So if you saw theses pictures in a roleplaying book…

… would you think they look good, assuming of course they are theme appropriate? (Click on them to see in higher resolution).

I was trying to figure out if I could do, myself, good or high quality images or at least create something that looks like it is good or high quality. I think I hit on the right technique. (Some more images after the cut).

I feel like I’ve cheated a bit to create these images. Basically, I took a photograph (one of my own), then traced elements of it and added/modded stuff. Here’s the original image. Do you think I’ve cheated? I’m not sure because the photo is original and what I’ve produced is quite original too.

The interesting thing is that I took advantage of the effect scanning has on the image, by only scanning in black and white, it hid any mistakes or smudges, leaving a sharp and pure black ink image. I even played with different ways of using ink: brush, nibs, pens and even markers. I’m not sure how recognisable the differences are in these few images.

My host’s recent downtime gave me spare time to actually do some artwork, and I played with the technique a bit. I needed to know if I could use it to do urban scenes, which was meant to be part of the theme for L___ H_____. So I took a photo of a city street and added an old friend…

I did a second example of this and took a photo of where I work, adding his all mightiness lording over us…

I needed also to see if I could use it to create pictures of people. So I took a photo of my grumpy daughter and turned her into a fairy. But I wasn’t completely happy with the result. That’s when I discovered a nice little perk of tracing. I could quickly do another copy, benefiting from my first attempt. My second attempt is certainly better but still needs some improvements, which I haven’t tried yet.

I do like how they come out and the sort of templating system of the tracing a source photo makes it easy to try different combinations or just to play with the images. I’m not sure I could get away with using them in a roleplaying book… I think I might have to add colour in some way to do that.

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