OSR Art Friday: Cover of The Dragon #67

This festive scene is from one of six covers that Jack Crane drew for Dragon Magazine. He also did some interior art for the magazine and wrote a short story, "The Legacy of Hortus", which appeared in Issue # 87.

Scott Taylor of Black Gate: Adventures in Fantasy Literature, recently did an illuminating interview with the artist here, from which we took most of the information below. Among other things, Crane stated:

I’ve always been a bit of a non-conformist, as is probably the case with most artists and creative types. And I’ve always rejected the “norm”, meaningless rules, and established styles for almost everything. My style of drawing is … my style of drawing … as is the case with most artists. And when I first started working for Dragon I was unambiguous about insisting that I never create art depicting one human being inflicting death or injury upon another human being … or any other sentient beings. This seems to be a predictable response to having spent four years in the military with one of those years in a war zone. Kim (Mohan) was perfectly comfortable with those parameters.

Fair enough. His pieces stand out from other fantasy offerings of the day partly for their whimsical humor and Art Nouveau-style use of shading and colors. Add another important mark to Old School art: it was diverse.

Luckily, he didn't apply his otherwise laudable philosophy to holiday turkeys.

The other covers, including the iconic Tree-Men in the Dismal Swamp (# 54) and the unforgettable Andragon (# 96) can be seen in the same Black Gate post, among other places.

Since the 1980's he has had a great diversity of non-fantasy art commissions including newspapers, trade, hobby and craft publications as well as three-dimensional legal displays for law firms. Recently he publicly returned to fantasy art, doing some work for Gygax Magazine. Great stuff.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

OSR Art Friday: Editing Batten (a long post with too many pictures at the end)

This post will be annoying to some of you in that you were probably expecting a pretty color picture. Instead you will be getting many black and white pictures.

And the featured artist of the day is not some 1970's luminary but well, me. Or rather, the featured artist is the brilliant John Dickson Batten, but the post is about what I did to him.

And if that doesn't irritate you enough, be warned, I will be doing some bragging (explained below).

The post is about how I edited the illustrations of Batten to better suit their inclusion in my four booklet game, Seven Voyages of Zylarthen. The bragging is not how about how great I am compared to you. I am not great compared to you. I expect that most of you reading this post are more experienced/adept/talented at editing illustrations than I am, and that many of you are familiar with illustrations programs that I haven't even heard of. No. I'm bragging because I did it. I did it. Knowing nothing about editing or graphic design, and being generally uncoordinated and not artistic, I nevertheless figured out (temporarily) how to (arguably) do a passable job at it. That's an accomplishment I want to brag about.

A few months ago I said this about Batten:

Finally, in regards to setting, I should mention the artwork of Zylarthen. There are close to a hundred pieces, all by the same artist--the turn of the century illustrator John Dickson Batten. I said elsewhere that once I had chosen the works of Batten, the art actually began to inform the setting and even the writing. Batten's works appeared in children's fairy-tale books. But appropriately enough they were also from a diversity of sources--English, Celtic, general European, Middle-Eastern and Indian. In my humble view, the art was not merely the best art I could find for free, but was in fact precisely right for what I was trying to do. I couldn't have paid for anything better. To the extent that Zylarthen as a visual or physical product succeeds it does so due to Batten. But equally importantly, to the extent the setting and tone are interesting or attractive is also I think due to Batten. Indeed, he deserves an entire post, and will get one soon.

In the review of Zylarthen on the Save or Die! podcast. DM Liz paid the product one of its finest compliments do date (I think). To paraphrase, despite the fact that the art was public domain from approximately a hundred years ago, each piece still seemed appropriate to the subject or the page. It enhanced the work rather than looking just tacked on to fill up space. (Then her husband emphasized the point by making a joke: "hey what's that 57' Chevy doing there?")

I think it worked for three reasons:

1. The art itself. Now, Batten didn't draw illustrations for dungeon expeditions, obviously. But the exotic, fairytale vibe was exactly right for what I was trying to do.
2. Having drawn hundreds of illustrations for nine books, there were enough of them so that I could make informed choices as to appropriate pieces to use.
3. I edited most of the illustrations. Obviously many of them worked on their own without any (or hardly any) touch ups. But I think if I hadn't edited the rest, they would have looked forced or slightly inappropriate. The editing was a crucial part of the process.

