Game of Thrones – Aegon Targaryen

As I promised last time, here’s my depiction of young Aegon Targaryen for Game of Thrones latest Chapter Pack, The Shadow City, by Fantasy Flight Games.

Now, I was about to write “hey, this is the second time I draw Aegon, the first being this one in the book World of Ice and Fire”.

Luckily I did double check before writing that, and as it turn out I was being wrong.
I mean, wrong all along, even when I was working at this illustration.

First, the Targaryen I drew back then was Aerys the Mad. Of course I knew it at the time, the names just got mixed up in my mind after so long.

That left me with the question “bloody hell, who is this guy I just drew?”

The only Aegon I remembered was the son of Rhaegar and Lyanna Stark, whose head was smashed in by The Mountain when he was just a baby.
That clearly couldn’t be it.

Intrigued, I went as far as looking for a family tree of the Targaryen family.
As pretty as it is, that left me with even more questions, as there’s a whole bunch of Aegons in that family tree, and none of them rang any bell.

I eventually looked up his entry on Wiki of Ice and Fire (yes, I should have done that first thing), and that left me flabbergasted, as I had NO MEMORY WHATSOEVER of all this after reading all the books. Twice.

Once aboard the Shy Maid, Tyrion is introduced to Griff’s son, “Young Griff”, a young man who dyes his hair blue in memory of his late mother, who was from Tyrosh. He is a lithe and well-made youth, with a lanky build already as tall as Griff. Tyrion notes that the boy’s eyes seem to be dark blue, but look black by lamplight, and purple in the light of dusk. He has long eyelashes. […]

[…] After being rescued from the Sorrows, Tyrion admits his suspicion that the youth is claiming to be an incognito Aegon. The young man explains his apparent survival to Tyrion while they play cyvasse. According to his account, the infant killed during the Sack of King’s Landing was a tanner’s infant son born at Pisswater Bend, a street of King’s Landing. The child’s mother had died at birth. The tanner sold his boy to Varys for a jug of wine, since he already had other sons, but had never tasted Arbor gold. Varys arranged the swap between the two infants. Elia received the tanner’s son, whom Tyrion dubs the pisswater prince, while Varys took custody of the real Prince Aegon.

So, moral of the story is that if you have a memory as shitty as mine, the world looks new every time you open your eyes in the morning.

Also, I can save in books by keeping just a dozen at home, and then periodically going “aw, I’ve never read this, cool”.

by Paolo Puggioni

Game of Thrones – Ser Gerris Drinkwater

A couple of days ago I was delivered my contributor’s copy of the Game of Thrones Shadow City chapter pack by Fantasy Flight Games.

As usual, I giggled with delight, both for the free stuff aspect of the thing and, I have to admit, for the good memories that the smell of newly printed cards evokes in nerdy old me.

Anyway, Ser Gerris Drinkwater below is one of the characters I illustrated for Shadow City, here he is.

Again, I didn’t trash the sketch:

As you can see, the coloured version changed a little bit from the sketch, it was flipped, his position changed and so on.
I had no memory of Ser Gerris Drinkwater from the books, so I had to resort to A Wiki of Ice and Fire this time as well.

Gerris is tall and lean and comely, with blue-green eyes and sandy, sun-streaked hair.
He has a swordsman’s grace and a courtier’s wit.
His confidence is often close to arrogance.
Gerris does not speak the Volantene dialect of High Valyrian as well as Quentyn Martell.

Gerris wears an expensive cloak of soft brown wool lined with sandsilk.
Ser Barristan Selmy thinks Gerris is shallow and a worse warrior than Ser Archibald Yronwood.

One thing I’m chuffed about is that Ser Gerris Drinkwater was picked for the bunch of cards displayed in the product page.
Although, I have to say, my favourite illustration of the whole pack is the guy right above and to the left, Scheming Septon by Aleksander Karcz.

Anyway, as always here’s the Shadow City Chapter Pack in all its glory, look how pretty it is. Look at it!

Next week I’ll post the other illustration of the pack, Aegon Targaryen.

by Paolo Puggioni

Spear Fishing Practice

I made this over what feels like a couple of hundred sessions.

I know I’m repeating myself, but I’ve had so many little time as of late, that I haven’t been able to spend a minute even on Freakshow, which has been sitting in my Works In Progress folder for an uncomfortably long time now.

Anyway, bit by bit and at a very leisurely pace I recently managed to complete the illustration below, which had started a few months ago as thing-for-fun-that-I’ll-do-while-watching-Netflix kind of endeavor.

