Steampunk Playing Cards part 1.

 “Once you’ve accepted your flaws, no one can use them against you.”

George R. R. Martin, "A Game of Thrones"

For some strange and unexplained reason I'm working mostly on graphic designs and environment/architectural designs, which means that I'm using only pens/pencils and graphic tablet on daily basis.
As the time went by I began to suspect, that I'm going to forget how to make watercolor illustrations until one day...
a proposal from one of the leading Polish card manufacturer ("Trefl") came.
The offer concerned making set of cards in a Steampunk style. Handmade, watercolor technique, victorian aesthetics, steampunk subjects - PERFECT!
Some of my previously done artworks were also welcome to be part of the deck (ie "Train", "Steampunk Landscape").


Working process started with thinking (what a surprise!).

CONCLUSION 1 - Jokers could be presented as goblins, Aces as buildings, Kings could be portrayed as bearded guys, Queens as cute ladies (congrats Evi, how unusual) and Jacks could be robots. After discussion with the client  we decided to put vehicles on cards with numbers.

CONCLUSION 2 - each color could be designed as a different...how to put it right... subculture?
hearts would be members of the "upper classes" , clubs should be inventors/researchers fascinated with steampunk technical achievements, spades could be pirates or sea travelers and diamonds could be a charming mix of goths and dandies with a touch of decadence.

That's just a little sample of what you can expect to see in the deck. Next posts will reveal more :)

Miniature Buildings - p.III

Here is the third part from the serie about architectural designs for tabletop games (see also partI and partII). Now it's time for ruins and steamunk buildings.

The little pile of paper below doesn't look impressive, I know... But these are 125 pages of plans, cross sections, elevations and perspective sketches making up designs of 27 objects, which can be parts of a miniature world. 

If you're curious about how "Winterdale" looks like in reality (ie. after 3D printing), you can visit Printable Scenery website http://www.printablescenery.com/.

In the next post (about something completely different) I'll try to be more wordy, I promise :)

Winterdale - miniature buildings p.II

Time for continuation of one of my previous posts and presenting new designs of tabletop miniature buildings. A fantasy land "Winterdale" is expanding more and more!

It's really nice to know, that my buildings are "real" somehow. Well, they can be touched, they form an environment... for a group of miniature figures. Sounds awesome to me :) 

Here are few sketches of miniature buildings in medieval style (a merchant's house, a cemetery chapel and some parts of a castle):

If you're curious about how "Winterdale" looks like in reality (ie. after 3D printing), you can visit Printable Scenery website .

"History Lesson in Pictures"

"There are no innocent. There are, however, different degrees of responsibility."

Stieg Larsson, "The Girl Who Played With Fire"

At the end of the last year I got a quite noble task, namely preparing a series of illustrations related with the Baptism of Poland (2016 is the 1050th anniversary of this event). The National Centre for Culture (NCK) gave me a great deal of freedom regarding technique and subjects, with only one stipulation: "no controversial themes". When the condition "no controversial themes" was repeated for the third time during the preliminary talks, I began to ponder about what so controversial could appear there... but haven't come up with anything brilliant.

Anyway, here are some of these works. Ready for a short history lesson? Here we go!

"Unification of Tribes" - one of the main consequences of Christening of Poland was unifying few tribes and creating one land with one sovereign.

"Old Beliefs" - that's the sad one actually. Statues of ancient gods were being destroyed on a massive scale and most Slavic beliefs gone irrecoverably, as they weren't written down.

"Writing" -  Writing came to Poland along with Christian monks. Finally!

"Architecture and Art" - here on the example of St. Mary's Basilica in Kraków.