And some of the editing was for tone. Many of Batten's fairytale drawings were comical. I didn't want a severe tone, but I didn't wan't it silly either.

So part of this is bragging (see above). Again, not I'm so great, but, rather I did it. Most of it was just whiting stuff out, which is easy and actually almost cathartic.

I used the free program Gimp. I only learned 5% of it, but it was all I needed.

In a handful of cases I actually pasted a few images. In two instances, I actually drew small bits of my own. Once I actually sketched a foot.

But the main message is, it wasn't hard. If I could do it, you can. I suspect many of you could almost do it with your eyes closed.

So enough of these boring words. The rest of the post will feature a long line of actual examples. I think this sort of thing is interesting, but you are pardoned if you think it goes on for too long.

Before precedes After:

To me, the odd hand angle was reminiscent of the Judges Guild "Flying Turkey".

The Ducks were silly.

The original was too busy.

This was one of the only cases where I pasted something in (I duplicated the dagger). I don't know. I thought a second dagger might be more effective in combat than a mask.

Better just a corpse than a corpse with a silly man standing over him.

I love this monster. I think it's a Solian.

This was ironic in that I took a fantastical drawing and made it more mundane. The Boar went from two heads to one.

From silly to (hopefully) sinister.

The original was too well-known to leave as is.

Pure greed.

Dungeons don't have beds. Okay, maybe they don't have curtains either, but still...

The original was fine but the bird didn't fit.

This was my second choice for the magic cover. The first was a great drawing, but it just didn't seem to work on its own. I think this one works. I liked the contrast in that it was the only cover not featuring a person.

Away with that little man!

I'm not sure this totally works but people seem to like it.

These bottles were lifted from various places.

Okay, I'm proud of these drums (look on the top). Also, note that I removed the lute from the otherwise identical picture on the back cover of Volume 4 (see the blog heading picture). It just seemed too much. But that's probably just me.

I'm sort of proud of this. I edited out the arm and of course re-angled it. But the design in the center is obviously kind of screwed-up, especially if you look at it closely. I banked on readers not looking at it closely, mentally processing it as "oh, a rug", and then quickly moving on.  

Too many angels, or bird women or whatever.

I like this sullen creature.

Again, the original was too busy...

So there it is. Part of the method to my madness. Perhaps exposing the method was too much--oh dear, the magic is gone! But I figure we're all adults here and are enough interested in the craft of game design such that the above might be entertaining and useful.

It's not perfect. I know that. But we tried. This is part of how we tried...

OSR Art Friday: Cover of The Dragon #37

The piece is by Darlene Pekul and appeared in the May 1980 issue.

I am fond of it partly because it graced the cover of one of the first issues of The Dragon that I purchased, and thus it helped to define the look of the game for me. Its pastel colors and serenity provided a neat contrast with the usual fare.

Oddly, I never noticed the skulls until now.

Pekul (who legally changed her name to the one-word and capitalized 'DARLENE' in 1984) was one of the most prolific of the early TSR artists. Indeed, that same issue of The Dragon seemed to feature her work on almost every page, from city and wilderness illustrations—'From the City of Brass to Dead Orc Pass'—to calligraphy and background design—Out on a Limb, Leomund's Tiny Hut—to the comic strip, Jasmine, which would run for twelve issues.

She also was responsible for the 'fat unicorn' on the title page of the Dungeon Master's Guide, the cover and interior art for a number of TSR adventure modules and perhaps most famously, the full-color map of the Flanaess for the 1980 World of Greyhawk release.

The neat illustration below (also in the DMG), probably contributed to good old-fashioned mutual suspicion among players as much as any other single thing:

Curiously, Image Googling 'Darlene Pekul' or even 'Darlene Pekul The Dragon' or 'Darlene Pekul Dragon Magazine' does not yield this OSR Art Friday's featured piece. Doing a reverse search seems to imply that it has rarely, if ever, been previously discussed or featured. I hope this post, in its small way, helps to redress that.

OSR Art Friday: Cover of The Fane of Poisoned Prophecies

The above piece was created by Pete Mullen for the Chaotic Henchmen Productions module The Fane of Poisoned Prophecies, authored in 2009 by Guy Fullerton.

