Issue 03: October 2024... The Halloween Special!

Many happy pumpkins to you! If you missed the previous issue, you can read it here.
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Folks, I love Halloween, and I hope you're reading this while lost in a corn maze or from a misty pumpkin patch. In years past, making an annual Halloween painting (or book) was one of my favorite traditions. That's been beyond my reach for the past few years, but I swear they will one day return. Recovering from tendonitis has also put a wrench in some of my plans for card signings, so to those who have been waiting on that news, you have my apologies... But! Let's look on the bright side. The paint is flowing again, we've got some Everhaven artwork, new Lorcana cards, and for those who like a long read, the Q&A has arrived as promised. Here we go!

Witch Pitch

Last time, I mentioned the unfortunate cancellation of the video game Everhaven (aka Project Dragon.) The art pile from that project is pretty huge, and I wasn't sure where to begin excavating. Since it's Halloween season, let's start here:

This scarecrow-building-witch was a pitch I drew while brainstorming NPC's for a spooky pastoral setting with friend-of-the-newsletter Nicholas Kole. The Stitcher makes these little buddies to scare off the local crows... let's hope things don't get out of hand.

Nicholas also drew a scarecrow character with a beard made of carrots named Captain Nettlefield that might be my favorite of them all. I'll continue to sift through the Everhaven vault and share.

Card News

The cards keep coming fast, here are a couple new ones from Lorcana: Shimmering Skies: Little John, Camp Cook and Alan-a-Dale, Rockin' Rooster have bolstered my ever-growing Robin Hood collection (I even pulled a foil Little John!)

You might recognize Little John's props and general vibe from the Robin card in set three. We loved the idea of returning to this riverside setting to see what Little John is up to. (No, the illustrations don't continuously line up. I considered it, but in my opinion Robin is a little too far down the river for that to make sense.)

Shelf-Discovery

I have a lot of neat books about art. Some of them I love, some of them I haven't even read yet. What better excuse to check them all out. Here we go:

The Art and Making of ParaNorman, by Jed Alger ParaNorman is one of my favorite Halloween movies, the chunky textures of stop-motion are unbeatable, and it's also my favorite medium that I've never actually worked in. I recall getting this book just as I was really finally digging into painting (I was an animator when I started my career) and poring over the concept work, color scripts, and sculpts. The book is a great look into the unusual stop-motion pipeline that hops between different mediums as the production moves through its stages. Some of my favorite bits are the galleries of replacement puppet faces and the asymmetrical excellence of Heidi Smith's character designs, which are translated perfectly into three-dimensional form. A really fascinating account of a unique process. And to LAIKA... please let me visit your studio (I'll bring you cake.)

A Long-expected Q&A

It's Q&A time. Thank you to those who sent in questions, let's dive in:

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​Q: I am a hobby artist interested in illustrating my own picture book for an old family story. I have a manuscript written out, but I am now facing the daunting task of drawing roughs for each spread. What is your approach to this process? How do you decide what to put on each page or what to say with pictures versus words? Any advice would be appreciated.

A: Great question! Layout and pacing is the hardest part of writing picture books, in my opinion. The first thing to look at is: What is your page count? These usually come in multiples of eight (32-40 pages is the typical length of a modern picture book.) This tells you how much space you have to work with. Next, think about where your big narrative moments are, what are the memorable or visually rich scenes, and any surprises or dramatic changes of mood... these are probably going to get their own pages or spreads, and I would start there and work outwards. As you work, you can drop the accompanying text onto each scene to see if any pages are feeling too text-heavy. If so, it might be time to either break it up into two drawings, or plan to remove some descriptive text that's being doubled up by the pictures. As for the pictures, think stick figures and diagrams, don't spend your time drawing nicely in an initial pass. Good luck!

Q: I have difficulty keeping stuff loose while doing a huge art. Specifically when the style needs to be simplified and texturized. I keep trying to render stuff too much and I end up spending too much time on a piece. For this same reason, I struggle to keep even the style of rendering cohesive, so I have to go back and simplify stuff... what kind of advice would you give for keeping the looseness when doing a huge work and not going out of the style detailing stuff too much. Using fewer brushes would help too?

