A new banner for my blog

 

I've decided to improve my little corner of the web here with some of my own art and a slight change in ambience, trying to make it easier on the eye and a little bit more damned looking. When I first starting blogging, I was entirely unprepared and unoriginal in choosing Les Edwards iconic illustration from the cover of the Lost and the Damned itself. It really is an image that stayed with me from a teenager to a middle aged geek and seemed appropriate for the introduction of this blog of mine.

However as the blog's developed and my influences increased, I started thinking about creating my own unique illustration, based on some of my favourite GW artwork from when I was a kid, particularly that of Adrian Smith and also some of the illustration from Fighting Fantasy which I have already used liberally in miniature projects.

For example the illustration of some Nurgle Warriors, below by Adrian Smith, has the characters facing us head on, in lovely contrasting black and whites, with a somewhat blighted background. But I have a personal dislike of compositions where the legs and feet are completely cut off, it prevents the figures from having the same grounding in their environment.

So I'd kind of decided upon the style (black and white, contrasting tones) with a Nurgle based subject matter - characters face on to the viewer with a dark ambience in the background and starting playing around with some black and white acrylics and inks:

I then decided that I did not want to lose all connections with the Lost and the Damned tome, so I thought about how I could incorporate some of the text from the book into my illustration. The art teacher in me thought instantly of good old Mod-Podge:

 and with a  mirrored photocopy of the opening page of Nurgle from the great book I was able to combine the text onto my background and re-work into it with some additional tones and drips etc.

So what for the illustration itself? I played around with the idea of creating my own Nurgle characters, but I wanted to link back to miniature painting exploits on this blog, perhaps drawing up one of my favourite models or greatest accomplishments. And then it hit me! Having recently completed the collecting and painting of all the original Nurgle Champions I considered working from one of my very own photographs of my very own models, this one in particular:

Below you can see the initial drawing outlined in black pen (and the title of the blog Mod-Podged on)

And then bringing in some further contrasting highlights with some white acrylic washes:

 

I think there's still room for improvement in the contrasting and definition of each drawn figure (although I wish I hadn't worked in A4 size - what a simple mistake - always work larger and scale down!), but I am interested in hearing your thoughts. Cheers in advance!

Ps. How do I resize the image at the top and why have I suddenly lost a load of my comments, I think all those from Google +? All help and comments appreciated (if they show!)