I have finally begun work on the illustrations for Vaults of Vaarn issue 4. I don’t want to make any firm promises on how long this will take. I’m really rusty and realised that I’ve barely had a proper illustration schedule since I was doing stuff for the Deluxe Edition back in April 2022! So it’s been a while. Anyway, I thought you might like to see what I worked on this week.
I decided to start with the Bestiary section because (a) it needs the largest amount of individual illustrations, 23 of the 54 required, and (b) because I’m hoping I can get through it quicker, since all the illustrations will be single character designs on a blank background rather than detailed splash pages.
I decide to go through the monsters alphabetically, starting with the Albino Ape.
As you can see, this creature went through lots of formative work, which surprised me. I think I was feeling really under-confident, and I wanted to get the pose of the creature right. You can see lots of sketch work here taken from gorillas and chimps. However, I started to feel that I wanted to bring a heavier, bear-like posture into the creature, since Vaarn monsters aren’t meant to be 1-to-1 representations of currently extant Earth animals. I thought the Albino Ape might have a little polar bear DNA, so it ended up heavier and shaggier than most real life apes:
This is purely an ink drawing at this stage. I often add digital halftones as well, although for this image I don’t think I’m going to. I like the shading as is and don’t think it needs any additions, especially for a creature that’s meant to be white furred.
Next we have some work for the Cannon Beetle:
You can see that I (a) did much less sketch work for this creature, and (b) inked a ‘final piece’ that I then didn’t care for. I completely changed the look of the monster in a single ink drawing, which I think I’ll add some screen tones to and put into the zine. Sometimes you just end up improvising and like the result:
I really dig the squat, more powerful look this design has. It feels more front-loaded and menacing.
Finally I did some drawings of the Chattersnipes. These creatures are semi-sentient flying squirrel folk, who have a mutation which causes enormous quills to sprout from their tails. They use the quills as weapons. This is a rare instance where I think the intitial sketch is perfect and can’t be improved upon by ink:
There’s something so fresh and dynamic about these sketches sometimes, and it really hurts when you draw something like this because you know it’ll be a slog to recapture that energy and funniness in a more careful ink drawing.
I tried once:
…and kind of messed it up. I don’t like the shading on his wing-flaps and it loses something for me. I tried again in a bigger format and I think this image might appear in the zine:
Although truth be told I still love that pencil sketch most of all. I might re-try the Chattersnipe next week, but there are a lot of other illustrations to get through and I think I may just have to live with the imperfection.
I hope this was an interesting look behind the curtain. I am excited to be drawing again, even though I have rarely felt less confident with my pen. I’m hoping grinding these monsters out every morning for issue 04 will boost my skills a bit, and that I’ll have some more polished looking line art for you all soon.
This post originally appeared in January for my Patrons. If you like the setting and want more behind the scenes looks at constructing the new issues of the zine, please consider subscribing.
VAULTS OF VAARN 