Dandibuja

Hello! More drawings at: dandibuja.blogspot.com

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I tire of playing Autarchs of old, my friend! Next time I should be a gallant knight on a quest to rescue his lady love!

A behind-the-scenes sequel to this illustration I did years ago.

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¡Oh triste de ti Bandenazar, el más sin ventura de cuantos nacieron, que la Fortuna permitiese para mayor dolor tuyo que los imperios de Babilonia, Persia y Trapesonda, con toda la redondez de la tierra, te fuesen sujetos, dotándote de fuerzas y ventura más que a otro en el universo para darte tal caída que vinieses en el extremo presente que por mano de tu mayor enemigo estés puesto en tales tormentos sin que la muerte jamas haya lugar de té vencer! ¿Cómo es posible que el que por dios por todos era tenido esté al presente en tormento tan doloroso? Oh muerte, ¿por qué no me acabas? Oh vida, ¿por qué me sigues, siendo tan perseguido de la contraria Fortuna?

Belianís de Grecia (I-II) de Jerónimo Fernández (1545)

Alas, Bandenazar, the unluckiest of all who have ever been born, who was sorrowfully granted the empires of Babylon, Persia and Trebizond, and of all the roundness of the Earth by Fortune, who also gave you more strength and felicity than to any other in the universe, only to make you fall to this state by the hand of your greatest enemy, in such torment that death won’t ever conquer you! How can it be for one that was once deemed godlike to be presently subjected to such a painful torment? O, death, why won’t you end me? O, life, why do you chase me, if I’m already chased by adverse Fortune? 

Belianís of Greece (I-II) by Jerónimo Fernández (1545)

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I just came across your page and I wanted to say that I love your paintings. I also wanted to ask what do you use for drawing? Sorry to bother and thank you

Hello! Thanks a lot for your kind words, I'm very glad that you like my work.

Many of my traditional illustrations are made with a mixed technique combining a base of watercolor with gouache and some touches of colored pencils, pastels or ink, depending of the result I wish to achieve. 

However, I have some examples of illustrations done with a single technique, such as pastels, watercolors or colored pencils. 

Thank you again for your interest in my work. I wish I was more active online, but personal circumstances have prevented me from drawing lately. 

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Deep in the wastes of Vaarn, a Sourcerer bargains with a Quantum Daemon

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La portada de “Imperio Vestigial” una ambientación para juegos de rol que estoy desarrollando junto a José Carlos Domínguez del blog Un Paladín en el Infierno.

The cover of “Vestigial Empire”, a setting for role-playing games that I am developing with José Carlos Domínguez from the blog Un Paladín en el Infierno. 

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Gaudy jewel of Vaarn’s southern badlands, the city of a thousand shaded bazaars, a thirsty, bustling morass of dusty courtyards and guild halls and artisans’ workshops. If there is something to be sold in Vaarn, then Gnomon is the place to buy it. Everything within the crumbling blue walls of the city has a price: water, food, song, love, and death.

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They are the fulfillment of humanity’s oldest and fondest wish: that we might join the birds we envy in the unbounded blue of the depths above. Despite forsaking the ground they have renounced none of their ancestors’ pride and the creatures are famed for their mercurial tempers and capacity to hold a grudge.

The harpies of Ostriel are shaped like predatory birds with vibrantly coloured feathers, possessed of the visages and metacarpi of pale, aristocratic humans. Their clawed feet are as dextrous as any hand, and they are known as expert archers.

Ancestry: Harpy for Vaults of Vaarn by Leo Hunt

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With dragonfly speed She bites the sword in two; with her teeth she destroys the sword of bronze. She strikes him in his side. His blood paints the moon; Crimson his blood paints the plains of the moon. Two trunkless legs fall; nothing beside remains.

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...but no wrongdoing can hide forever from the Light of the Trust.

From Exposed, episode nineteen of the second season of Midst 

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Tesoros del mundo superior

Treasures from the world above

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Elysium Crumbles

A collage inspired by the role-playing game Kult made by combining the following paintings:

The Last Day of Pompeii by Karl Brullov (1830-1833)

Fallen Angel by Alexandre Cabanel (1847)

The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by John Martin (1852)

The Great Day of His Wrath by John Martin (1851–1853)

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Ilustración inspirada en el juego de rol Flying Circus de Erika Chappell

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Ucronía: Caballero Neandertal montado en un Metridiochoerus.

Uchronia: Neanderthal Knight riding a Metridiochoerus.

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The Knight

Khuñ Khaphun, last knight of the Order of Unn, posed for only one portrait during his life. He was an intensely private man, and so it was only at the behest of his close friend Pricipio d'Ardevarke that he agreed to see the painter. This was in the spring of the year of the Golden Rabbit, a mere seven months before his death.