The idea for this came from a holiday I had in Corsica some years ago.
A friend and I decided to go spear fishing. Nothing fancy, the goal was mostly to look at the wildlife, while occasionally trying to catch something to eat on the barbecue in the evening.
As it turned out, the entire expedition resulted in a bad sunburn and the slight humiliation inflicted upon us by a smart octopus, which just kept evading us by swimming a couple of inches below the maximum range that our skill allowed.

But I digress.

While looking for fish to catch, we came upon the edge of a submerged cliff, which disappeared into what seemed like and endless, bottomless abyss.

Instead of rocks, colourful fishes and all that, there was now just darkness, and surely an entire ecosystem hidden not far below us.
I (we) felt suddenly small and inconsequential, puny beings before something titanic.
As if that was not a place where humans are used or supposed to hang out.

My imagination being what it is, I immediately imagined the big scary face of some kind of hungry leviathan coming to us from the dark depths, with cold expressionless eyes and its mouth a mess of fangs.
My friend and I couldn’t clearly talk to each other, but I’m sure he had the same thought, as we turned around and swam back towards the shore without even a gesture.

Anyway, a while ago this long forgotten memory resurfaced (see what I did?) and I started doing this.
Only, in this version, the human in the picture is there to kick ass.

by Paolo Puggioni

Game of Thrones – Peace and Prosperity

The illustration below belongs to the bunch I made for the Game of Thrones expansion Sands of Dorne, by Fantasy Flight Games.

I actually received the box set quite a while ago, but I got distracted by something shiny and I forgot to brag about it.

Look how pretty it is:

I LOVE everything about the fact that illustrators get to receive an actual physical thing to put on a shelf and look at.
I like the smell of the new cards when you open them, I like too browse the other illustrators’ work, I even like the postman going “something from the States for you”.
You kind of loose that working in video games, with Playstation online store and all that.

Anyway, Sands of Dorne has been sitting on my shelf for a couple of months now, so it’s about time I share the illustrations in it.

The one below is called Peace and Prosperity, and it depicts one of the gates of King’s Landing, during on of those brief hiatus when people weren’t killing each other.

It’s a bit of a bummer that the final version of the card cropped a lot from the original, but hey, it happens.

For the guy in the foreground I took as a reference an old master’s painting, if I remember correctly.
Unfortunately that’s as far as my memory goes, so in lieu of more details about it I can only offer the original sketch.

As part of the feedback, I had to move things around and rearrange various elements, so the coloured version differs from the sketch a little bit.

Interestingly, I wasn’t really sure about what kind of crest the banners at the gate of King’s Landing would display at this point of the story.

This is when Geoffrey was king, and I didn’t know whether the flags of the city would fly the Lannisters’ flags or those of the Baratheons.

The art director was very happy to start a discussion about it, and as it turns out, at that time they would use a hybrid banner with the crests of both houses.
The more you know..

Anyway, more Sands of Dorne illustrations next week.
Oh, as usual, made with Krita.

By Paolo Puggioni

Ser Justin Massey

This is one of the (many) illustration I had the pleasure to make for the Game of Thrones game over the past year or so.

It’s part of The March on Winterfell by Fantasy Flight Games, and although the expansion isn’t out yet, the image is already displayed on the product’s page, so here it is in all its slightly higher res glory.

For those who – like me – don’t remember Ser Justin Massey neither from the tv series or the Game of Thrones books, here’s all I know about him, diligently pasted from his entry on the Wiki of Ice and Fire:

Justin is a large man with pink cheeks, blue eyes, and a mop of white blonde hair pale as flax. The fair knight has a neatly-trimmed blond beard. His tunic displays the triple spiral of House Massey.

Justin, who has a pleasing manner and a ready smile, often tells jokes with a glib tongue.
Stannis Baratheon refers to Justin as “the smiler” and Clayton Suggs considers him a “prancing fool”.

I might have made him slightly fitter than it was supposed to be judging by his description, but the art director was happy about him, so that’s how he officially looks like now.

And since I’m a good boy, I didn’t get rid of the sketch this time.

There are still a couple of illustration that I’ll be allowed to post before these Game of Thrones expansions are released, which I’ll do over the next few days.

by Paolo Puggioni

An Improbable Life III

A few months ago I had the pleasure to illustrate the third book of Improbable Life, the latest volume of Frasar’s memoirs.

The first book was published just in 2016, and as I pointed out back then, it’s a really nice read, as well as the latest one.

Also, I just realized that I forgot to post the cover I made for the second book of the series, so that will come soon.

Anyway, here it is.

Some might notice that this cover has a different tone to the previous ones.
Where the others tried to convey some sort of adventurous moment in the author’s life, together with the sense of wonder that was driving him – this one is definitely darker in mood.

