Tuesday, July 19, 2011

The Leech Lord

It's been a while since I've done an ASOIAF piece (and I have other longer blog posts to write!)...buuuut A Dance With Dragons has been filling my free time with tales of Westeros and the Free Cities and I can't let Sam have all the fun with his ASOIAF portraits!


Roose Bolton only sporadically shows up in the books, but I think he is one of the most physically described side characters. His most cited feature is his disturbingly pale eyes, like chips of dirty ice. Though past 40, his pallid skin is absent of any lines, wrinkles or distinguishing marks. His face isn't handsome but not quite plain either, and his physique is neither fat, nor thin, nor muscular.

The Boltons are a shadier branch of the Stark bannermen, and Roose is a deceptively soft spoken and calculating lord. The Bolton house sigil, a bloody flayed man upon a pink field, hints at the twisted ancestry he shares his surname with. Roose's mannerly but callous nature is often overshadowed by the brutal acts of violence his bastard son Ramsay is allowed to commit. Lord Bolton is known for frequently leeching himself and touts it as the secret to long life, but it's said that his constant leechings have drained him of both color and emotion.

So whaddaya think, should I just go ahead and replace all future illustrations of happy, pleasant ladies with disturbing men?

For anyone interested in more ASOIAF art, I was recently a part of a ASOIAF art zine-- "Blood Magic". You can browse the list of artists or order a zine for yourself here.
I have also been informed there are still some posters of mine available over at 1200 Posters. Nab one yourself, or check out the new poster up for sale.

10 comments:

ed said...

Is this all digital? Loving the subtle textures, Kali! Might I ask how you achieved them?

Unknown said...

Superb! :)

ANTONIO CUESTA said...

NIce!!

Kai Schüttler said...

I like it a lot, his armor looks cool!I'd like to see more like this one:)

Craig Phillips said...

He's wonderful! Great piece!

Kali Ciesemier said...

Thanks everyone!!
Eamonn-- Yup, all digital! I was experimenting with different texture layers...I have a set of subtly colored texture scans in there that I set into different layer modes (like Color Burn, Divide, and Linear Light-- on low opacities.)
Then on top of that I also have some texture "stamps" that were created by scanning in a b&w texture, then making it into a large (like 2500pixel) photoshop brush. I stamped the texture over the image a bunch of different times & used different layer modes/opacity (linear burn, lighten, multiply), plus layer masks to selectively erase areas of the texture.

Basically I've just been playing around with using texture layers in layer modes A WHOLE LOT recently. It's pretty fun, and you get some surprising results sometimes.

sdawk said...

You see a lot more of him in Dance With Dragons, glad you took on his eyes.

Sara said...

I featured your artwork here: http://asofai.tumblr.com/post/8700704086/by-kali-ciesemier

this one is awesome. really really well done. you've got some serious talent!

DK said...

This is an excellent piece. You really captured Roose Bolton well, down to his unnerving stare and "smile." So many details rendered flawlessly, down to the rondels on his armor. I love it.

Unknown said...

This might be my favorite ASOIAF fan picture!