Two down, one to go!

Words cannot express how relieved I am to finally have this image done. I knew that doing a dragon properly would make my life a nightmare, but I'm so happy with how this turned out. I'm so *very* excited.

Unfortunately, the fact that I had so much trouble with the background means that I have five days to finish a fifth piece from start to finish. I anticipate working right down to the wire. But at least the finish line is in sight.

Here! Admire!

Now I just have to find a place that will do poster printing for me cheaper than CafePress. ($6 for an 11x17? Black and white only? You've GOT to be joking...)

Another Kagematsu update

This is more for Danielle's benefit than anyone else, but so far I'm very excited about the progress of the second Kagematsu image.

Thankfully the last image in the series will be much less complex... The scales alone have been a nightmare.

EDIT: Had trouble sleeping, so I did another hour's work and finished up the dragon. Maybe another hour left to put in an appropriate background, but for now I'm going back to bed.

Kagematsu versus the dragon - in progress

OMG. This is going to be so awesome it hurts.

I will for sure post in-progress updates of this one. It's going to be really lovely.

More Kagematsu

First off, I was negligent in not linking to an excellent Playtesting thread that Ron Edwards wrote up on the Forge after our game at last year's GenCon. Though the game has gone through revisions since then, I think that you can still get a good feel for what sort of play the game creates. If you're interested, you can read it here.

Secondly, the sketch that I posted yesterday has since undergone some revisions. You can see the new version here:

And here is the other image that I promised, the one that is already finished and ready to go. It took a lot of trial and error to get right, but I'm soooo happy with how it turned out and plan on offering prints of these images at GenCon.

Artwork for Kagematsu

Last year at GenCon, I got an opportunity to play Danielle Lewon's game Kagematsu which was all kinds of fun. It was still in late playtesting last year, and this year she's finally releasing it. It's a super fantastic game, and I was very excited when I got the chance to illustrate this game. (If you haven't heard of this game, go follow that link and read about it. It's awesome, trust me.)

I'm on a bit of a tight schedule to accomodate getting the book printed in time for GenCon, but it's well worth it. I've already had quite a bit of fun working on the pieces for this game.

I've gotten the first one finished already, which I'll hold off on posting for right now. I'm working on the second, which is a fight between Kagematsu, the samurai from whom the game takes its name, and a dragon - one of the many potential threats that the women in the game are trying to get Kagematsu to protect them from.

Here's a sketch to whet your appetite:

I started this sketch off in pencil and finished it up digitally since the dragon was giving me some trouble. I'm super excited to see what the finished version of this piece will look like. Danielle has me doing her pieces in a sort of modified ukiyo-e style, which has been a lot of fun and a good challenge...

It's getting late, so I'll post about Pirate Jenny tomorrow...