Imperial Heroine

Some new artwork at last... but first, a big THANK YOU for all the messages of support and encouragement I've received after my last post. You peeps are awesome!

The Imperial Heroine was my offering for the recent MyFX Challenge #344: Booty-full.
Participants were asked to (quite literally) stretch the boundaries of female fantasy and sci-fi character stereotypes, i.e. big gals.
Anyone familiar with John Blanche's Inquisitor Sketchbook will be able to recognise my inspiration for the character pretty easily.

And here she is in all her plus-sized glory.

Ordo Illuminatus :: Revisited

A few years ago I discovered an awesome online community that is all about the appreciation and creation of Warhammer and Warhammer 40k inspired art: Ordo Illuminatus

Even though activity was already on the decline when I actively joined the forum in 2009, there were still a great number of talented and enthusiastic individuals about and I tremendously enjoyed being a part of this community. Unfortunately, life has since left the Ordo Illuminatus forum, but it is still up in case anyone wants to head over there to have a look-see.
As the 2009 season of the Ordo Illuminatus Weekly Sketch Group was about to kick off, I jumped in with both feet and got drawing. In fact, I set myself the goal to contribute to every single sketch challenge throughout the year... and I did. More on that at the end of this post.

Earlier this year, as I was looking through my old sketchbooks, I re-discovered all of these sketches. So I decided to revisit some of them for my portfolio and give them some (digital) paint. Here are the first two (I plan to paint more of them at some stage)...

WSG#28: Champions (Champion of Nurgle)

WSG#22: Or(k)nate Armour

Throughout the 2009 season of the Weekly Sketch Group there were a total of 50 challenges, one of which was not an art challenge. Since my contributions are no longer on the forum (re-designed my homepage and needed the space on the server) I decided to compile all 49 of my entries into the single image below.

A New Hero

Another entry for conceptart.org's Character of the Week challenge. This time, the idea was to create a hero that is entirely unsuited to the task... because all the real heroes are away fighting monsters and evil elsewhere.
I went with a young peasant girl for mine, with armour and weapons that are way to big for her. If you can spare a moment, let me know what you think her chances are in the comments section.

And here are some WIPs to show how it all came together.

Wrapping Up 2011

Happy 2012 everyone!

I thought I'd kick off the new year by having a quick look back at 2011 with a few more pieces I never got to post.

MyFX Monthly Challenge December 2011: Character Remix

Red Sonja (of the Warhammer World)

MyFX #258: Camelot

MyFX #253: Tarot Card (The Moon)

MyFX #236: Grumpy Troll

Eowyn and the Nazgul

It's been way too long since the last update, so here's a little something just before the holidays...

This was my entry for the Eowyn and the Nazgul Challenge on ArtOrder.

I was pretty happy with the feedback I've received and I even managed to snag a prize: John Jude Palencar's wonderful art book Origins.