This blog post is about the work of Pete Mullen.

There are many talented artists associated with the current OSR movement. But Mullen is at the head of the pack. If anyone deserves the title of The OSR artist, he does.

Part of this is due to the variety and diversity of products he has done illustrations for. A partial list would include Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Swords & Wizardry (he provided the cover illustrations for both the WhiteBox and Core editions) and Dungeon Crawl Classics as well as various smaller games and companies such as Ruins & Ronin and of course Chaotic Henchmen.

But more importantly the tone and quality of his work practically screams OD&D*. Many of his illustrations center around an adventuring party doing what adventuring parties do--fighting of course, as in the above—but just as interestingly and evocatively, exploring, pausing, thinking (which way to go now?), plundering (after a battle) and so on. The text below will be interspersed with a few other works out of a great many that I could just as easily have featured tonight. My only bias in choosing them is that I tried to pick pieces that were perhaps not quite as well-known as his more famous covers.

  
A few years ago Mullen gave an interview to Stuart Robertson on his blog Strange Magic. I want to excerpt one of his answers here:

I think there are several key differences between these two generations of fantasy art (Old School versus standard contemporary]. In terms of subject matter, the fantasy art in the seventies and eighties had their fair share of super heroes and strange monsters but their work encouraged the viewer to use their imagination and ask the question of "What the heck is going on here?" To me, the fantasy art in this day's market has more of an instant gratification element to it. When I look at it, I say, "Cool!" But then I'm left with, "Now what?" I find that I don't pursue the, "What the heck is going on here?" questions beyond that initial "Cool!" When producing my art work, I try to get the viewer to ask the "What the heck is going on here?" questions.

The piece I featured above would seem to almost buck this. We know what's going on, don't we? The party is fighting a group of Giant Scorpions. Three party members are engaged in melee while the fourth—pretty clearly the Magic-User—is casting some sort of probably offensive spell. But even here in this more 'obvious' scene, the viewer finds himself asking questions which serve to more thoroughly engage him in the painting: What is the spell? It appears to involve some sort of bright globe. Is it a Light spell? Why would the Magic-User want to cast that? And the way those columns are spaced and drawn is sort of...stressful. Are there other Scorpions about to scuttle around from behind? Did the party attack them in their lair or are they being set upon by surprise? The piece is exciting not because everyone is flying through the air like Chinese martial-artists (as in a typical 4e illustration) but because we really don't know what's going to happen next.

And I think the center of it is the Magic-User's raised arms. I chose this illustration partly because out of all the Old School or OSR works that I have seen (a lot) this is the most evocative rendering of a spell cast in melee that I have ever come across.

Here is another non-combat painting titled The Dungeoneers (I don't know which product, if any, it is attached to):

Now, in previous posts I have disparaged the 'cartoony' aspect of contemporary 'New School' art. But it's clear that Mullen's work is cartoony in its way. We know that people or dungeon adventurers don't actually look like this. The representations are abstract or exaggerated in a certain sense. So what gives? I'm not an experienced or schooled art critic (obviously) so call me out if I make some howlers here. But to me the difference is that, say, 4e art looks video-gamey because it's almost saying, this is what your fantasy world looks like. Since (by assumption) you think video games are cool, we're going along with that by portraying your fantasy world as a video game. Isn't that cool? Or, see, we're cool too, or whatever. But Mullen is not treating us like we are babies or passive consumers. The shoulders on his Magic-Users are not pointy or angular because we think that's how they actually are, but to stress the point that they're thoughtful, logical Magic-Users. That's what grown-up art—art made for grown ups—does (or at least often does).

Great stuff.

Mullen has sometimes been portrayed as a sort of Erol Otus wannabe. This is a slur. Not because there's anything wrong with Otis. He's also brilliant, of course. But I think Mullen is up to something a bit different...and unique.

I don't know what he is doing now. I assume he is still available to provide illustrations for OSR games and modules. I certainly hope he is. His site—containing the above and many other neat illustrations—is here.

At the risk of sounding too much the OSR artist groupie (though I am one)...

Thank you.

* I owe the precisely appropriate 'screams' designation to a Google+ comment by Theodore Kabisios, referring to last Friday's OSR Art offering.

