Warhammer 40K fanart-Asurmen
Completed: June 2002

I actually drew this on a whim. When I do fanart things, they don't turn out as well as this one. When it was starting to look good, I wanted to use it as a studio project. But, it's fanart, so it don't count. Asurmen is, to a non-40K player, a very ancient warrior. He is reincarnated time and time again over thousands of years because it is his soul, not his body, that lives on within the armour. I had this piece critiqued by an artist who rendered Asurmen for a card game. This is what she had to say:

Your art: Nice design and composition; the pose, with all the angled lines and curves conveys a sense of action and drama. You've filled the page, which is a good thing (you'd be surprised how some people have a hard time with that). Line quality on the inks looks good (it's strong and clear where it needs to be). The hatch lines could be a bit more consistently used, as in: shading (right now it looks as if you're using the hatching for the metal parts, but you've also got it in the crest for texture, whereas the metal wouldn't be textured, but rather have strong darks and highlights; you don't hatch the shadowed parts on the rest of him, though--or rather, only bits. It might be better if you chose to go one way or the other with the hatching. Lots of half-tones, consistently (depicting shadowing or whatever), or stick with fewer hatching and a more graphic look. Try to use your lines, solid blacks and hatching/half-tones to make the images stronger and more understandable--as in creating shadows to better convey the 3D-ness of the form and to make the figure distinct from the background, etc. But all this is just nit-picking (as in: it's no big deal--the over-all look is fine). But while I'm nit-picking, the left elbow looks a big constricted in places, compared to the thickness of his upper arm and lower arm. Again, no big deal. Overall, it's a pretty nice piece. 'Hope this helps!

This was her artwork (click on the image to go to her site):