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[Windrider]

Since I teased you guys by showing some of my non-EQ art on the watercolor thread and some of you said you'd like to see more, I thought I'd start a non-EQ gallery here.  Most of my published art is copyrighted by the publishers, so I thought I'd start out with some of my student art, specifically my senior student project, "Dream Waters."  These paintings may be old and flawed, but I still like some of them a great deal - I will only be posting those.

Some background:

This project was a turning point for me artistically.  In these images for the first time I turned my back on the absolute realism of my science illustration background and was intentionally going for something NOT realistic, both in the theme and how they were painted.  This led to the style of art I use for children's books and for EQ, which is rather different from my science stuff.  All of these paintings are watercolor and gouache on cold press illustration board.  There were 16 paintings of about 18 x 30 inches (HUGE for me) and a number of smaller paintings half that size.

The disjointed, Jungian, wordless story of "Dream Waters" is based on the writings of mythologist Joseph Campbell, in particular "The Hero's Journey."  I kept a dream diary and plugged my dreams into the different stages of his hero's journey format.  There were reoccuring elements: me (the hero), my dog (the hero's companion), the "other self" and his companion (the red horse), etc.  The boat became a character in its own right, which is funny since I often talk to my boats.     But it became a metaphor for creativity - the boat is a vessel which is empty at the beginning, but returns from its journey into the subconscious brimming with life.

Dream Waters

"Offerings of the Water"



"Trial one: The Labyrinth"



"Trial Three: The Wave"



"Descent I"



"Descent II"



"The Garden Beneath"



"At the Center"



"Encounter"



"Ascent I"



"Ascent II"



"Dream Waters"

[Treefox]

*gasp* I shall need some time to shape the words to describe what I think about these pictures...

[silentleaf]

your talent just melted my brain!

[Joyrider1978]

Completely stunned as always!  Your work simply glows.  I am crazy jealous of your mastery of light, and your ridiculous flawless washes.  The wave is amazing!  I can almost hear it.  I wish you had more we could drool over!  Stupid publishers.

Can I be you when I grow up?  (shh! I am not already grown up! shh!!)

[Windrider]

I'm glad you are enjoying these!  I haven't shown them to anyone in so long.

Here are a couple details you might like to see.   These should appear on your screen only slightly larger than the size they were painted.  Shows what detail you can get with a good sable brush.  For detail, I didn't use anything smaller than a 4, usually a 6.  But real sables will keep a point like nothing else.

This first one would make me a good avatar, maybe?

[joselle]

Crazy lovely work here. I feel like I've seen some of it before. Maybe when we went sailing long, long ago? And gouache? *shudders* Well, better you than me!

I absolutely love the last one. The translucent quality of the water is just lovely, and soooo difficult to capture.

[Kitt]

Wow! Really gorgeous work here! I love the texture in your colors! ^_^

[Windrider]

This kind of goes with the "Dream Waters" series above.  It was actually done as a preliminary to the main project, testing out ideas with color sketches.  This is all watercolor no gouache, and not really a finished painting, though I did detail some areas.

This is the based on the part of the Hero's Journey where the hero must shed all the perks of this world in order to descend into the underworld.  I didn't use this idea in the final series because it contained more Joseph Campbell and less of my personal dream.

[Mist-eyes]

Fantastic, amazing light! Thank you so much for sharing This series of paintings has such a complete other worldly (or world-within-world) feeling too it, it's very easy to immerse yourself into. Very inspiring!

[Treefox]

Yes, the way you handle the light with watercolors is just magical. While I can imagine I could such an intense red, I could never manage all those details like the cloak with water colors. Beautiful classic symbolism executed in such a imaginative and professional way, it is pure joy to look at it. I really appreciate that you post glimpses of your non-EQ pictures here.

[Windrider]

Glad you like it Treefox.  I've always been fascinated with classical mythologies and symbolism.  Handling detail in watercolor isn't hard, just fiddly.  You have to paint around all the lighter details.

Now for something totally different....

