Dragon Garage

Cover of Dragon Garage by James Turner

Check out my other fantasy book, Dragon Garage:

An imaginative and playful misfit accidentally opens a portal to a fantastical reality in James Turner's graphic novel. Zach Vandermeer's imagination can get the young man into trouble. Zach loves to play role-playing games, and Heroic Journey is his favorite.

One night Zach introduces a new character into the game, one that launches him and his friends into a real world adventure in the realm of Arthea which up until that night was a fictional world created by Zach.

What follows is a page-turning romp brought to you by James Turner, creator of Rex Libris, the world's toughest librarian.

Lots of fun and mayhem ensue when reality and fantasy collide! 

The rescue mission proceeds!

More on the Dragon Garage blog.

Another ink steam knight mech

 

Even has a lance with plasma feed! What's not to love?

I have a number of other sketches lying around, I may work on them some more in ProCreate...

Underground cavern from Theo Paxstone and the Dragon of Adyron

I did all the drawings for Theo Paxstone at the very end of the process, after spending an ungodly amount of time editing it, over and over and over. By then I was beyond exhausted. I've never been terribly happy with the illustrations, and I've thought about revisiting them, but then, it's usually better to just let go, learn the lesson, and move on. 

This one I did rather like though: 

Midjourney AI mechanical steam knights of Palachia

A herald steam knight bearing a locked message signals the King of the Northern realm.

MidJourney is an AI rendering system that works from text prompts. 

The imagery that results can be pretty amazing.

I haven't fully explored it yet, and it has limitations, but it's also terribly addictive.

A mighty front line steam mech, wielding a sword

Steam mech with large viewing window in the helm for the pilot, allowing a clear field of view of the battlefield. It is, however, a point of vulnerability.

A Palachian gargantuan steam knight marching to protect a small village from a menacing dragon. Note the lance.

These models are larger model steam mechs, part of a new breed of machines created in Alandia by the renowned machinist Gregor Malachi. 

*Some minor editing done to the MidJourney images in ProCreate. All four images were created from a single prompt.

Faux film poster for Theo

Made for an art show of faux film posters. 

Steam mech drawing

I got an iPad last year, and I've really enjoyed playing around with ProCreate. It's so much more forgiving than traditional media. There's a lot of hidden depth to the program.

This picture is of an Adyron steam mech, ready for action. It's a basic version without some of the fancy (and unorthodox) features that Sir Bentham's mech had.

Theo Paxstone illustrations

I did a number of pictures for the book, just black and white ink scribbles.

I wanted them to be very loose, just impressions. I am not sure how well they fulfilled their function.




Theo leading Pumpkin and the wagon, with Riley and Bentham aboard.




Theo with Ollie, the spotter bird. He's supposed to be in the foreground. I thought that came across, but some people think he's a gigantic 20 foot tall terror bird.

Ollie would like that.