This is because the book itself describes a troubled phase of his story, which led to a more inward-looking narrative.
The cover illustration still depicts an event actually occurred, so it’s not like the book is less eventful, but the tone is undoubtedly changed.

Funnily enough, I worked on this illustration at the same time I was busy on this one, so it was two images where a stormy sea was one of the main elements.

That’s where I found out that I love painting the sea, so I have to say I was particularly happy about these last two works.

Incidentally, my next post would be again about the sea, but I swear it’s not at all intentional and I’m not becoming obsessed.

by Paolo Puggioni

Coinspinner

Late last year I had the pleasure to do some works for Lost Spheres Publishing, and the illustration below, called the Coinspinner, is one of them.

The Coinspinner was made for City of the Seven Seraph, a Pathfinder campaign now fully funded and I believe already available.

I made this right in the middle of my move from the UK back to Italy, on top of all the work that I had left building up due to the move, so I remember this being quite a hectic period.
Nonetheless, I’m quite happy about the result: I found out that I LOVE drawing water.

Incidentally I’m about post another illustration that I made about the same time, with a lot more prominent ocean.

Also, the brief needed the ship to look organic and not too far away from H.R.Giger’s aesthetics, which was a nice plus for me.
Anyway, I’m not sure I’m allowed to publish the other work I made for Lost Spheres Publishing but I’ll double check.

In the meantime I’ll probably post some more artwork with raging oceans, now that I got a taste for it:)

Also, oddly enough I didn’t throw away the sketch for the Coinspinner, so here you go.

by Paolo Puggioni

Traveller – Catch 22

Catch 22 is another piece I made for the Traveller card game.

I have to say, this illustration in particular did take some thinking.
I had to cram more information than I was comfortable with in a relatively small canvas, so it required some planning, especially composition-wise.

The brief was about a guy hiding behind a wall, while another person is talking with a guard, probably giving away his hiding place.

I meant the main character to look somehow in control of the situation, so I drew him much bigger than the other people in the frame, and with his eyes above all else’s, looking down at them.
Also, the perspective of the buildings on the background kind of resemble the main character’s cone of view, to emphasize the fact that he’s aware of the situation.

I NEVER go into this kid of depth when planning for an illustration, as I find that starting with random sketches and adjusting them along the way makes it for better-flowing compositions.
So, well, I’m kind of happy about how this turned up, all the bits seem to be working together with each other despite the forced arrangement.

I also happen to have the sketch handy, for once.

by Paolo Puggioni

Traveller – Bodyguard

This is one of the illustrations I made last year for the Traveller card game.

I had started talking about it a while back, then I got distracted by the whole moving abroad thing (the ordeal of which started right about the date of the entry just linked) and I never got around to posting the rest of the artwork I made for the project.

So here’s another one, quite clearly titled Bodyguard.

Pasting directly from its page on BoardGameGeek:

A card game with trade, exploration and combat in Marc Miller’s classic RPG setting, The Third Imperium.

Our basic mechanics are an icon-driven race game, with ample opportunities to interact with, and even engage in piracy against, other players. All Captains must also contend with a hostile galaxy and the looming threat of insolvency.

Since the shipping of the game is ongoing right now, it looks like my being late is in fact quite well timed.

I’ll post a few more shortly.

by Paolo Puggioni

John Carter of Mars – Red City

Following my last post, Red City is the second illustration I made for Modiphius Entertainment’s John Carter of Mars RPG.

Now, saying that my memory is bad is, in general, a gross understatement.
I’m talking about long term and short term here.
If you add to that the fact that I read John Carter of Mars about 35 years ago, it’s like I actually never read it. I still have blurred memories of white apes and John carter jumping around a lot, but sadly nothing about red cities.

I’m not saying that this is intrinsecally bad. I mean, you wake up and everything is kind of new, yay. And you can play the Witcher 3 for the third time and still find it full of pleasant surprises.

Having a crap memory doesn’t help, however, when it comes to illustrating a five books series you haven’t had the time to finish re-reading yet.
So, all the information I was working on here was from the brief I got for the illustration; if anyone finds some awful inconsistency please let me know, although I’m pretty sure the art directors would have spotted it.

Since drawing a city of this complexity from scratch is pretty time consuming, especially when you make changes to lighting or point of view further down the line, I made a quick 3D model of the layout on Sketchup and then painted over it.

I saved about a dozen views of the whole scene and submitted about half of them.
Of the sketches below, the first one is the one that was picked.

That’s it for John Carter of Mars I think. I have a bunch of concepts sitting in my hard drive but I’m not sure I can post them.

by Paolo Puggioni