Issue 07: July 2025... The Summer Postcard

If you missed the last issue, you can read it here.​

It's been a while, I've been deluged in deadlines and dad-lines and this issue has sat half-complete for too long. Since last time, I also finished the first round of card signing and wrapped up a round of painting mentorships which I really enjoyed... I get to ramble on about my favorite topics, and of course the artists did a great job.

This newsletter is about a year old now, and the question of its frequency (for which I had no plan) has been answered, and it seems to be more or less bimonthly. If you have complaints, suggestions, or glowing praise, do let me know. Thanks for reading, and here's to art.

The Everhaven Archives

I did more digging into the Everhaven archives recently, and we have three new concepts this time:

This was one of the costume/fashion explorations I did for the game. There were several broad costume categories players could choose for their character, and this was the nature-based style as worn for crafting, casting, and combat. We called this fashion Woven Tree Magic.

One of the major sets of characters I worked on was a group of land-based pirates called Raiders, and this is a design for one of their mounts. Buckle up, I have a lot of Raider stuff coming up.

Speaking of mounts, these were part of a series of designs for bipedal mounts that the player could ride around in Everhaven. In video games there's a process called re-targeting, which means using a duplicate set of bone structure and animations for multiple characters. Long ago, I was a video game animator and dealt with this a lot.

From the Eem Team
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​Just a reminder, the Land of Eem: Underlands Sandbox Campaign Setting Box Set is on Kickstarter right now! I painted this super-wide GM screen incorporating the book cover.

You can check out the Kickstarter here​

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 Wonderful Wizard of Oz By L. Frank Baum, Adapted by David Chauvel and Enrique Fernández (With all due respect to Baum and Chauvel, I am going to talk about Enrique here.) I didn't know which of his comics to pick, but this was the first one I ever got. Open to ANY PAGE of this book for a feast- Enrique continually makes the boldest, most bizarre choices in shape, then holds them together with beautiful and subtle technical ability. His palettes are amazing, even though he often employs just two to three colors. He is truly a wonderful wizard of neutrals. Enrique's style has continued to evolve since this book, and he tends to use more line and texture in newer books, which I'm sure we'll return to at a later date. Thank you, Enrique!

Card News

Thanks to everyone who sent in cards and playmats! I now wish I had taken more pictures, but here are a couple signatures and doodles. If you want to get on the waitlist for next time, send an email to lorcanasignings@gmail.com.

And be sure to check out the beautiful work of my colleagues in Reign of Jafar and Illumineer's Quest: Palace Heist!

Let's end with some fun nostalgia, I recently found some old convention supplies including a stack of postcards from when Nicholas Kole and I had an artists' table at the 2016 Maine Comics Festival. If you follow me other places, you might recognize the original source of my profile picture here.

Until next time,

John

​www.johnloren.com​