"warhammer commission 1: how we quit the forest"



Yay commission!




I was commissioned by



He's writing some kind of book, a rulebook or a roleplay game or something like that (he corrected me at this but... I will leave this for him to explain because I don't understand a single word of this stuff ) and he needs a couple of illustrations for that. This is the first of 3.


He asked me to draw two Eldar riders in armor, on their dinosaurs. (I don't really know about this whole thing in detail so I will just let him explain this himself if he wants to) He wanted this my usual style but as good shading as possible, with the main focus on the riders, with a relatively simple background. I think the pic perfectly lives up to all.


'Tis got sold for 40€.... >__________> Which MOSTLY was because of the incredible generousity of the commissionee (well actually I am the commissionee right? But I want to be a commissioner because that sounds much better. Commissioner Jimmy the breakfast masta' )

No worries, I can go MUCH cheaper than this, esp. without a shitload of details and complicated background. As for this pic, I would normally say not more than a good 30$.

Decision was based on the following:

it was a bit less than A4 size, relatively small, but the details pretty much fill the whole picture.
I put an unbelievable amount of detail into the shading- whether good or bad, I think this is my best at the moment.
the background was relatively simple, I would rate it as a medium



This pic was an incredible challenge mostly because I don't think I have ever drawn any dinosaurs in my life, so I basically knew nothing about their anatomy whatsoever, not to mention their incredibly time consuming skin....

To compensate the -in my opinion- rather childishly cute idea of people riding dinosaurs, I tried to make them as not-nice and beastly creatures as I could.

The riders are a young man and his superior.... he is in a lesser rank but possibly a son of very rich/noble parents, notice the much more decorated armor with, however, less gemstones!

The armors are my own designs loosely based on what I saw on models... so if there's anyone from the Eldar military management reading this, I am absolutely open to outfit design commissions ;D


I didn't pay enough attention to the lights, so they basically come from all kinds of places at the same time (I am lame) but... I guess an overall view, without a few exceptions, would suggest the light is coming from a specific point directly from above, which coincidentally fits with the light conditions in a hypothetical jungle (I think) which means that I am lame, but the mistakes I make end up totally awesomely so no one notices (I hope-no one reads my descriptions anyway)

I first drew everything in the foreground, then spent a few days thinking about what to draw in the background not to screw up the otherwise pretty good foreground (I was satisfied with it at least). And after I figured I would have felt it screwed up no matter what I had drawn, I asked ~3shades what he would like. To which he said it should definitely be a jungle.

This is why I used the plants and trees mostly as spacefillers rather than actual elements (some leaves in the foreground, in the way of the dinos would have been nice but it was already too late)


It was an honour to work with ~3shades, was the most patient commissionee ever, answered all my stupid questions, provided me with plenty of reference and was very generous at the end ______ I can only recommend him to anyone and I would of course love to work with/for him again


Oh yes.... this was drawn with a black fine ballpoint pen on a B5 size paper (but was much smaller than B5 size) and... I have no idea how much time it actually took, forgot to count (I will do that next time) but it took several weeks to finish, I started it in the middle of the exam period and finished it only a few days ago.


is permitted to use this picture in any way he wants as many times as he wants (wow, that DOES sound bad ) except for claiming it his own work.


Enjoy!