We are extremely busy here at the studio with some exciting things for us.

In the meanwhile, here is a random update with some Artwork that where completed a little while ago.

These where all done for the same client as the Maori-Styled Space Marines where done: the Lantern Marines.

Here are some variations for their Chapterlogo-

Some Iconography

And then something completely different-

Pandoran Crabs

http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/showthread.php?t=97951

An Imperial Regiment.

Hopefully we can share a few tidbits every post from now on, but things are under contracts so we will see.

Look out for future installments of ” To be Inspired and Driven by”, as well as some more personal artwork and hopefully a fully fledged tutorial in the not-too-distant future.

Until next time!

David

Reblogged from Aaron Dembski-Bowden:

Oh, man, just when I was thinking I'd have to kill someone with my replica Gears of War Lancer in order to actually have something to  post this week, this bad boy drops into my lap.

Ladies and gentlemen: Talos on the bridge of the Echo of Damnation, circa the beginning of Void Stalker, when he's... ah, 'communing' with Ruven.

Read more… 726 more words

The first book by Aaron Dembski-Bowden I ever read was “First Heretic”.

It was a gust of fresh air. Don’t get me wrong, I like reading any Black Library books that come out because I love the worlds they describe, both the Fantasy and sci-fi genres. The problem for me has been two things really:

1) No patience. Not from me, but from the writers. They go from beginning, rush over descriptions of characters that usually are pretty shallow or just straight archetypes and then rush head-on to the FIGHTING (dum du duum!).

I understand that these are books based upon a strategic war–game. I understand that the people writing these obviously write with that audience in mind, but I just find it such a big shame that the writing has o be that bad. Especially since ADB, in First Heretic, make the characters come out so well (in comparison) in just one chapter, and then build layers n them the rest of the time.

2) The bombasticness. This is especially true with the books describing the Space Marines.

Again, I understand that the need to show off how fanatical the SM’s are, and how proud, stoic, heroic and just abut every other bombastic adjective you can think of, the Space Marines are. I get that, but you do not need to repeat the “Hail the Primarch” with every other sentence to get this across. Your characters do not need to be carbon copies of one-another and they certainly do not need to have every thought about their Brothers be “He was filled with pride of how they where so fantastic in all ways”.
They are killing-machines, psychologically trained to react in certain ways during battle, that doesn’t mean they like one another at all times.

But that mostly went away with First Heretic.

So I got hooked, I picked up another book written by Aaron Dembski-Bowden.

Soul Hunter

And there my standard got set so much higher then before.

After reading Soul Hunter, I wanted to paint the members of First Claw. The characters where very vivid and evolved throughout the book.
But I didn’t feel I could do them justice at the time.
So after that, I rushed to a friends who had the second book in the series, Blood Reaver.
I read it from cover to cover and decided to buy them all three in ebook-form, once the last book was out.

So just after I got the third and last book in the series, Void Stalker, I got contacted by a guy who has commissioned me work in the past. A really nice guy, who asked me to paint Talos.

Talos.

I had a couple of other projects at the same time and so I asked if deadline was important, which he graciously said it was important that I had fun painting it. Because of this, I did the sketch for it, we agreed on it and some extra ideas, and then I put it aside to work on the other jobs I had at the time.

I did this for two reasons- it would have been fantastic to paint it right away, but all the other jobs would have felt a little less after it. And secondly, I wanted to evolve a little. I have had a burst of evolution in my skills lately, something I was aware of happening just around the time when I got the commission and I just new that every illustration I made this summer would be better then the previous. I put in every effort into every piece of illustration I do, I don’t do half-measures. It is bad towards the client, it makes me feel bad and just doesn’t go well. But this summer I knew that the image I needed to be the best at to make it come out as I wanted it was this image.

So here I give you-

Talos, on the bridge of the Echo of Damnation, chained to the commandseat and speaking to the ghost/ephemera of Ruven.
Some things aren’t exactly as in the book (the weaponry where in his quarters when this happened, and he was walking in a dreamlandscape of the bridge, speaking to th corpse rather then the ghost) but it is how me and the commissioner agreed on it.

Here is a close-up of Talos

And here is a filmic-format version

I hope you enjoy!

