A fleeting inspiration

I have always been curious about D&D, I’m sure my aunt Lois planted the seeds early on, but I remember distinctly a time at high school, at Notre Dame, I would see a group of boys, off in one of the lobby areas, beneath a statue of some saint, let’s say it was Saint Francis?… rolling dice and looking at maps. I wanted at that moment to turn around and see what was going on, but I didn’t, and that was the end of it.

Fast forward 37 years and I make friends with a fellow designer / dad at a famously exuberant home Christmas bash, we indulged in Makers Mark and traded stories, eventually it came up through the night that he plays D&D. Having shown my interest, I was eventually invited to play with them. since then we have become all very good friends and still play to this day.

I’m going to keep this short because I’m super tired from a day of skiing. We played many campaign, long and short but one campaign stood out in its vivid nature, It was called Skulk and it may have been a home brew (I can follow up on that) but it included a cast of characters, some involving tech. The DM on this campaign is a fan of art and wanted something from me, so I thought it was only natural to paint a portrait of the cast of characters from the Skulk campaign. The sketch came way too easy, it just flowed out of me and into my Procreate on my iPad.

As you can see from the Procreate sketch, as in most of my work, I consider the golden ratio with everything I do. From there I simply projected it on a canvas, with the intension of making it full color as I usually do (I love color).

I eventually decided to make it black and white, it just felt natural, again, something was leading me. There has never been a time where a painting came so effortlessly, maybe it was because we “lived” the adventure (is that too nerdy?)

After creating this, I felt like I had a eureka moment, I love this, I cant wait to do more. 4 years later, not a single stroke of this Picasso inspired style, maybe this year?