Burnt the Half-Orc Ranger

Burnt the Half-Orc Ranger was raised by his Mama Fern out in the woods. From an early age, he learned how to hunt, survive, and defend the creatures of the forest against raging dragons, which Mama Fern and Burnt did until she passed away.

He lives alone with no companion animals, though he does know a handful of humans from the small sea port of Nisbeth, including Margot, a thief who sometimes stays with him out in the woods to avoid arrest.

There was also a human stranger he cared for, for a short period of time, by the name of Voss. The two men became close, and when Voss vanished, Burnt began looking for him.

The Halberd he carries was the one Mama Fern used when she was alive, and he uses it more for combat and self-defense than any other weapon on his person. Also, the sight of it being held by Burnt is enough to scare fighters away from trying to challenge him.

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Burnt is one of my favorite characters to play in Dungeons & Dragons, and he’ll be in a story along with Margot (the aforementioned thief) and Auxaton, whom I mentioned more in this post and this post. I’m writing out bits and pieces of his story on my breaks at the day job.

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This piece was done in colored pencils. I talked a bit about how I started it in this post I made recently, but to sum up:

I drew this with graphite pencils first, then colored a layer of white colored pencil on top of it to seal the value scales and preserve the shadows. Then I added the colored pencils on top of that white layer.

Each color took at least two layers of colors (not counting white) blended together. Some colors are as many as five colors blended together. I had no colorless blender while making this, so I just used various pressures of cross-hatching, from light to hard. The paper was Strathmore Toned Tan sketchbook paper, which is my favorite paper to use for making colored pencil illustrations.

That reminds me, I have Rendr marker paper in a brand new sketchbook and a metric butt-ton of markers to use. Perhaps the next illustration I do will be marker-based.

Here’s the thing – I actually kind of love colored pencils because of the pure colors that can come out of it. However, it took me an extra long time to finish this Burnt piece (hehe, pun), so I’m not sure I want to use colored pencils for a while… at least until I can get myself a colorless blender. I’m much more used to working in Copic markers, my number one tool in making comics.

It was good to take a step out of my usual comfort zone of marker-dom by making this piece, though. It taught me a lot about color usage and the importance of having a value scale of gray as an under-sketch under your work: it helps you see in the piece where the colors may accidentally bleed into each other and become muddy.

Seriously, though, my next illustration will be in markers. And then the one after that may be watercolors. I have some ideas for the watercolor one…

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading!

You. Are. Awesome.

P.S. Patrons on Patreon actually got to see this art piece a day early. If you want to be part of the super secret awesome club and help fund future illustrations, consider pledging on Patreon.