DnD Campaign Portraits

I have a special affinity for board gaming and tabletop roleplaying games. Sometimes turns are a little slow during remote TTRPG sessions (or, well, any sessions) and one of my favourite things to draw is characters — and so, unsurprisingly, you’ll usually find me sketching player characters during campaigns.

Character design and art process

After receiving a general description and initial references from a brief, I’ll build up a small reference board. For sketching, I often prefer to work in 2B pencil on simple copier paper first. For more complex illustrations, I’ll also make composition thumbnails. I’ll usually let the client choose between 3 – 5 thumbnails.

Pencil allows me to establish the general shape of the character, making rapid iterations through erasing and redrawing when necessary. Once I’m happy with the character proportions, I’ll proceed to scan the work.

There’s a rule of thumb for timing visual work – 80/20 – where the first 20% of the time spent determine 80% of the final outcome and I think it very much applies.

For a painted portrait of a character, this is my general process with a time breakdown:

For this particular illustration a very rough sketch was enough to start painting. During painting some of the character’s features were changed to reflect the character’s personality and gender identity a little better, and give them a little more appeal.

Commissions?

I’d be thrilled to draw your characters! In addition to characters, I’m also interested in creature and item design for homebrew. I take on commission work whenever time allows, and my rates are low.
You can find my rates for personal commissions here: https://chrideart.tumblr.com/commissions