This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.
Having trouble coming up with something to draw? No worries - while you'll eventually learn how to start from a tiny seed of a thought and gradually nurture it into a complex concept to explore through design and illustration, it's perfectly fine not to be there just yet.
For now though, here's an idea that might interest you.
The Goblin Snow Games
As the trees bud once again, and the snows thaw, the armies move. Beneath the hot summer sun, blood is shed. And as the leaves fall and the harvest is brought in by those few, desperate survivors, still raw with the loss of their recent dead.
Winter, however, is special - with the cold and the snow comes stillness and peace. But it is not without its own excitement. Every year, after the first true snowfall takes hold and encases the landscape, the Games begin.
We've taken to referring to them as "The Goblin Snow Games" though not for their specific, unique involvement in its creation. In fact, most historians agree that it was largely a human event that eventually opened the doors to other cultures. Rather, the name comes from the tendency for most players to become distinctly goblin-like in their behaviour as they play.
The Goblin Snow Games are simple - it's a mixture between Capture the Flag and a snowball fight, played out in the vast flat fields surrounding the human capital, between as many teams as are willing to show up. After the first big snowfall, the teams are each given a full week to build their fortifications, and declare their "flag". The only rule is that both the defenses one erects, as well as the part of a weapon that makes contact with the enemy must be made only of snow (no ice - though many will try to sneak it in, risking disqualification).
Despite the being called a flag, anything can be used for this purpose, as long as it represents the honour of those defending it. Back in the Games of '46 a team of orcs decided their flag would be a boulder. While generally considered against the spirit of the games, it was allowed - and their flag was captured by small team of gnomish engineers. The orcs had no trouble breaking into their defenses, but when it came time to carry their flag back... they were unable.
So! It's time for you to participate. The Goblin Snow Games call for heroes, they call for ingenuity, they call for brilliant strategy and calculated tactics. Design a team member, a piece of siege machinery, an example of defenses, or anything else that might be seen on such a bloodless battlefield. Remember - you can go with any fantasy race for this, so go wild!
This one isn't doing it for you? How about this one instead: Lost in the Multiverse >>>
The recommendation below is an advertisement. Most of the links here are part of Amazon's affiliate program (unless otherwise stated), which helps support this website. It's also more than that - it's a hand-picked recommendation of something we've used ourselves, or know to be of impeccable quality. If you're interested, here is a full list.
Framed Ink
I'd been drawing as a hobby for a solid 10 years at least before I finally had the concept of composition explained to me by a friend.
Unlike the spatial reasoning we delve into here, where it's all about understanding the relationships between things in three dimensions, composition is all about understanding what you're drawing as it exists in two dimensions. It's about the silhouettes that are used to represent objects, without concern for what those objects are. It's all just shapes, how those shapes balance against one another, and how their arrangement encourages the viewer's eye to follow a specific path. When it comes to illustration, composition is extremely important, and coming to understand it fundamentally changed how I approached my own work.
Marcos Mateu-Mestre's Framed Ink is among the best books out there on explaining composition, and how to think through the way in which you lay out your work.
Illustration is, at its core, storytelling, and understanding composition will arm you with the tools you'll need to tell stories that occur across a span of time, within the confines of a single frame.