Images | Wannabeartist

Utopian Rummy = Plato 3000

Haiko uploaded three of the 13 illustrated cards to boardgamegeek and they got approved over night. The game has been published already under the name “Utopian Rummy”. I illustrated a revision of the game, new design and changes to the rules. This new version will be published as “Plato 3000″. As soon as there’s a standalone page for Plato 3000 I’ll add the link.

Card design by Haiko Günther, all illustration by me.
Utopian Rummy|Farmer @ BoardGameGeek
Utopian Rummy|Fisherman @ BoardGameGeek
Utopian Rummy|Philosopher @ BoardGameGeek

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A greeting from winter

That’s sort of how it feels like if i go out these days. Knocked out cold by fierce temperatures.

Daily Sketch #4

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the “must include” ingredient for every balanced diet

I’m looking forward to making a thought-through illustration out of this.

Daily Sketch #3

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Styler

Daily Sketchpost #2

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Love yourself. It’s a pleasure for all of us.

Decided that i will do one not-work related sketch every morning as a warmup. This is todays.

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Blueberry Muffin

Eine Kleinigkeit die ich Anfang des Monats für Anne gemacht habe im Austausch für ihre Hilfe an einer Visitenkarte.

A little something i did for Anne earlier this month in exchange for some help with a business card.

Something deadly happened

There isn’t much to this image. I painted it a few weeks ago. Another take on giving story hints in illustration work.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from Steven Bagatzky

I wish you all a merry christmas and a great festive season. I hope to be able to share some insights on what’s going to happen in 2012 when we come closer to New Years Eve. Its going to be an interesting year!

Don’t forget that Daniels Wormworld-Saga will continue on Dec. 25th. That’s one big Christmas present for us all: The Wormworldsaga

Playful magazine type of illustration

I did the following images yesterday and today as a sort of experiment. I’ve been a fan of Bernie Fuchs, Coby Whitmore, Jon Whitcomb and the magazine illustrators from the 60s since i first saw images from them (which sadly is not so long ago).
I also took inspiration from Charles Vess whose artbook i bought last week in a local comicshop and who seems to be an admirer of Aubrey Beardsleys work as myself.
And than there’s a little bit of Tadahiro Uesugi in there as well… along with all the other artists i favor.

I wanted to see how the above mentioned illustrators (not so much Aubrey in here) might leave a mark on my way of painting.

Personally i like the pool murder image the best. Nowhere to run – which was the first – shows too much lineart and too little painting, and by that looks more influenced by Tommy Lee Edwards stuff (which might be due to the fact, that i read his comic “Turf” on the weekend).
The easy life on the other hand went to far in terms of realism on the car, the buildings and the overall colorscheme.
I’ll conduct more experiments in that direction, since it is one sort of illustration that i have been eager to learn and do more since some time. Maybe i even get an author to provide me with a nice little short story, so that i don’t have to make up crappy titles any more!

And a little b/w-sketch which has nothing to do with the above posted experiments, other than that i used the same brush for the lineart that i used for most parts of the paintings.

Das Magazin – Dezember Ausgabe – Cover Sketches

Letzte Woche schrieb mich dasMagazin an ob ich einverstanden wäre, wenn sie eine meiner Illustrationen für ihre Dezember Ausgabe nutzen würden. Natürlich war ich einverstanden, allerdings ist die Illustration schon ein paar Jahre alt und ich wollte zumindest noch etwas neues vorschlagen. Also hab ich Sonntag abend noch schnell ein paar Skizzen gemacht, die aber leider nicht genommen wurden. Naja kann man nix machen.
So oder so wird eine Illu von mir die Dezemberausgabe schmücken. Bin gespannt.

Engl:
Last week the german magazine dasMagazin contacted me and asked if i would allow them to use an illustration from me for their december issue. Of course i agreed, but since the illustration is a few years old i at least wanted to suggest something new. So i sat down saturday evening and did the following sketches, unfortunately they weren’t approved.
But nonetheless the december issue will feature my illustration on its cover. I’m looking forward to it.

Shortly after that, she died.

