The fantasy illustration work of Matt 'MrLich' Lichtenwalner
All things related to TableTop RolePlaying.
I’ve just released the above collection of VTT token borders on my Patreon page. They’re free to the public (no membership required) so swing by and grab them.
While you’re there, feel free to recommend other borders you would like to see!
Wow. We’re almost to the end of February and I haven’t uploaded my sketch stuff from January yet. Way to stick to that new publishing plan, sir.
And there’s a lot. While January wasn’t super productive in the Finished Art Department, there was a decent amount of sketching. So I think that I will upload it here in a gallery format rather than discuss each sketch. If there’s something you would like to know about a particular sketch, let me know in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer all questions.
I was thinking it might be a fun thing to post all the sketches here that I did for various things each month. I often can’t post the finished stuff for my Patreon page (as an example) but the sketch work should be fine. And that give you fine folks a little more info on what I’ve been up to.
Additionally, I’ve been spending a bit more time sketching lately without taking the images through to completed work. So there’s more for you to see.
So let’s get started! (Click on individual images to embiggen.)
First up, we have the Gust Goblin. I’ve been working on a set of variant goblin types for folks to use in their TTRPG sessions. This one has an air theme, and the others will (of course) be earth, fire, and water. There will also be a fifth associated with The Void – which is something I’m wholly making up.
I’m hoping to develop a whole series of variant creatures with these 5 types eventually, but one thing at a time, so I’ll work on getting this set done and go from there.
It’s taking me a bit of time to build out the stats / crunch for each of the variants because I’m a bit new to all that.
I’ll post each of the individual variants to my Patreon page first, but then I’ll bundle them together and make them a Pay What You Want title on both my Gumroad and DriveThruRPG.
I believe I actually did the sketch work for this one a while back but I’m including it because I did the inks and colors in December. Plus, I like the little guy.
I created the character as a way to say thanks to my Twitter Pal The Goblin’s Notebook. He’s created a web app that is his namesake. A simple, elegant, and powerful tool for tracking all of your TTRPG campaign notes online in an intuitive way.
If you find yourself struggling to find the thing you’re looking for in your old spiral bound notepad, I strongly suggest checking it out!
This one was a bit of an experiment. I was trying to figure out how to stream live on YouTube using only my iPad since that’s often all I have available to me when I’m on the road.
I was… marginally successful.
Anyway, while doing that, I asked folks on the fediverse (via my profile on mastodon.art) what they would like to see. One person mentioned a mul character. Muls being a fantasy race I’d never come across before, I liked the idea. I did a little digging and found very little in the way of artwork for female muls, so here we are! There’s a lot of potentially triggering content involving muls, so I wanted to hint at it without doing anything that would be overt and clearly triggering. That’s how we came to this moment where she’s clearly standing up / rebelling / starting a revolution.
The first of my holiday themed images for the year. I was thinking about doing postcards. Then, after I procrastinated for a while, I thought about e-cards. Then I just said “Maybe next year.”
Sigh. Distractions, man.
Anyway, I like this little bugger. Goblins have been a bit of a theme for me of late.
I’m okay with this.
Another holiday themed goblin sketch. I was really just playing around with different ideas for holiday / wintery images. The goblin in this one is a bit too angry looking, but this was just the sketch stage.
Also, goblin.
Still playing around with winter / holiday themes, but a little less ‘funny’ or ‘cute’. I really liked giving this orc a pair of dire wolf companions as a parallel to Santa’s reindeer. Not a huge stretch, but I liked it.
This is a weird sort of amalgam character from my childhood. Back when I was in high school (and the dinosaurs still roamed the planet) I created this guy as a small rebellion in my introductory chemistry class.
Even back then, I enjoyed drawing high fantasy stuff, and I thought that sticking Beaker’s head onto Arnold Schwarzenegger’s physique was just hilarious.
He would continue to make appearances on occasion throughout the rest of my life, and yet, I think this may be the first time I’ve referenced him here on dragonbones.net!
That does it for this month!
All of the images above plus their inked (simple black and white line only) and color versions are available to all of my Patreon patrons for $2.
In addition, you’ll find bonus content, and I’m always looking for recommendations from my patrons.
It’s long overdue, but I finally hit publish on the updated / improved / enbiggified version of the Dragonbones.Net Big Coloring Book!
It’s now 54 pages with over 50 illustrations to print out and color as many times as you like!
I’m offering it up as a Pay What You Want (PWYW) book, and yes, that means you can pay $0.00 if you like.
I would like to thank my Patreon patrons. Many of the images in this coloring book were created thanks to their patronage. If you would like to support future products like this, feel free to pay whatever you like above zero, and/or become a patron over on my Patreon page.
This is the rough sketch / concept for something that’s been knocking around in my brain meats – the Magma Goblin. It’s a homebrew idea for ttrpg GMs to use at their tables for a bit of variety.
I want to keep them relatively low challenge rating with possible ‘power ups’ for folks who would like that. With that said, they will have some fire related abilities that traditional goblins don’t.
More coming soon!
I did a little experimental thread over on my Twitter stream. I wanted to encourage a couple of things – namely audience interaction and I wanted to provide them an actual reason to share the thread.
Simply put: I provided a series of polls for folks to vote on to determine how I constructed a monster.
Here’s a link to the thread in case you’re curious.
The results to the first poll (bipedal or quadrapedal) was:
The second poll was what kind of terrain the creature spends its time in. The audience chose subterranean so I added digging claws and narrowed the torso to make the creature more wedge shaped.
The third poll was how many heads the creature has. Crowd said 2.
And the fourth and final poll was what kind of tail to give it (or to give it none). The crowd picked a long straight tail with a club end.
After the final poll, I finished the tail and posted it and then felt like I should go ahead and paint it. Since I was already in an experimental mode, I took the sketch, blurred it a bit, and then mixed the sketch lines in with the digital paint layers. Here are the final results.
Here’s the process video if you enjoy that.
I really need to get back to the work for my Patreon page, but this was an excellent little experiment and I plan to do it again in the near future.
This is the character I’m currently working on for Patreon:
(This post was also put up over on my One Post Wonder blog. Cross posted here for availability to everyone.)
