Doing a school report titled “Your Favoritist Book Creator of All Time”?

When is your college term paper on “The Most Stupendous Writer-Artist-Guy of the 21st Century?” due?

Perhaps you want to break into the industry of making books for kids…or perhaps you just need to know more about me than my own parents.

Whatever you fancy, there is lots of questions answered in my FAQ section of the site. And they’ve been updated from some of the insightful questions I was asked from various interviews last year. Read on…

I had a great reminisce with my old Dragon magazine editor, Wolfgang Baur, at Kobold Quarterly. We talked about my start working for TSR’s Dungeons & Dragons, my role on creating the visuals for the Planescape role-playing game…and even a little advice for up-and-coming illustrators. You can listen to the entire podcast here.

…and, because I was feeling nostalgic, Wolf coerced me into doing a sketch of my take of the AD&D Monster Manual 2’s “Quickling”, which they are giving away to one lucky visitor at their site. I haven’t drawn D&D stuff in a loooong time (and I likely won’t be in the foreseeable future), so stop by and win a sketch from yours truly. Good luck!

Galerie Daniel Maghen is a fantasy-themed art gallery in Paris, France. In addition to selling fantastic artwork, they produce exquisite books (with my new favorite, Jean Baptiste-Monge). They’ve also done some collections with American artists like The Universe of Dragons (you’ll never guess what that book is about).

When they contacted me to do a piece for their collection, I was absolutely excited, but pressed for time. So I opted to (digitally) blow the dust off of an old favorite of mine “A Golden Afternoon” done in 1997 for Dragon magazine.

This was quite an ambitious piece for me at that time. I conjured up an image from Kenneth Grahame’s The Reluctant Dragon as the basis for the image. I remember I was looking at a lot of Maxfield Parrish and Scott Gustafson then, and I think their influence can be seen in the handling of the background and environment. Of course, I am nowhere near the painter these masters are, but I was happy with the final painting nonetheless – I felt I had grown a bit after completing it.

One thing I never was truly happy about, though, was the boy. At that point in my career, I had hardly rendered a child in any of my work. As time went on, I was able to understand a little more about the anatomy and structure of little ones. And so, I was able to create a new head for this reprint. Now I am reeeaaallllly happy.

There is a great gaggle of contributors in this collection (the second volume, I might add) like Tom Kidd, Todd Lockwood, Paul Bonner and William Stout (to name some favs). If you are interested, it looks like you can order the book directly from the gallery or through Amazon France…Stuart Ng may even have it. Also, check out Volume 1, its got some nice images in it as well.

I’ve another sketch re-visitation to share this morning. It was my sole warm-up yesterday before I began work on the new Spiderwick book. This time, I looked at a 1994 pen & ink drawing of a Dungeons & Dragons orc guard.

There is something comical about this guy that I do like – especially with his mix-matched armor and pencil-thin spear. But his “orcishness” (new word, you know what it means) is pretty lame. He’s basically an exaggerated guy with big ears and a pig nose. If memory serves, orcs are indeed porcine in appearance, but also capable humanoid warriors. Time for some serious reference.

I gathered some photos of wild pigs from books I had here in the studio and from the internet. I also referenced Charles Knight’s Animal Drawing, from 1947 (though still in print thanks to Dover Publications). I grew up loving Knight’s dinosaurs and ice age paintings and his knowledge of animal anatomy is superb. Sure enough, he had some wonderful pig studies. I was able to start building my own anatomy on a quick gesture:

I twisted his snout a bit to indicate that perhaps he smells something (like a rotten human). Also, I hunched him over in a neanderthal-type stance, which somehow reads more thug-like. The hairiness of wild pigs made me think giving him a dense beard…which then led me to think of vikings…so it was off to another reference book for more detail gathering.

The DK Eyewitness series was MADE for artists. Within a few page flips, I found how this fella’s leather-padded armor was constructed, as well as his pilfered shield.

I did a blind eye and battle-damaged ear to indicate past damage suffered on the left side of his head. I’ve done the blind-eye/detached retina thing a lot, I know, but it does add a creepy factor.

Okay, that’s it for now…more next week.

I realize I’ve been doing a lot of writing, designing, plotting, and even a little art-directing lately. But the one thing I haven’t done a lot of is some serious drawing. As I warm up to begin the interior art for the last Spiderwick book, The Wyrm King, I blow the dust off of some old sketches in an attempt to track what I’ve learned in the last decade.

This is nothing new. French artist Claire Wendling did it masterfully in a fascinating revisit to one of her earlier published sketchbooks, Iguana Bay. In the same spirit I took my first self-published sketchbook, aptly titled DiTerlizzi Sketchbook (it was limited to 100 copies and sold at the 1994 GenCon game fair), and looked at it with older, possibly more astute, eyes.

I started with the goblin on the cover. Certainly he was a classic Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual-inspired character. Though there is some fun gesture with the penwork (especially in the hand), I really had no control over the ink. I was trying to learn how to put it down on paper without making too much of a mess. The overall gesture doesn’t say much about his character either – he is simply a grotesque head popped on a scribbled torso.

