news
what’s up at the portable city
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Swords Without Master has arrived!
I come to you with unmatched good news! The glorious tabletop RPG Swords Without Master is being released as a standalone book! The game is live on kickstarter, awaiting your support to manifest itself in the most glorious and fitting form: a book, custom dice, and a true dragon’s hoard of art in the form keep reading
personal blog
the shel news
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two years of arm stuff? 26 months of arm stuff, more precisely…
So you may have noticed a dearth of arm updates, blogging on the experience, et cetera! I still have a… read more
longer reads
bigger ideas and more to look at
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Painting the Great Bear for Swords Without Master
For this painting I spent more time than I honestly expected wrestling with my style goals. In the context of my arm recovery, I’ve been trying to figure out a stylistic angle for myself going forward as an illustrator. Over the past few months I’ve been doing style tests, digitally and then on paper, trying
in art
Photography Blogging
digital camera snaps and thoughts
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New Macro Conversion Lens!
My partner gave me this Raynox DCR-250 Super Macro Conversion Lens for christmas! It clips onto the end of all my other lenses, and lets me take photos like these: It’s going to be an…
in photo -
Achievement! 1000+ Observations on iNaturalist!
In honour of taking enough photos and spending the time to categorize them and crop them and geotag them and sort them into distinct observations to have crossed the 1000 observations milestone on iNaturalist, I…
in photo -
heard you was…
…talkin shit (done in tribute to an infinitely delightful series of photos by msd on the curious quail blog)
in photo -
Camera people – what bags do you love?
I now have a beautiful new digital mirrorless camera + gorgeous telephoto lens to take on adventures! But I cannot willingly do so without a protective case. What I’d like is a very lightweight sling…
in photo
Art Blogging
paintings and drawings and more
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Painting the Great Bear for Swords Without Master
For this painting I spent more time than I honestly expected wrestling with my style goals. In the context of my arm recovery, I’ve been trying to figure out a stylistic angle for myself going…
in art
Concept Art Blogging
professional vis dev work
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Early Environment Concepts for Young Suns
I had the pleasure of contributing a couple environments to the early development of Young Suns, from KO_OP Games. Working with art director GP Lackey was great; we went from a broad brief to two…
in concept art
Comics Blogging
comics of many kinds
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A Brief Guide to (early onset) Wizard Puberty
A Brief Guide to (early onset) Wizard Puberty is a silly but sincere explanation for bystanders of what is happening when their friends become disabled, as narrated by a very tired wizard. This comic has…
in comics
Pocket Dungeon Blogging
system agnostic ttrpg modules that come in a cute pouch
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The Ghost Houses of Phylinecra – Pocket Dungeon Zine & Pocket Pack
The Ghost Houses of Phylinecra is a system-agnostic, story-heavy dungeon crawl about a community recovering after disaster, and how a goddess might try to understand mortal grief. The village of Phylinecra was a tight-knit community of artists and creatives, until it suffered a devastating flood. In the aftermath, as the survivors try to salvage their […]
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The Corruption of Pelursk – Pocket Dungeon Pack
The Corruption of Pelursk is a system-agnostic tabletop RPG hexcrawl/dungeon, written by Shel Kahn. The Isle of Pelursk holds a glowing, steaming, mist-shrouded secret at its heart, and once you’ve entered its clutches it does not want to let you leave. Designed to fit easily as a sidequest into an ongoing campaign or stand confidently…
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Keep on the Shining Isle – Pocket Pack
Keep on the Shining Isle is a system-agnostic dungeon featuring a haunted ruin, a mystery cult and some very tempting apples. Pick this up to send your home campaign on a memorable sidequest, or try out your favourite new system with this 1-2 session scenario. Written and published by Shel Kahn as the first of many…
Teaching Blogging
professional vis dev work
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Teaching Comics, Zine-making and Visual Literacy at OSF
In autumn 2017, I taught a four week comics course at the Oasis Skateboard Factory, an alternative highschool within the Toronto District Schoolboard. OSF has a project-focused curriculum, so our comic project was multifaceted, to…
in teaching
the feed
pinned thoughts and quick snapshots
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The Bear – for Swords Without Master
We are inching ever closer every day to the launch of the Swords Without Master kickstarter, which I am involved with as the art director…
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snow macro experiment #2
lots of macro techniques to be learned now, so I can get deep into macro bugs next spring!
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Paper Test Wizard Adventure #4
Testing more paper by sending the wizard to a very, very colourful realm: This paper test was scaled up to 9 x 12″, and it…
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Paper Test Wizard Adventure #3
Further paper tests allow further wizardry – this time in a more contemplative mode, though. A second test run with the hot press cotton paper…
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Paper Test Wizard Adventure #2
Another paper test as an excuse to paint this wizard doing a little treasure hunting in a dark forest. For this one I switched to…
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Paper Test Wizard Adventure #1
I have some new papers to test out and how better to test them than to paint a wizard on a journey? Here’s their first…
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Style Test – fantastic skyscraper reinterpretation
Another style experiment, this time done 95% in Procreate. This one has me using a photo I took in highschool of a courtyard downtown that…
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Digital Style Exploration – Building Fantasy from a Photo
This was a 100% Clip Studio digital painting, based on a photo of mine from a visit to Hay River in the Northwest Territories; the…
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Style Explorations – Landscape with Figures Study
Another photo study, but I took this one into Clip Studio after doing the first pass in procreate, which let me use the smarter selection…
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Style Exploration – Digital Paint with Dark Inked Lines
This was reffing a photo on pinterest; I wanted to refocus on how I want to handle stylizing figures. I am slowly starting to nail…
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Style Test – Lineless Film Study
Another film still study, this one from Snow White and the Huntsman. This piece was done in Clip Studio, with a selection tool approach and…
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Latest Comments:
the finished piece is beautiful, and i love your writeup! the two separate notans is a wonderful idea and i…
Thankyouuuuu! I think the Jack of Hearts might be my fav too – I would love a whole story about…
Ahh same, here’s hoping these find a home on paper someday!
Ahh thanks for the kind words! I would love to know if you did end up picking these up and…
Website Details:
This site is built to be a conversation and archive and digital garden.
Links to Enjoy:
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Artist! Chris Hüth
chrishuth.com
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Artist! Mary Verhoeven
sob-comix.com
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High Level Pencil Skills Videos
Sometimes you spend eight years of your life in post-secondary art training of various types, and then a further 14…
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Jey Pawlik Explains RSS!
One of my fav tech savvy cartoonists wrote up a huge post on what RSS is, how you can use…
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Laura’s angle on iNaturalist
I’m enjoying not only posting on and browsing photos via iNaturalist, I’m also having a blast seeing how other people…
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Shing Yin Khor’s “Make Little Guys”
https://www.patreon.com/posts/make-little-guys-112268885
I would be super interested in a write-up on what all those test were exploring.