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Those of you that who haven't voted on the Zylarthen name shortening thing (wait, I just prejudiced the vote there) have until 11:37 PM Pacific Standard time to get your vote in on the comments section of this post. Again, you might win hardcopies of Seven Voyages of Zylarthen, Swords & Wizardry WhiteBox, Stonehell Dungeon or Anomalous Subsurface Enviroment—all pinnacles of OSR genius and creativity (well, three out of four them, at least).

By the way, there's a rumor going around (started by my own ambiguous wording more than anything else) that I want to rename my game. But it's only a question of finding an appropriate shortening of it. You guys know that right?

Seven Voyages of Zylarthen will always be Seven Voyages of Zylarthen. Unless you first pry it from my dead mailed fist...

OSR Art Friday: Omar?

The illustration above appeared on the cover of the first printing of Swords & Wizardry Complete (2010) and was created by Richard Sardinha in the same year. The title, 'Omar?', was, as far as I know, referred to in only one place--the artist's posting of it in his gallery on DeviantArt. (The S&W link takes you to a free version of the second edition with a different cover.)

An interesting and perhaps odd choice for OSR Friday, for at least three reasons:

1. Sardinha is well-known for his work on various 'New School' games and related products including 3rd edition Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer, Magic: The Gathering and others.
2. Some Old Schoolers were a bit negative on the piece (see the blog post and especially the comments here), as it replaced a painting by an OSR stalwart, Pete Mullen, on the previous 'Core' edition of the game and was in turn replaced by a painting by the beloved Errol Otis for the second edition of the 'Complete' rules set.
3. Sardinha admits that the illustration was not painted but photoshopped (presumably not a very Old School method) from an original sketch.

So, why did I choose it?

Because it is associated with an OSR game. And I like it.

This is as good a place as any to spend a moment discussing what I'm up to with this series. The point is not to divide everything into immutable categories of Old School versus everything else, and thus to separate artistic works or artists into the good or approved versus the bad or ideologically-suspect. It's true that I have my aesthetic preferences, or rather--since I've given my opinion on the non-starter of relativism in previous posts--my opinions on aesthetic value. I do think role-playing games have devolved from what they once were (though with a bump in the positive direction from the contemporary OSR movement) and the artistic choices have certainly been a part of that. But it's not all--if you'll pardon the metaphor in a discussion of illustration--black and white. I'll leave that attitude to the other guys--you know, the ones who insist on always looking at things in terms of bad people versus good people. The misogynists, homophobes, Eurocentrists, Frazetta-ites, philatelists, or whomever else they want to focus their Two Minutes Hate against on any particular day of the week versus, well, themselves.

Also, I think it's interesting to consider as great a diversity of good art as possible--both in terms of era and style--especially if it will provoke useful thought or discussion.

Which doesn't of course mean that we can't occasionally have a bit of fun snarking at some of the bad art or the small and petty little orthodoxies that often tend to encourage or support it.

But let's look at the painting:

Who's Omar? He's the guy who was just picked off by the underwater snake, or whatever it is. His body (living? dead?) is entwined in that tentacle. I missed that at first. Just as the party missed it and perhaps will never discover it. Omar went home. You know how he was. He just wanted to return to the surface and bank his copper pieces. Coward.

Speaking of the surface, I thought originally that the illustration depicted an Asian sort of scene--a valley with those beautiful Chinese-like vertical hills. But of course it's a huge underground cavern with perhaps a shaft of light at the top. The artist describes the central city as a 'subterranean goblin ghost town'. I guess the remaining adventurers are about to find out what that means.

The color scheme and overall tone reminds me of some of the drawings for Call of Cthulhu. The guy in the forefront holding a torch almost looks like he's wearing an early 20th century pith helmet. Indeed, we learn that Sardinha has done a number of pieces with that sort of motif. Fittingly, he lives in Providence. Here's his interpretation of a rather thoughtful Great Old One:

Sardinha has diverse talents. He's also a sculptor and puppet maker, as well as having an interest in drawing dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures. His website is fascinating--and intimidating, especially for a non-talented artist groupie like me.

I think the original illustration wonderfully captures the spirit of Swords & Wizardry, which is about as Old School, OSR or just plain cool as you can get.

We'll have more to show and say about Mullin and Otis in later posts...