So those two Let’s Illustrates I did were a lot of fun and they did help me get over that first big artistic hurdle of “What should I draw for practice?”
But now that I’m starting to get in the habit of practicing the time required to play a game and keep a journal and organize reference screen shots and whatnot is actually getting in the way of practicing the actual art. So now I have a new plan!
I have purchased a set of Rory’s Story Cubes, Voyage edition. It’s a set of nine dice with adventure themed pictures on them instead of numbers. These things are really handful for anybody whose creativity needs a little head start. Want a random short story idea? A theme for your next game of Dungeons and Dragons? Maybe… inspiration for a piece of pixel art?
In my case I use them by rolling all nine dice, choosing four that seem to fit together well and then that’s the theme of my next pixel drawing.
For example, the first time I rolled them I picked out a submarine, a shield, a cauldron and an empty fuel gauge.
So I thought a little and came up with this:
A deep sea diver (submarine) wearing one of those metal plated old diving suits (shield). He’s underwater examining a pipe for carrying oil that can be refined (cauldron) into usable fuel (fuel gauge).