This kind of popped in my head after drawing the other doodle, so I scribbled it out and slapped some colour on it.
Age of Fire Concepts: Troll Sketches
E. E. Knight has some very interesting trolls in his universe and it’s been a fun challenge to capture them on paper. My brain was doing so many cartwheels around the description at first that I missed some crucial details, so my first sketch is pretty off-model. After some discussion with the roomies and going back over the descriptions again, I think the second design is a lot closer.
The plated ridges on it’s back are where it breathes through and the tendril-orb thing is it’s main sensory organ, replacing any eyes, ears, or nostrils. We think it works similar to the sensory orifice of a hagfish. We’re still not sure if the tendril is attached to the belly or the back. We need to rummage through the descriptions again.
My roommates and I are on a big Age of Fire kick and have been sketching a lot of our favourite scenes or trying to figure out the designs of the various critters and characters. Knight does an incredible job of using very minimal descriptions that imply far more and build such amazing mental images.
Also, go read these books! They are fantastic!
Fanart of Age of Fire by E. E. Knight
Drawn at TAG Seattle using sketch pens and prisma markers 10%, 30%, and 70% grays since that’s what I had on me. I sketched with the markers first and added the inks on top.
Haven’t used this technique since ‘08 so I’m a bit rusty and make weird anatomical mistakes, but it felt good doing it again. I need to do it more often :)
A 20 minute doodle done while taking the train. The laptop screen sucked so the colours came out very muddy. I figure it’s a good start though :)
Character sketches from Perdido Street Station by China Mieville.
There’s a description of various folks in a rundown bar: A woman with a mechanical hand that’s dripping oil and spouting steam, a man with a fox snout grafted to his face licking beer from a dish, and a man who had been sentanced to silence by having a seamless square of skin grafted over his mouth, but instead of eating through his nose he tried to cut his mouth back open with a knife. He trembled when he did it though so the cut is uneven and incomplete.
I’m liking this book. I’m getting a lot of intense mental images from the descriptions, so I will probably draw more characters and environments in the future. I want to draw one of the main characters, Lin, especially since most artists just depict her as a human with a scarab for a head, wheras I imagine her more insectish than that.
Halloween Gribblies!
Page of sketches I did back on Halloween. What better day to draw gribblies than a holiday celebrating them?