The first thing I did, before I sketched anything, was take a quick snapshot of me acting as this goblin. I figured he was a grumpy sort of character (perhaps due to dental problems). So, with my computer, I struck a pose:

Young artists out there: this took less than 90 seconds to pose and print. One and a half minutes. If I had Ang take the shot with our digital camera, then perhaps 5 whopping minutes to shot, download, and print. There is no excuse why you cannot have reference to help make your imagery more convincing. You are never too old, or experienced, to do this. Okay, rant over, blog resuming…

Great, so the grumpy goblin pose helped. I was able to sketch the pull from his crossed arms on his tattered shirt convincingly, and play with some nice facial lighting. In fact, I twisted and pushed his facial features to give him a battered appearance. (Personally, I think most D&D characters would be a little worse for the wear from all of the adventuring anyhow).

Next, I found a fairly decent ink doodle of a chameleon lizard man shaman. Surprisingly, my linework here was pretty solid, if a bit overworked. The aspect I did not capitalize on, though, was the awesome anatomy of the lizard itself – he has humanish arms and legs plopped on his reptilian form.

My quick redo retains his lizardy features with a couple of hints at intelligence: jewelery, belts and pouches, and a staff.  By the way, I used the same book I used as reference for this original drawing: Chameleons, by James Martin.

…more tomorrow…

As the week ends, I find myself back at the beginning of my work for the role-playing game, Planescape. The first color illustration you see in the Player’s Guide, found in the original campaign setting, is of a halfling showing his adventuring companion how to make the portal to another plane open.

So I thought it would be fitting to redraw this one from 1994. It was one of the first finished images that I created for the line.

Ang and I went to see Sting in concert down in Florida during the time that I was working on Planescape, and I remember that I really liked how he had reinterpreted his old Police songs. It showed that the music was original and could be played in many variations but still be the same tune. I have felt that in redrawing and sharing some of this early work of mine has been like that – there were obvious technical advances on my part as an artist over the years, but the design ideas and imagination that went into the imagery for this game still held up over a decade later…and I am proud to have been a part of it.

Planescape’s underworld was, of course, modeled after Inferno in Dante’s Divine Comedy. I haven’t read that book since college, but a good pal of mine sent me a newly translated version last year – and I am finally starting to read it. Written a little more…”cleaner”, this version still retains the poetic verse and I’ve enjoyed it so far.

Anyways, here’s Dante out on a solo adventure speaking with a pit fiend…I think he’s asking where a good restaurant might be.

I’ve been doing some characters from the various Planescape factions over the last few days, and I thought I’d post what I’ve done so far. Most are just a little more simplified and lively than their predecessors. I realized I added lots of clothing, armor, belts and tassels, to hide my cursory figure drawing back then. I guess after 10+ years I was bound to get a little better.

Yugoloths, baatezu, tanar’ri, devils, or Screwtape’s peeps…whatever you’d like to call’em, Planescape had A LOT of them. To be completely honest, I really enjoyed rendering those creepies – but again, I think I lacked the maturity as an illustrator to push their designs to the fullest potential.

The most obvious flaw in the PS illus. is that they are all perfect specimens. After eons of fighting off adventurers, good guys from Mt. Celestia, and each other – well, they would show the effects of such a battered existence, and I think these wounds would add greatly to their grotesqueness.

Of course, I looked at 15th century painter of all things nightmarish, Hieronymus Bosch for inspiration. But I think the best devils I have seen rendered are by alien painter/genius Wayne Barlowe. His work is great – his imagination is AMAZING!

Okay, enough reminiscing, I am off to bed. Hopefully no succubi will invade my dreams

Ah, the nefarious, notorious githyanki. For us older gamers, we first saw these Astral killers on the cover to 1981’s Fiend Folio – and fell in love with their rich backstory and bizarre appearance. They always reminded me of some alien race on Star Trek, like the klingons.

Anyways, I got the opportunity to render them, and their githzerai cousins, quite a few times for Planescape starting with the first Monstrous Compendium. In fact, I still remember one game reviewer saying that my Planescape art reminded him a bit of Dr. Seuss (*see my postscript). I wonder if he was looking at my Grinch-like githyanki design?

Actually one of the key Planescape game designers, Zeb Cook, showed me some books he had recently purchased from Japan on an artist named Yoshitaka Amano. Of course, the artwork totally blew me away. Back in ‘94, I don’t think many knew of his work here in the states, but now his work (rightfully) is much more known thanks to the availability of his lavishly illustrated books. His costume design and patterning were certainly an influence on my githyanki images.

This morning, I played around with the original Fiend Folio cover pose while incorporating bits of the original and my Planescape design. In my attempt of maturing as an illustrator, I veered away from the “look I am evil. See my evil face?”, and created a more alien, otherwordly look. Besides, the actions of these villainous rogues certainly define their alignment.

PS – Speaking of nonsense children’s book authors, did you know that the githyanki’s main weapon, their vorpal sword, was originally created by none other than Lewis Carroll for his poem “Jabberwocky” in Through the Looking Glass? That’s so cool…