Boudica’s Gambit: A Debriefing

If you’re an artist and want to understand my process before AI replaces us all and makes this redundant- then this post may be of interest to you. Everyone is welcome of course, but frankly, this is mainly here for my own benefit. You’d be surprised how much you forget once a project is completed!

I started this picture with the notion that it would be cartoonier than my other work, and therefore simpler. I’d pay homage to those “Manga-looking” JRPG games I loved as a teen and try to capture that style. There might be an element of that in final result, but ultimately it’s my usual obsessive approach that won out.

Perhaps because I thought it would be simpler, and because I was excited to just get stuck in- I launched into the picture with a pretty underdeveloped thumbnail sketch. I was confident I could work it all out as I went. That’s the beauty of personal work after all!

After choosing my loose compositional idea I began to explore ideas for the individual characters.

A backstory to the world began to develop- an idea that included cold war Berlin- a city divided by opposing powers, but this time being a Celtic inspired city occupied by a more advanced magi-tech Roman empire.

When I started this picture I wasn’t totally comfortable with my ability to pull off a big complex city scene and wanted to really challenge myself to produce something ambitious. I also wanted to incorporate some Celtic elements into the design, and spent some time gathering references of Crannogs stone circles and hill forts.

This picture progressed over the course of two-and-a-bit years, and was juggled between Photoshop, Krita and Procreate, PC and iPad. I started thinking about this in late 2019, and finally wrapped it up in mid December this year (2022). As I worked on it I saved out the latest iteration to record the progress. Later in the process I started setting each new image as my desktop background as motivation to keep the image progressing. I ended up with 47 iterations:

The progress video

A few key take-aways for me from this project:

  • Keep your perspective grid on a layer inside the file itself, so when you pass the file from program to program it stays there.
  • Make notes or a reference model to keep track of the light sources. You forget what they are after a while.
  • Krita tops photoshop for painting. Photoshop makes everything harder than it needs to be with it’s archaic brush engine.
  • The start and end of a painting is super fun. You’ve just got to push over that middle hump!

Digital Sketchbook- April 2021

Every so often I like to upload the best sketches and drawings I’ve accumulated over the last few months. Here’s the latest:

A skater cat circa 2007.
There’s a story behind this one. Perhaps I’ll make something of it one day. Jennifer the reluctant apprentice wizard and Faisal her silver-starred mentor live by the lakeside in the idyllic rural village of Pensy-Clockham. There’s a whole thing growing in my head but it’s all a bit formless so far.
I like drawing wizards. They’re easy and the hats are satisfying.
Walk like an Egyptian priestess.
Fat Lord Hermann
Morty the narcissistic necromancer. 
He spends all his time hanging around with skeletons and consequently feels very insecure about this weight. On the other hand- he feels great about his hair!
A steampunk engineer
Flamingo Knight.
An often overlooked area of military history. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to see a horde of these guys charging at you- all sharp steel, honking and plumage! Of the course the real danger is falling off. It’s quite...
A noble flamingo knight
Owlbears!
Deadly owlbears. Hunters of the night. In the dark eucalyptus groves of the world they still clamber, their terrible cries echoing “Twit- tawaaarrrgh!” Their powerful beaks can crush bone and sinew like a sausage roll. often an unsuspecting...
Deadly Owlbears
Polar Shaman.
From the digital sketchbook, 2020
Polar Shaman and his best bear buddy

I also upload these things on my tumblr and instagram accounts, so go follow me on there to see them as soon as they’re uploaded:

https://www.instagram.com/spikedmcgrath/

https://spikedmcgrath.tumblr.com/

…Incidentally is anyone else still using tumblr?

Digital Sketchbook : August 2019

How time flies. Today the rain pours down and a cool breeze seems heavily to imply that summer is over- which is shame because I like that bit. Here’s a few assorted sketches from the past few months. Never as many as I’d like!

Sketchbook June- August 2015

Here’s just a few selected drawings from my sketchbooks from the past few months

E01

Fantasy creatures for Capstone books:E02 E03 More heads. As usual.E04The ongoing practice of figure drawing:
E06

Also with clothes.E05Some Hardware:
E08

Some miscellaneous stuff:
E07I’m making an effort from here on not to overlap my sketches so much- that should make them easier to scan and show in future. Trying to extract a single drawing from them is such a nightmare:

page 01 Page 02

Hm.

See more sketches in the Sketchbook section of my gallery: http://www.spikedmcgrath.com/gallery/sketches-gallery/

Or the sketchbook category of this blog: http://www.spikedmcgrath.com/category/sketchbook/