Khuñ's life had seen him pulled in opposing directions since his early childhood. As a youth he was enamored with stories of the great mountain-home knights and the adventures of the Sunrise Age, which put him at odds with his family of stonemasons. Dissatisfied with the trades, and likewise distasteful of the formal military, he became obsessed with the idea of reviving the knights of Unn. He was self-taught in combat, as provided by whatever training manuals of the era that he could find. Unfortunately, he was an withdrawn and introverted man, who made connections rarely. While he might have named himself a knight of Unn, he simply didn't have the social adeptness to attract others to his cause - the few volunteers who joined him quickly returned home in all cases, finding him too difficult to work with.

He came into the eye of the public after he slew the Giant of Gjanisang, but he found himself unable to follow it up with subsequent feats and spent the years to follow wandering up and down the Hojenvaid River valley. He refused offers of patronage, even from d'Ardevarke, claiming always that it was not knightly to do such a thing, and took payment only in exchange for monster slaying or performances of feats (he was fond of trick jousting, and this was more profitable in the long run than monster hunting).

He died without fanfare in his roadside camp of natural causes. Likely a disease of the heart. The Order of Unn went with him, and he is remembered only now by students of the historically curious and those who walk past his portrait at the museum of art in Harandara.

Written by Dan from Throne of Salt 

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El monstruoso festín de las gaviotas. 

The monstrous seagulls’ feast.

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The Monstrous Seagulls' Feast

The gulls had no questions at all about the great gelatinous corpse. It wasn't poisonous and something else had done the work of killing it, and that was all that mattered. Smart birds, seagulls.

(The crabs did question it, and came to different conclusions. They have yet to share.)

Speculation on the creature's origins exploded as soon as the news cameras started rolling, but it peaked early. The fervor couldn't be maintained through the next crisis of the week, especially when the answers that were forthcoming were so plain: the creature washed up on the Argentine shore during the night of April 16th, it was almost certainly terrestrial in origin, some kind of mollusk, and it was very dead. Within seventy-two hours it had dissolved into a mound of dirty translucent gelatin, and within two more days it had decayed completely. The final verdict was that it was some kind of long lost cephalopod from the abyssal zones.

The conspiracists remembered it, and the graduate students in biology departments around the world, and the unfunny Facebook memes lasted a couple months beyond that, and for the creature this was the end of it.

But it was never the important part of the incident, only the vehicle by which it arrived on the scene. The abyssotitan's flesh was riddled with parasites - minute corkscrew worms, near-invisible to the eye. Most died with their host, but the eggs survived, and the eggs were eaten by the seagulls, and the eggs hatched within the seagulls, and the seagulls shat them out and then...

Well, that's the end of it.

Written by Dan from Throne of Salt 

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Lo que queda de la Casa Leoviridis.

What remains of House Leoviridis. 

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What Remains of House Leoviridius

The villa ruins had been as empty as the Jackal's stomach. Disappointing, but only mildly surprising: wealth makes an easy target for those in the trade and the summer home had predictably been stripped clean years ago. The windows were gone - some smashed but most carefully removed for the sake of the glass. The roof had collapsed in the east wing - years without maintenance to blame for that. Kitchen was bare - knives and pots too valuable to leave behind. Wood taken for firestarters, clothing taken for bandages and bedlining. No hope of jewelry being overlooked. Even the floor safe in the master bedroom had been torn up and smashed open. Likely nothing of worth in there, unless the lucky thief wanted gold for ballast or deeds for toilet paper. The well in the central courtyard still had water. No bucket, but water - cold and heavy and barely gritty. Small mercies. The Jackal refilled their canteens (tying each one to a length of string), drank up, refilled again. All the while, they kept ears open. Nothing but the dull wind. Not even an ambush of curious dune mice. Years in the trade prevented the Jackal from ever relaxing, but they settled into a state that approximated it and let their mind drift to topics unconcerned with survival and safety. The crumbling west wall of the courtyard, shielded from the worst of the wind, still bore the icon of the Lords of the World. Green lion rampant, bleeding sun. Tongues of fire? The Jackal cast their mind back to what their grandfather had told them about the signs of House Leoviridius and their meaning, but found nothing. Grandfather had plenty to say about the Leoviridians, far more than anyone with real troubles could keep track of. "Officious cousin-fuckers", he was fond of saying that. Ranting about how they didn't know how good they had it, that they'd never seen a real sandstorm season and you can't trust anyone who'll sell you piss and call it water. He was right about the sandstorms. When things were first falling apart, he spent his days in a constant chorus of "Told you! Told you just how it was!" He kept it up till he died. In retrospect it was a bizarre thing to take pride in, but the Jackal was charitable to the old man's memory. He'd been through enough to earn that. The Jackal rested there for a few hours before they departed by the leeward road down out of the hills. They died ten days later, stabbed in the throat in a roadside mugging. The IDRS Madrid out of Arcturus, still the closest vessel that could provide aid, was thirty-nine years away. The sands would engulf the villa well before then.

Written by Dan from Throne of Salt 

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This is a shared fever dream with no end an no beginning.

A communal acid trip.

They have been here forever.

They have been here for thirty seconds.

They were never here at all.

From Weather, episode four of the second season of Midst 

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Ilustración inspirada en el juego de rol Vaults of Vaarn de Leo Hunt