David

The future has some interesting things happening for the Studio, which we cannot really speak of just yet but what it means is that private commissions will be a little fewer, look out for some more personal paintings in the future and a bit more focus on tutorials and guests then before.

All in all, we sincerely hope that you readers will benefit more from the changes then not.

In the meanwhile, here are three private commissions.

Salamander and Sister

Valrak – Imperial Fist

(Done for Valrak, over at the Vigilia Mortis forums - http://www.battle-brothers.net/home )

Kahuna – Chaplain of the Lantern Marines

The Lantern Marines are always fun to paint and this time I got to paint the Kahuna, the equivalent of a Chaplain, of the Lantern Marines.

Don’t forget to add us on twitter or Facebook (just click the images below)!

 
Until next time!

David

Time for a tiny art-update.

I am currently working on three commissions that are expected to be done within a very short time, but in the meanwhile, here are three images that just got released (and thus I am allowed to show right here) plus a commission that got completed yesterday.

The Fantastic people over at Bolter and Chainsword contacted me quite a while back about doing one or two images for one of their Legio Imprints.

The first Legio Imprint was an alternative setting for Warhammer 40k called “Dornian Heresy” which was a very well thought out book. The one I had the chance to work on was just released a few days ago and is called “Legio Imprint 2: The Eye of Terror” , where I had the oportunity to both get to do the cover and two interior illustrations.

So here are the images I did for this Imprint:

Eye of Terror cover – click to see large

Eye of Terror banner – click to see large

Excorsists Librarian – click to see large

Yesterday I had the benefit of finalizing one of my latest commissions. The commissioner has asked me to only post this image at my webpage and at the deviantArt gallery.

I am sure you will like it though, especially those of you who follow my series of Primarchs, as I got a chance to illustgrate a fairly unrepresented Primarch- Ferrus Manus. 

Ferrus Manus, the 10th Primarch – click to see large

(Though the illustration above has some of my influence in it, it is important that you know that I follow a brief on commissions. If this is not how you envision Ferrus Manus, then I’d be happy to do another version for you if you’d like to commission me.)

Feel free to add your thoughts on Ferrus Manus, or any of the other Primarchs. Or if you have any questions or ideas you’d like to share.

Until next time,

David

Currently, the studio has quite a lot of work t do but if you’d be interested in hiring us for work, feel free to contact us, either through this blog or through our email:  ”‘studio . colrouphobia @ gmail . com” (without the blank-spaces of course).

 
In the meanwhile, lets show some already completed private commissions:

Khullain of the Storm Wardens Space Marines

And Pax, a Black Shield Deathwatch Marine

(clicking on the images will open them in another window at a larger size).

Until next time!

Today there aren’t going to be any pretty pictures in the blogpost, but I hope the text will bring something interesting to you anyway.

In an effort to give back (something I’m sure you have heard before from others) here at Studio Colrouphobia we looked at our past, present and future to see what has been important for us when it comes to art and working as artists.

Pretty fast I personally came to the conclusion that there are two things that have and continue to, play a major role for me when it comes to working with art.

Inspiration and Motivation.

When I was younger, I thrived on visuals. I was into movies, comics and games, just like most others. But what really got me into things, where the visual aspects.

When I imagined things, the more I could visualize things in my mind, the more vivid they would become and therefore they would inspire me to explore that imagination.

My first true introduction to Art, as means to work with, actually came from the Swedish version of D&D. The images and illustrations where probably not the best, but I remember the creatures they depicted very well (and they all look perfect in my head now!) and I also remember thinking:
“Wow, the guys doing this are my dad’s age. Nobody I know my dad’s age would do this unless they got paid for it. They get paid to draw!”

I had always drawn and sketched, just like most others, though I was hardly the one two scribble on walls and scream if no pen or paper was around. I just enjoyed sketching and put enough effort into it for people to notice.

At a certain age I just decided that this, doing Fantasy and Sci-fi art, for a living, was what I wanted to do.

From there on, things become a constant battle between being inspired and getting motivation, drive, to continue. Most people have a really hard time trying to become a freelancer at anything, regardless of what you do. The reasons are many- people not believing in you, lack of money to pursue that sort of career, lack of self-confidence and lack of believing in yourself (and no, those last two are not the same – one mean you do not believe you are good enough and the other that you do not believe you WILL be good enough).