This is really old school, low fantasy.  Fritz Leiber's two incorrigibles, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.  I did these for an article on the series Argosy Magazine was going to run, but the magazine went defunct before that issue was published, so I guess I don't have to worry about violating copyright by posting these.    I know I did more art of these two ruffians, but I don't know where it is....

Fafhrd


Mouser living up to his name (thanks to a wizard's potion)


Mouser and friend climbing a mountain named "Stardock"

[Treefox]

Yes, I can at least roughly imagine how that fiddling would work... I am nowhere near your skill of course. I think the last pure water color painting I did was in my underwhelming art school in 1995...
Anyway, it's always a pleasant surprise that you post more of your non-EQ art here! It's simply fascinating how dark you can get with the layers of color! It creates a more dramatic light. The rock wall on the last one look photo-realistic, especially when viewed from a distance. I also think that you have a good hand at creating recognizable characters. That is not always easy!

[Faerydae]

Man the way you command color is just inspiring! Love the texture,depth, light, and fluidity!

[nilla]

  Your art is mindbending. The details, the scenery...

[Startear]

All of these are amazing, however, my favorite is the one with the white cat. Cracks me up with that attitude. I can hear she/he saying "hold still there, this takes a lot of though and prescicion. One wrong move, and we will plummel down to our death." 

[Tynami]

There's just something about crossover type pictures... I love them!! For some reason they make me think of that old cgi video of the fish and the bird.

[Windrider]

Thanks for the comments, guys.  I just figured out where all the rest of my Fafhrd and Grey Mouser art went.  See, the adventures of these two scoundrels always included a fair amount of swordplay and indulging in the pleasures of the fairer sex.  All the art I did on those two subjects was bought for the personal collection of the editor.     So I was left with the "tamer" pics.  Startear, I'm glad the personality of the cat came through.  In the story, she just invites herself on the adventure.

Here are a couple even older pics, done for Dragon Magazine if I remember correctly.  These are all gouache.  I don't like using that technique anymore because I think it leaves a sort of chalky texture and I like the glowing transparency of the watercolor.  But these two are the best of my dragon series (which included most of the other D&D dragon species).  This is really early D&D, before they standardized the look of the different dragon types.

Bronze Dragon


Green Dragon

[Multimedea]

Thoroughly fab dragons, Windrider! I think I  prefer the scaly, articulated armor skin style of dragon, too. I wonder if the old-school dragon style will make a comeback when The Hobbit opens and everyone sees and hears Smaug (voiced by the yummy Benedict Cumberbatch)?

[Treefox]

I missed out on a lot these past days! Those are fabulous! The way the sky and also the water reflects on the Bronze Dragon's scales is so detailed and just seems to me to be doing exactly what light should do on such a surface.
I like individual dragon designs. One of the first things I started to draw as a kid were dragons. Just had a love for wolves, dragons and big cats.
Did I mention before that you also do amazing lighting effects with objects/living beings that are lit from below? I think that is not easy to do as, at least for me, it's no something that I see every day.

[Windrider]

I think I  prefer the scaly, articulated armor skin style of dragon, too.

Hmmm... I like both types.  There is definitely something visually interesting in taking real life reptiles as inspiration for scaly dragons, as I did above (Bronze is inspired by an armadillo lizard and Green in inspired by a green vine snake).  But painting all those scales is a royal PITA!  Not to mention it can look very busy visually.  There is a lot to be said for the Pern-type dragon model, which I like too.  I am not a huge fan of the overly muscled type that appears to be taking over D&D nowadays, though.  I like to think that dragons should be able to fly without a TOTAL suspension of disbelief!   

An example of why artists should not go crazy with the scaly dragons and make the picture too busy; a crop of my Brass Dragon.  I still like the head design very much, but would have toned back the body scales a great deal.  But these are some of my first professional fantasy art works, so I can't be too hard on myself.


A crop of my Blue Dragon.  One of the problems I had working with gouache alone was overworking things and getting the colors all muddy.  So I  cropped out the worst of it. 

[Startear]

I really like how reptilian your dragons look. Especially the last one. And I love me some lightening spitting dragon.