A: Remember your focal points and the core premise of the image. One of the great strengths of painting is the ability to use detail as a contrast lever to create a hierarchy of attention for the viewer. When it comes to rendering, that might mean doing a tighter sketch or study to understand the object in question, but then intentionally pulling back on the complexity of the render. This means combining nearby similar values, removing details, and focusing on shape. If you have clear evocative focal points, the audience will forgive and even appreciate loose areas of the piece.
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The other big part of this is the scale of your toolset... Think about the size of your brushes as real-world implements, and the same pencil you used to draw the smallest details on your foreground character has to also provide the largest strokes on your background characters. So if a background character or object has features that are becoming too fine for your finest brush, then it's time to abstract and simplify that character to fit the scale of the toolset, not the other way around. This will keep people from peering past your focal points and lingering in other areas.

Q: How do you navigate the balance between person expression, viewer interpretation, and client demands in your work, and how has this evolved over time?

A: This is a cliche answer to start with, but you are the first audience. Lean into your own sense of humor, taste, preferences, etc and you’ll stand a much better chance of delivering a strong piece and delivering on the reasons the client hired you to begin with. Then, the real challenge is not to give yourself the benefit of the doubt as viewer of the image. Look at your work and think about the first impressions of readability and story clarity. In my opinion, clarity is the best bargain you can make with an audience whose taste and expectations are all over the map. This continuous refreshing of perspective and objectivity is a difficult habit to learn, as effectiveness is not always commensurate with your hours worked or mental energy spent. And ask another artist for their perspective, this is so valuable!

When it comes to the client… In order to avoid a lot of surprises on the back end, I try to get as much information as possible from the client up front about the problem I’m trying to solve, so I can bring solutions that specifically fit this project. If you ever get an ask like "we just need a cool character" or "this can take place wherever" that’s a good sign you’re in for trouble in the later phases. What you need to ideally reach is a shared understanding of the specifics and purpose of the piece before you begin.

Q: What’s a really niche website you like to visit for inspiration? Like a blog with photos of prototype cars, a website archiving old picture book art, or a Tumblr about abandoned buildings? Can be for a specific subject or more general!

A: Here's my real life answer, since I don't have a good website answer: Pumpkins! Every fall I descend upon the nearby farms and I take pictures of pumpkins of every shape size and color I can find, then I take the coolest ones home. ​

Q: Can you tell/show more about the process of creating Lorcana cards? How many composition sketches do you do before rendering the final image, are there many revisions, how much time approximately does it take to complete a card? Additional question, would it be possible to make a living only from illustrating cards for games like Lorcana or Hearthstone, are there many commissions like that available?

A: A card illustration takes place over the course of a few weeks, but with several pauses for exchanging sketches and feedback. I don't think I have copyright clearance to share the sketches from my own cards, so I would recommend watching this video from the D23 Conference this year, where they get into the pipeline of creating a card illustration from a character design and thumbnail sketches. The card artists featured are Aubrey Archer, Nicholas Kole, and Alice Pisoni.

Here's a link to video of the panel on Instagram via The Lorecontent Fam.

And for the second question: Yes, there are artists whose main business is card game illustrations. Different clients have their own terms for usage rights of illustrations that differ quite a bit, so you'll sometimes find artists selling original paintings or prints of those illustrations alongside the commission fee for the piece. These rights distinctions can change where their overall income comes from. Because client illustration of this type usually occurs in cycles with waiting periods for contracts and notes, I think the biggest challenge would be scheduling them out at regular intervals to maintain a manageable working pace. It would probably require working for several different games in rotation. In my case, I've usually paired card illustration with longer contracts like concept art jobs. (That's probably a more common scenario.)

Ok that's a wrap! Feel free to email me your questions for the next Q&A. And here's one last pumpkin from my daughter. Happy haunting! ​ -John

​www.johnloren.com​