So how do you solve this?
Well for one, you need to have support from your friends and family, something I know doesn’t always happend. I had luck enough to have my -then girlfriend, now- wife that has given me support throughout the past 10-12 years. That’s not always evident.
The other things you need are great sources of inspiration and causes for drive.

I had great sources for inspiration. Before the internet (yes, I’m old) there where things like “Heavy Metal“- with giants like Simon Bisley, Frank
Frazzetta and Jeffrey (Catherine) Jones. There where Roleplaying-games, with covers and interiors just giving my imagination so much to use- I was inspired by Brom, Paul Bonner, Paolo Parente and Wayne England. There where book-covers with fantastically painted images -people like Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell as
well as Luis Royo just made me feel extremely enthousiastic about improving and possibly one day be able to earn my living on art, if I could only get good enough.

Once on the Internet, I got so many more inspirators added to the list.
Traditional artists such as Donato Giancola, Dan Dos Santos and David Kassan blew me away from the moment I either discovered them or found out who those book covers where made by.
Digitalists like Andrew (Android) Jones – for his innovating techniques, Björn Hurri for his fantastic dedication and commitment, J.P. Targete for his traditionals-looking digitals, Melanie Delon for her fantastic characters, Noah Bradley for his fantastic environments, Brad Rigney for his general excellence and so many more…

They all inspired me and gave me a drive to continue, to try to become good enough to work as an llustrator for a living. I’m sure most of you have sources for inspiration and motivation. I would love to hear who they are, perhaps we share them, or I haven’t heard of them or seen their work. I am still looking for more inspirational and motivational artists to add to my list to keep me driven to learn and improve.

Well, back in the days, I had to really look for these sources of inspiration and talking here at the studio we agreed that we should try and give back some of that inspiration.

To do that, I have asked some of my art-heroes and sources for inspiration and drive to write one-time blogposts, right here on studiocolrouphobia.net.

A lot of them are busy with their work, but some have answered an will write to give you guys some inspiration. I do not know what they will write, as I didn’t want to restrict them, but the general theme for these will be ”To be inspired and driven”, and every blog-post made by a guest-blogger will be on the topic of Art.

We here at Studio Colrouphobia will post these as they come in. There is no a perfect schedule for when they will come in, but we will never post more then one a day, so if you have seen a guest-blogger post here, chanses are you wont see another update on that day.

We hope you will enjoy this little treat.

Did you know that you can follow us on Twitter and Facebook? Just click on the icons below to get to the right spot!

Until Next time!

Khullain, cropped WiP of a full figure illustration of a Storm Warden.

Cropped WiP of a full illustration, Lantern Marines Chaptermaster (Yes, he is supposed to have some features of Ozzy, there might even be glasses, hence the unfinnished eye-region).

CroppedWIP of a Black Shield Deathwatch Marine.

Until Next Time.

Here are two images to let you look at something whilst I prepare for a larger-ish post later this week.

Wip for a personal illustration that is currently on hold.

a Study for something….completely different.
Anyway, it is pencil on paper. And it is not World of Warcraft.

Until next post!

David

Its time again to show some things from our studio that has come out of Non Disclosure Agreement and is free to display at our website.

In my mailbox yesterday was a package from the kind souls at http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ , it was my contributors copy of the Hand of Corruption adventure (http://store.fantasyflightgames.com/productdetails.cfm?sku=BC03) that I worked on.

As we told you in theblogpost http://studiocolrouphobia.net/2011/10/15/how-ndas-work-and-an-example/, sometimes you work on things that take a long time before they are displayed publicly. The following illustrations are examples of a fairly common turnaround of NDA’s, about six months.

Hand of Corruption, page63 has this image by me on it.
The Brief called her “Norbik” hence the title.

Hand of Corruption, page101 has this image by me on it.
An Iron Warrior entering a Necron Complex.

Hand of Corruption, page128 has this image by me on it.
A b&w Arbitrator. I am very happy with how this one came out in print. The details really came out exceptionally good (I actually feared some of them would be lost)

Next post will see some other type of images in it. The cover illustration to http://www.precinctomega.co.uk/ ’s “Skrapyard” game is under wraps and I am doing some non-warhammer stuff at the moment that will see the dawn of light shortly.

Until next time!

David