She trembled for a moment. Was it supposed to be this troublesome? Nobody had warned her about all this. She got worried. “If this was to be expected, they surely would have told me”, she thought. “This can’t be right. This is so odd.”
But trembling is not falling, and so with little doubts she continued with small but steady steps to climb up her way. Her destination in an arms length reach. Or so she thought.

pleasurous training

Does the word “pleasurous” even exist? It should. sounds pretty good ^^

not the only thing i drew yesterday evening after work. but the rest will follow at a later date because so far, it’s a 24panel comic which i will certainly not be able to finish so fast in just 3 hours after work.

Everything is amazing & nobody is happy.

Hunting hounds

More training, somehow i started drawing a hound, failed at it and than stuck with training drawing basset hounds.
F for Free
R for with reference

More baby steps

crawling back up

It has been awefully silent on this blog for the last couple of weeks again. The reason is that after some troublesome times at work i found myself in a state of immobility. I lost all motivation to do anything. Wouldn’t draw or paint and there were only to states of mind: Reaaaally really angry or really depressed.
Thankfully and with the support from Maike i was able to start crawling up again from this pit. I got my equipment back home again, so that i can draw a bit every evening and changed something more major but i can’t speak about that just yet.

I wasn’t confident about sharing those sketches, because they are not “good enough”. But since i always shared the good as well as the bad ones from my sketchbooks, i decided to do it with these sketches as well.
I still feel mentally handicaped, but looking at this sheet i’m starting to get my confidence back that i will make progress. Hopefully fast

Come on, lets catch some fireflies.

At some point when you’re good at doing something, it doesn’t matter if you like doing it. It is expected of you that you continue doing so, because you are just so damn good at it.

1000px sized version
It took me about 14h to complete, from white canvas to this.

This time the reference map consisted of images from Arthur Hacker, Fausto Olivares, Frederik Marinus Kruseman and Mother Nature

You are restrained! – So I’ve been told ever since i married.

-You look bad, Herald, she said.
Beauty was never a requirement he answered, not when i was made king nor when i was made slave.
-What a shame.
Did you come here to mock me or to set me free, witch?
- Can’t i do both?

Beauty in a beast

Another mindless Speedpainting

The long lost trumpet

Wie gestern bereits gesagt, habe ich auch für dieses Bild Sargents Chess Game als Referenz benutzt, aber nicht nur das. Hier meine für das Bild angelegte Referenzpinnwand. Neben Sargent finden sich darauf auch mehrere Werke von Peder Mork Monsted, John William Waterhouse und Ruan Jia.
Die beiden Fotografien von asiatischen Frauen sind aus der Google-Bilder Suche entnommen, leider ohne Urheberangaben.
Ach ja und rechts bin ich.

A summer well spent

I am referencing John Singer Sargents Chess Game a lot lately, it’s interesting to see how different the results turn out to be. You’ll probably wouldn’t have thought that the Chess Game was a colour ref for this image, but in the one you’ll get to see tomorrow it will be more obvious I think.

I am officialy on vacation right now and originally planned to spent my time wisely on something more valueable, but because there’s a lot of stuff going through my mind right now the pictures i do produce while on vacation turn out to be … more of a occupational therapy, unfortunately.

Skizzenfestival Stralsund 2011 – 5

Skizzenfestival Stralsund 2011 – 4

Skizzenfestival Stralsund 2011 – 3

Skizzenfestival Stralsund 2011 – 2

Skizzenfestival Stralsund 2011 – 1

Invaders must die

do i look alright and i say darlin’ you look wonderful tonight

Fight night

A quick study after reading an article on the VFX-decisions made on Spartacus: Blood and Sand.

Characterpainting demonstration

Most of today i tried to find a software for recording longer photoshop activities. This was a very frustating thing to do, because most of the software i tried worked for a few minutes, but crashed while saving the 1h file, crashed somewhere inbetween, saved a corrupted file, … . I drew a lot of stuff, but none of it was recorded until i tried Snag It. That actually worked.
Unfortunately after a long day of frustrating trials, the painting that was finally recorded wasn’t really that interesting.
I am currently trying out Format Factory for best size/resolution results.
And searching for the “Show Brushes instead of Crosshair”-Option in Snag It.

Next up is finding a sound recording software so that i can put sound on top of these sort of videos. Than actually combining something and then the actual work starts. Recording painting demos, showing possible workflows and so on.

Small resolution video with original speed (i will exchange this as soon as i figured out where speed option is). No Sound for this as it was just meant to be a screen recording software test.