I just completed a commission for two friends of mine with whom I play Dungeons and Dragons. I love D&D, but my ADHD means that I need to be doing something with my hands while I’m participating in the story narrative—otherwise I start disconnecting from the game.
My solution to this has been to draw along with the story, and doodle out the funniest or most interesting incidents while we play. At the end of our play sessions, I show the group what I’ve drawn. Every group I’ve played with has been very encouraging, and it makes me so happy to see how delighted they are with the results. Some people even save the doodles and use them as avatars on Twitter or Discord (with credit, of course!) Plus, it immortalizes our weirdest and wackiest moments in the best way.
Doodles from a game session on February 20th.
During one session with my Thursday night group, the mysterious god of our grumpy Genasi cleric Kai appeared. A semi-sinister trickster god, who always hid his face behind a wolf mask, appeared in physical form before the party, and began dispensing cryptic information to us. I scribbled a little drawing of him snickering over his cup of tea.
The Wolf enjoys his tea.
Our game master and Kai’s player liked my drawing enough to commission me to do a full painting of the trickster god, who went by no name other than The Wolf. I was immensely flattered and excited to do a full painting of this character! I’ve painted two player characters from this game already (Kai, and Khandas, our paladin) and being invited to contribute again to the visual vocabulary of this world is very cool. So, I got to work.
I needed a more fleshed-out design for the Wolf’s mask, first. The gods of the pantheon to which the Wolf belongs all wear these strange masks, depicting a different animal. These are not nice deities, either—in fact, even though my character’s father has been revealed to be one of them, they are the adventure’s main antagonists. I drew inspiration from Japanese oni masks, which have such wonderfully intricate carving, but also perfect ambiguous expressions. It’s part snarl, part laugh, part whine of pain. I also added multiple irises and bizarre pupils, because one of the more fascinating things about masks to me is when you can’t quite tell where the eye-holes are.
Since designing the Wolf’s mask, I’ve also doodled the Unicorn and Panther…guess how many irises they’ve each got?!
For the illustration piece itself, I browsed through images of ballet dancers for inspiration for the character’s pose. I pictured the Wolf with a very lithe and athletic body, and I thought some of his wilder magic could be represented through dance…
Rough sketch and posing.
It took some time for me to choose the correct lighting and color for the piece. I really wanted to nail it. I ended up scrapping the color halfway through to restart because it felt awkward and stilted and I knew I couldn’t rescue it without a full restart. I’m very grateful for the painting teacher who taught me to wipe something out and start again if I’m not happy—it saves so much time and pain in the long run! Chances are you can get to the same point, and go further, a lot faster than you think you can. Anyway…
The final product. I’m very pleased with the result, after many long hours of labor. Cheers!
He’s a tricky one.