Polishing an Orc.

Its entirely possible I will start doing more blog posts. Ive said this before, but this time I almost kinda sorta mean it, maybe.

I do think the key is to keep it sort and sweet. Since I started blogging 13 years ago, Twitter and Instagram have been training people to be annoyed with much more than a single image and 140 characters. I include myself here since I was annoyed when twitter expanded to 240 characters. Who has time to read extra words?

To the topic at hand: I have been working for CGI for almost 20 years. Its been so long that I am getting to rework and redo stuff that I did when I was in the early stages of my illustration career. So, there is a lot of stuff in print that I am very embarrassed by.

The recent kickstarter of Columbia Games HarnMaster update gave me the chance to redo some art that really hurt my soul. One of the things Ive wanted a second shot at was the Harnic Orc and the Ivashu creatures. I drew some real turkeys. Since this time Ive done some pieces for fans and for other Harnic publications that have greatly improved how I draw these guys.
There was one Gargun image I did I was still quite fond of: the Gargu-arak or small orc. I rescanned the 17 year old drawing and worked it over a bit in black and white before coloring it. You can see the differences in the two images below where I fixed some problems (Bow just touching the knee) and refined some of the drawing.

Also back in the day, for some reason the images got converted to clunky bitmap files. So the new high res tiff files have more life to them even in black and white.
As is the style for my Harn work, I paint under the line art in photoshop. I have a few brushes I like that give a  nice water-color feel. For this image I thought Id try something different and give it a fall look with bright yellows and orange colors. Every other harnic orc was too embarrassing and replaced with something new.
Hope folks are as happy with the update as I am. Please burn your old copies so my shame disappears forever. Seriously, burn them all! and get the updated version.
Ill post about the Ivashu updates next. Feel free to ask questions in the comments or suggest topics for future posts.