'Malcolm & Howard in the Park' - digital painting
As well as continuing dev on 3HEX at break-brain pace, I'm still relying on select personal commissions.
Here's the latest. It's a photograph of Malcolm X and H P Lovecraft, enjoying hanging out at a park in 1976. Yes, you read that right.
'Malcolm & Howard in the Park'
Digital painting as support media for a client's Delta Green RPG campaign
I'm really proud of this work. It's the culmination (to date!) of decades of experimentation with digital art.
The process here is iterative. I take source from my own pen sketches, stock libraries, from photos I take myself, and some 3d bits I do in Blender, too, and photobash it all together with actual DIGITALLY painted stuff!
A lot of the process is semi-automated. Kinda throwing filters on stuff. It involves dozens of layers, artfully intertwined.
The subject[s] of the picture has/have drawn, publicly, some flak.
HP Lovecraft was an unredeemable racist. Pairing him with a renowned black activist... Yeah. That's too much for some people, and I get it.
Mone-the-less, the brief on this is more than clear--it depicts an image from an alternate reality that is wildly counter to the reality we know. That discordance is, for the players, undeniable evidence that media from an alternate reality is leaching into our own.
And, this from me, rather than the client: I think the piece is hopeful. It speaks to potential redemption, for even the most heinous of beliefs.
That concept of mercy and grace is something almost entirely absent from current political and cultural discourse.
It is actually possible, still, in 2025, to admit that you were wrong, and ask forgiveness.
Love remains real, despite the overwhelming hate.
All images and final artwork © 2025 Quire Graphics.