other. I was hired to produce a history of Lyttelton for the Harbour Board, but when they found out how much it would cost to print they dumped that idea and shuffled me off into a back room at the library, out of sight and out of mind. I spent my time there reading through their science-fiction and fantasy collection, and scribbling in my sketchbooks.

Even older than that is this one, from 1983. It was drawn from a photograph of a Tibetan rhododendron forest, and I just added the little dude on the rock. It's drawn with a Rotring rapidograph, probably a 0.18mm nib since that's what I favoured at the time. I quite like it really.

Mister Potato-head Goblin

This is just a little doodle I did this evening and finished off with texture and tone in Painter XIII.