Hârnic Centaur

The next HârnQuest is about ready to ship. The Centaur article, which has been bouncing around for a few years finally is going to see the light. I don't know about you, but when I think Centaur, the first thing that comes to mind for me is the SNL skit in which Christopher Walken interviews a Centaur for a job. The Centaur does not get the job.
So, all ideas for the concept of the Hârnic Centaur started there.

 One of my first thoughts was to really go beastial with this creature. Not the typical Greek Mythology, fashion model torso stuck on horse look. So, the early sketches were an attempt to move away from that.

I knew the horns were pushing it, but we realized that Centaurs had been mentioned enough elsewhere and even illustrated previously, so this was probably too much of a change. I did some other sketches, but this pose was my favorite. I just needed to tame it back. I initially wanted more goat-like hooves, and hands that even mimicked hooves.

Here is the final image I came up with. I did a late evening background that unfortunately got cropped out of the final article due to space issues, so I thought I would post the full rendering here.

Dirty Centaur, Copyright © 2014, Columbia Games, Inc. and Richard Luschek

I went with  a more human look with beastie features. I thought of adding more clothing or equipment, but it sort of mucked up the simple natural look of the creature. They occasionally interact with the Gargun, so I thought a gargun-like weapon would be a nice touch, but fashioned to take advantage charge. I figure some simple hook weapons on the hind legs would make a kick even more nasty.
I just realized that the image in the article is a bit different- I made the head a bit smaller and adjusted the weapon into a more pleasing position.

For the end piece of the article I drew a hillside scene.

 Centaur Herd, Copyright © 2014, Columbia Games, Inc. and Richard Luschek

I may eventually ink up one of the other sketches for FFF style release.