Hello nTOPAZites! For the alien eyeball's first foray into this friendly art fracas we are heading through the Ogre-Faced Arch of Stonehell Dungeon. Buckle your bucklers and fasten your helmets, we are heading in!

Stonehell Dungeon

Stonehell Dungeon is a fictional "megadungeon" setting created by Michael Curtis, intended for D&D and other similar pen and paper roleplaying games. I was active in the old school D&D blogging scene at the time Michael was self-publishing the first Stonehell book, and I responded to a call for artists he put out on his blog.

Michael asked if I could draw the "Ogre-Faced Arch", explaining in an email:

It's become an icon of Stonehell and my own attempts to render it don't do it much justice. I've attached my concept sketch to this email to give you an idea of what I had in mind.

Here is the concept sketch from Michael:

Ogre-Faced Arch concept sketch by Michael Curtis provided for reference

FINAL IMAGE

@carlgnash - pencil and PhotoShop

PROCESS

I decided to stay pretty close to the concept sketch compositionally with a straight on look down the hallway through the Ogre-Faced Arch, adding a couple of torches in sconces on the wall for a light source. The major change I did was to include lower teeth, and to make the lips/sides of the mouth form the arch itself.

First rough composition sketch with lots of scribbled notes on dimensions for the final drawing:

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A study I did for the teeth - I don't remember what kind of animal teeth I was using as a reference here:

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Another quick composition sketch messing around with different proportions for the arch and a different idea for the lower teeth:

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I actually made a mockup of the scene with a cardboard box taking the place of the dungeon corridor and a hair dresser's dummy head serving as the ogre, so I could take some reference photos for lighting. This was probably totally unnecessary work as far as the final result was concerned, but it was fun :)

My original photography, my dummy head, my candles, my cardboard box :)

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I also pulled together some reference images of stone walls and cobblestone floors. I wanted to do two different styles of masonry in the image; a rougher hewn, more irregular stone wall and cobblestone floor leading up to the ogre-faced arch, and a better constructed wall and floor at the arch and beyond composed of larger cut stone blocks.

This is a small detail and probably not something you would notice without me telling you, but it is the kind of thing that actually matters in old school dungeon crawl role playing games. Changes in the architecture of the dungeon often hold clues to the original inhabitants of the dungeon. Someone paying attention would realize they were passing out of one "zone" of the dungeon into another because of the change in construction.

Stone wall & floor references - property of the original photographers, thumbnail resolution displayed here as fair use in reporting process

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Mid-Process - shading walls and floor

Mid-Process - getting close

Proof of Ogre-Face

@carlgnash holding the original Ogre-Faced Arch drawing. Note my t-shirt!

Michael was quite happy with my drawing. I gave him permission to use the art however he wanted, and in addition to including it in the book he used it on a line of t-shirts (sending me one as a thank you). If you want your own Stonehell Dungeon t-shirt with my art on it, you can get it right here! https://www.zazzle.com/stonehell