Panel artwork sneak preview and Wormseal stamp

I'm back from a ZBrush workshop I gave at the Media Design Hochschule in Düsseldorf and I guess it's about time for an update. I had a real struggle with my first panel artwork. I was trying too hard to be especially smart with my painting and totally screwed up. Although I had chosen a technique that should speed things up, I was slow and although I tried to be flexible by using a lot of layers in Photoshop I never arrived at the right result. I discarted a lot of work in the last weeks and started to get really nervous. The worst thing was, that my first painting sessions wheren't fun at all. They felt like work. I tried to figure out what exactly my problem was and again tricked myself by coming up with all sorts of smart reasons why my work didn't turn out right. Before I went on my workshop, I was really lost.

It's always helpful to get out when you're stuck with a problem. The workshop lasted for three days and I lived in a hotel during that time and my daily routine was completely changed. I got distracted from all the theories about my painting problems in my head and finally had my breakthrough when I started painting without worrying too much about the result. I was in a hotel room and couldn't expect a perfect result anyway, right? I used a minimum of layers, worked completely unstructured and relied on my gut feeling. The result turned out satisfying and, most importantly, was fun. I think I'll be able to relax about the whole thing now and just paint my graphic novel. I don't know why things that should be so easy turn out to be so hard sometimes. It's all in the head. We shouldn't use our heads too much when it comes to certain things, I guess.

Here's a first sneak preview from my first panel artwork. I don't want to show too much before the first chapter is released and therefore it's only a small fragment:

And there's another thing to show you! Two weeks ago I received an item that I had ordered over the internet:

It's a stamp of the Wormseal! It is 6 centimeters in diameter and produces a very detailed, forgery-safe mark which looks especially cool in red color. I'm planning to offer a wide range of low priced digital prints of selected panel artwork from the Wormworld Saga online graphic novel as soon as the first chapter is released. Every print will be hand signed and marked with the Wormseal stamp in order to create a unique collector's item for everyone who wants to support my project. I'm really looking forward to making these available to you.