11 December 2013

Really old-school art

I've been having real trouble with Blogger behaving over the last few weeks which has (along with an absurd workload) utterly quashed any posting. Sorry. To make up for it, and hopefully to get me back on track with regular posting, here are some really old school fantasy illustrations. In this case, when I say old school I don't mean 1984, but seventy years before that. In 1914 there was a book published called "Modern book illustrators and their work" which has two hundred and twenty images with widely varying styles and subject matter. You can leaf through it yourself digitally, here, at Cornell University Library's Internet Archive.

There is plenty of inspiring stuff in there, but the illustrator that stood out for me on a first scan through was Beatrice Elvery, an Irish artist who mostly worked in stained glass. I think you can see an echo of the lead that separates the coloured glass in the heavy lines that she uses for outlines, which gives it an almost woodcut feel. I can't help but immediately be filled with anticipation for what slice of celtic-Arthuriana will befall the characters immediately after this frozen, captured moment.

tl;dr - look at the pretty pictures:


OSR bestiary illustration, anyone?


As for my creative output? A bit more work on tweaking GoblinQuest v1.1 and a spot of painting for my little tzeentch-themed warband for (hopefully) some festive gaming. The beastman models I've chosen are quite varied: a Bob Olley ram-head sculpt from 1989/90, an old AD&D bugbear (I think produced by Citadel under license), an early Citadel boar-headed figure with beetle-like armour, a Grenadier orc which has hairy arms and legs, a pre-slotta Citadel half orc which looks fairly beastly to me and an unidentified were-boar which I shall probably arm with a plastic sword from a Mantic sprue I have kicking around.

Happy geeking,
Rab