My Art Blog

Saturday, 1 March 2025

Island of the Lizard King Map

 


I have now completed the next Fighting Fantasy map, book number 7 Island of the Lizard King .... A3 prints are now available to purchase via Ebay or Etsy ;-)

Hopefully you and Mungo (RIP!) can destroy the Lizard King!

Map prints for books numbers 1 - 7 & 10; Warlock of Firetop Mountain, Citadel of Chaos, Forest of Doom, Starship Traveller, City of Thieves, Deathtrap Dungeon & House of Hell are also available to purchase from the above links.  

Official Fighting Fantasy website: https://www.fightingfantasy.com

Fighting Fantasy is a trademark owned by Steve Jackson & Ian Livingstone.  All rights reserved.  



Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Wednesday, 11 December 2024

House of Hell Fighting Fantasy Map Completed








I have now completed the next Fighting Fantasy map, book number 10 House of Hell .... A3 prints are now available to purchase via Ebay or Etsy ;-)

Don't let Lord Kelnor know you have the map especially as it will help you acquire the Kriss Knife!

Map prints for books numbers 1 - 6; Warlock of Firetop Mountain, Citadel of Chaos, Forest of Doom, Starship Traveller, City of Thieves and Deathtrap Dungeon are also available to purchase from the above links.  

Official Fighting Fantasy website: https://www.fightingfantasy.com

Fighting Fantasy is a trademark owned by Steve Jackson & Ian Livingstone.  All rights reserved.  




Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Monday, 23 September 2024

Deathtrap Dungeon Fighting Fantasy Map Completed

I have now completed the next Fighting Fantasy map, book number 6 Deathtrap Dungeon .... A3 prints are available to purchase through all good book shops, ahem I mean Ebay or Etsy ;-)

Again, I really enjoyed drawing and painting this one and redrawing my favourite illustrations ... probably the seated Dwarf is my favourite

As normal I have listed and shown each item available to pick up during the book, and number any rooms you can enter ... certainly helps you to complete the book, without giving too much away, plus the A3 maps look great on the wall :-)

Official Fighting Fantasy website: https://www.fightingfantasy.com

Fighting Fantasy is a trademark owned by Steve Jackson & Ian Livingstone.  All rights reserved. 

Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sunday, 24 March 2024

Fighting Fantasy Maps

I was absolutely delighted to sign a licence with Fighting Fantasy (Steve Jackson and Sir Ian Livingstone) to produce maps of their books.

To those not in the know, Fighting Fantasy is a series of Choose your own adventures books where the player plays through the book in a nonlinear fashion.  Fighting Fantasy differentiated itself from other Choose your own adventure books by introducing dice and stats.  The books usually had 400 "entries" and the player had to make a series of decisions and turn to that particular entry .... i.e. "Do you take the left fork in the road turn to 236, or follow the thief and go right, turn to 85".

The books started in 1982 and are still being produced Today!  59 books have been released selling over 20 million copies in total!

So far I have produced maps for the 1st five books; The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, The Citadel of Chaos, The Forest of Doom, Starship Traveller and the City of Thieves.

I spent ages replaying the books to work out all the paths through the books and identifying all the items you can pick up along the way.

I also redraw the maps multiple times till I am happy with the final draft version.  Then on good quality watercolour paper I did the final drawing and paint it with various watercolour layers on top.  Finally I scan in the map before working on it digitally to tidy it up and finish it off 

My Maps are available to buy through either my Ebay or Etsy page

Official Fighting Fantasy website: https://www.fightingfantasy.com

Fighting Fantasy is a trademark owned by Steve Jackson & Ian Livingstone.  All rights reserved. 






Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Friday, 15 March 2024

Westheart Album Cover

Was delighted to collaborate with the super talented @westheartmusic on the cover for his album "The Space Between Darkness & Light".  

Beautiful ambient mindful music, available to stream now.  

Head over to https://www.westheart.co.uk/ to listen to the album.

For the painting we discussed ideas about what feelings he wanted to evoke for the cover.  After a few sketches and some chat we agreed on the outline.

The original painting was built with up lots and lots of watercolour layers on A5 paper. I then scanned in the painting and worked on it digitally until we were both happy with it.  



Saturday, 17 October 2020

The Wizards' Library - Recognition

When I started drawing and painting again in May 2019, I certainly didn't expect to get any recognition.  But I've been so happy and surprised to get recognition twice for my Wizard's Library painting


Firstly, I entered the painting in a National competition (TALP Open 2020) a few months ago (not really in any hope and certainly not in expectation) and a few weeks later I found it out that the painting was "Highly Commended" and had been selected to be displayed in their virtual gallery of winners.  I was super chuffed :-)

Here's a link to the comp  TALP Open 2020

I'm quite active on the biggest online art gallery, Deviantart (48 million accounts!).  In Early October  my Wizard's Library painting was selected for a Daily Deviation (Deviantart select a few paintings every day for this honour).  Again I super chuffed and very proud! :-) 

Daily Deviation Award

It certainly makes the weeks I took to paint this worthwhile :-)


Tuesday, 18 February 2020

Painting Hogwarts - Part 2

Okay, with the sky more of less finished, I moved onto Hogwarts itself and the hillside.
I wanted to place lots of artificial lights and moon light to create a contrast between the dark night.  I love the contrast between night time and artificial lights, and paintings with flat light do not interest me.
For the dark night colours I mixed up some blue, black and white.  I wanted to add the blue, as pure grey wouldn't have been very interesting.  To contrast this I used some warm yellow and a little white to create the artificial light and it's affect on it's surroundings.

To paint the dark areas at this point a used just maybe 3 tones of the blue/black mix ... a bit like the cel shading technique.  I then used the dry brush technique to add in the warm yellow once the blue/black was dry (the "dry brush" technique is when you have just a little bit of paint on your brush and you even try to rub some of that off with a tissue).  Then draw your brush lightly over and over the area till the paint starts to take to the surface and continue till you get the correct amount ... I do love this technique!  But you probably want to use an old brush as it can ruin it eventually.

I then moved onto the water.  this was done quite quickly with an initial flat all over very dark grey with some blue, then once this dried, I used the dry brush technique again with a large brush and a much lighter version of the base colour (just added some white). to create the "peaks" of the waves which are obviously lighter in colour.  I also added the moonlight hitting the water.  To create some depth I made the waves bigger as I got more into the foreground.


You can see it is starting to take shape now :-)

Next, it was a lot of tidying up and adding more artificial light sources (to give loads of lovely contrast).  I then used the dry brush technique again to show the light hitting the hill side / buildings.  I maybe went to town on this a bit much .. but I think it looks okay?

I added some light reflections on the water too (did I mention I love painting light reflections on water :-) ).  To do this just add a horizontal line of yellow etc on the "peak" of the wave .. it's a very easy effect and looks pretty good.


To finish the painting I added all the year 1 pupils from Hogwarts (so Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley etc) taking the boats over to Hogwarts with Hagrid.

Again, I added yet more artificial light in their little torches and more reflections of this on the water.  Then painted the boats dark blue/grey ... just slightly lighter than the water.  Finally, I added the light contrast on the boat edges and the pupils heads ... and it was finished ... apart from signing it :-)


Hope you like it, any C&C welcome.

If you're interested, I have this painting for sale on Etsy.

http://www.ScottMackayArt.co.uk

My Art Blog


  Instagram   Facebook   Ebay   Etsy   DeviantArt

  Me with two of my paintings     My Fighting Fantasy Maps