My Coloring Book - on Kickstarter!

During the last 3,5 years (how time flies!) in my very limited free time I was preparing a quite fun personal project. And now it's theoretically finished (hip, hip, hooray!).

So, what's this project about? It's a coloring book with diverse hand-drawn vintage sceneries. 

I know, it sounds like a quick and easy project. You could build a house, plant a tree and raise a kid during this time. But hey, I might have put some significant effort into these drawings (have I mentioned that my spare time was very limited?). And if I only knew... making the drawings was just the beginning! 

Another time-consuming task was finding a proper printing house which would be able to print "Vintage Sceneries" according to my highly non-standard requirements. The crucial aspect was thick, high quality paper which would work for watercolors, felt pens and crayons. For some reason, only a few printing houses are able to do that! I hate to be fussy, but a lot of different paper types were tested in order to find the right one. 

Not-so-crucial, but still important issues were perforations enabling removing sheets, aesthetic binding and a cherry on a top - gold and shiny frame on a cover. 

Then I had to do some math in order to determine the campaign rewards. And check it... twice.

And finally, preparing the campaign itself. Only time will tell whether I did it correctly... 

The campaign will last for 30 days. 

Rewards will consist of pdf versions, printed books, printed books with one page colored by my humble person and original ink drawings.  

Below there is a sneak-peak of "Vintage Sceneries":

I don't want to reveal too much at the moment, but there are Victorian houses, gothic graves, mysterious forest huts, medieval fantasy buildings and even a ghost sheep.

Wish me luck! I hope that you'll check out the campaign sometime :) 

If it sounds interesting, check the campaign yourself :)

TOP 3 illustrations (dark and fantastical)

I have some serious doubts whether people still bother reading something as old-school as blog posts. However, I prepared a new post, just a short one. 

Not so long ago I made 24 illustrations for an upcoming fantasy card game (yay!). Nevertheless, currently I can show only 3 of them (not-so-yay). 

After long deliberations  the TOP 3 was finally chosen! Ladies and gentlemen, please let me announce: 

#3 “Infiltrate”  

Simply because most of my illustrations present only buildings. And this one looks quite mysterious (I hope).

#2 “Tsunami”  

 A combination of classic “grimdream” medieval architecture and dramatic/time-consuming waves. 

#1 “Lord of the Void” 

Because dark surrealism is my favorite genre... is there such genre as “dark surrealism”? Anyway, the color combination is nice.

Mysterious Temple

Ha! I bet that you totally forgot about my blog… I apparently did. A year and a half of silence would suggest that anyways.

The illustration below was actually made over one and a half year ago, which could confirm that I haven’t drawn anything since a looong time. But that’s not true, I swear. I’ve been just extremely busy with projects I cannot share with you… yet.

I’ll be brief (just as a busy person like myself should be).

In the beginning, I made a few concept sketches. Not real pieces of art, I know. But don’t lose hope:

Outlines drawn in pencil:

Some details in waterproof ink:

The whole building and the foreground were masked with masking fluid to protect these areas from being painted over with very liquid paint (“wet on wet” technique). Mountains were salted to achieve these textures:

Working on the sky with watercolor paint mixed with gum arabic. Previously masked areas were painted slowly and carefully:

Hmmm… looks almost like the previous step. Maybe I just wasted my time, but I actually added some extra precise shadows and highlights with ink and dense white watercolor paint:

Concept Designs - Tabletop Miniatures

"I don't dislike to be alone"

Ingmar Bergman

What would you do, if you had plenty of spare time and wouldn’t have to worry too much about economic issues? Well, most of the people would like to travel the world and spend time with their friends (which is not such a bad idea), but I would love to create my own, miniature cities and other fantasy sceneries like those from tabletop RPG games. Okay, maybe I would also travel here and there...

True, I don’t have time for creating physical models, painting them and building fantasy lands of them, but lately, I had (again!) an opportunity to work on concept designs for a company producing such 3D models. Their Kickstarter campaign has just ended and, considering how successful it was, I can guess, that there are quite a lot people interested in spending hours and days on building their miniature worlds and probably even fight battles there. The only difference is, that they actually HAVE time for that 😊

To the point! My task was to design ships, a little bizarre harbor city buildings, and various scenery objects for “lost tribes”. Below you can see, among others, a boathouse, a navigator’s guild, a port tavern, a governor’s mansion, a wizard’s tower, a shaman’s hut and tribal tree houses.

 I hope that all the backers will have fun with these sceneries!

"Magician's Palace" - Designing Imaginary Architecture

Hi there! In snowy and cold winter days like these, there’s nothing better than warm tea near the burning fireplace. As I don’t have a burning fireplace (or any other fireplace for that matter), warm tea near the computer has to suffice.

So! Here is the last of the four “case studies” but just one of the whole mass of drawings made for a course in designing imaginaryarchitecture. The concept process behind this design has been described in the course and below you can see the drawing process. This illustration is called “The Magician’s Palace” and the form of the building is strongly influenced by gothic cathedrals.

1.      Well, an expression “concept sketch” may be too generous, but this tangle of lines really helped me to capture the idea.

2.      Just a few fine, accurate lines, which will determine the size of the building on a large piece of paper.

3.      Sketches of details, which I wanted to capture as soon as possible before I forget them (I avoid using reference photos while drawing architectural objects).

Repeating the previous step in ink with “copying” repeatable elements. I’ve been using here the same waterproof Faber-Castell pens, size S. Actually, if I could find size XS, it would be even better.

4.      Further delving into details… and a moment of doubt. It’s going to take a looooong time before…

5.      …finish!

Well, it’s not the real finish yet. Below you can take a look at a short video, where I’ve been painting it with watercolors in sepia tones.

Keep warm!