Airship Norge/2

According to some old photos, airships were carried out of hangars simply by pulling ropes. Sometimes a kind of trolley could support the airship, but I was interested in showing the magic of a giant weightless baloon being carried around.

Gulls

Gulls are common on the river in my town, especially in winter. They gladly accept some food (mostly old bread) and "pose" for some photos.
These are probably young specimens of black-headed gull (Larus ridibundus). The big one on the lower left is a different species, probably a yellow-legged gull (Larus michahellis).

Knight and dragon/6

A new drawing on an old theme... the title actually could be "the knight's nightmare", possibly the night before the battle (but did he know in advance?).
I'm using a bit more of shading than usual, but I'm not very satisfied with the super-polished look, I have to look for a freer effect.

Airship Norge

The second project I'm working on is a set of images of airships.
I'm starting with some images inspired by the explorations of Umberto Nobile in the '20s, in particular the first polar expedition with airship Norge. However I'm not claiming that my images are faithful to real facts: I'm just fantasizing on them. I will probably make some completely "imaginative" pictures in the future.

Airships are magic objects, possibly the most beautiful and poetic technological objects ever made by men. They are huge and impressive, yet "light" and "immaterial"; they look like dreams made real.

I decided to mix 3D and 2D graphics, because airships are complicated objects which need an accurate rendering, and I don't like to draw mechanical objects. I'm not really fond of 3D (I don't have much fun with it), but that seemed the best option in this case.

The airship (made with the open-source program Blender):


and some settings, on digitally painted backgrounds:

Exploration of Svalbard island (two versions, same background):



The evening before leaving


Leaving in the morning

Warthog

I'm illustrating a short tale where a nasty wild boar terrifies people and destroys everything in a realm.
Unfortunately wild boars have a "teddy bear" look which is not freightening at all, while warthogs have the tipical villain look I was looking for... so, here is a study of a warthog, with some liberties.

Tortoise and rooster

The tortoise is a nightly, earthly creature, the rooster is the messenger of light, breaking the spell of dark powers... well, at least according to some ancient legends dating back probably more than two thousands years, and still present in modern popular tales.
I used the same technique explained here, which once more proved very flexible and reworkable - I changed my mind about the tortoise, it started with regular legs but then I decided to let it emerge from the rocks.
Unfortunately the scanner has turned the nice paper texture into a boring, cloudy one.

Messy ostrich

Inkscape is a nice vector graphics editor, like Corel Draw or Adobe Illustrator, but it's open-source and free.
Although vector graphics is not my favourite medium, sometimes I like to play a little with bezier curves and the like. You really have the feeeling that you are drawing with your mind, not with your hand, which can be pleasant or annoying depending on your disposition and your mood.
Last spring I took part in the contest for the splash screen of version 0.48, which included a new spray tool. In this case my approach was not "pure vector", as I first drew the main character with a pencil, then traced it (that is: convert to vector) and then compose the image, but the final result still retains the free-hand look.
The image was done in a hurry, and it shows, but anyway I thought it was worth showing.


And no, my proposal was not selected, in case you ask.