What are your favorite resources to get a character portrait?
Internet clip art?
Draw it yourself?
Professional artist?
My gaming group happened upon an artist in Romania who we commissioned some art through. We got some individual characters done as well as gotten some "group shots" for our DM's. He's got some pretty reasonable rates if you folks are interested.
There's one who does some really good work here: http://falenavar.tripod.com//id19.html
I go through a professional artist. I'm running one of the best campaigns I've ever ran and the players are making it awesome. So I decided to go professional for character work.
www.oddgodpress.com/reillybrown
Check out his gallery. Keep in mind professional artists rely on commission work, so it isn't exactly cheap. I'm paying $70 for high quality work and if Reilly is slow on work can have something in 7-10 days. He's TOP NOTCH, as far as I'm concerned and I collect a LOT of fantasy art. For my best friend in the game as well as a birthday present, I asked for something spectacular. So we did a full background in a larger format. Cost me about $100. Printing it cost about $100 as well. It came out in 30x40 size. Stupid AWESOME. Most of his work is 8x11, but will adjust to whatever size you want to print it on. 8x11 image to 30x40 will look bad, so we made it 30x40 native and it's stunning. If you check out his color gallery, please do, the work he did for me are...
Ogre (my half ogre barbarian in another game).
Dwarven Cleric/Hammer of Moradin (notice animated sheild)
Dwarven Barbarian (that's the big one)
Ranger (kick butt flame sword)
Rouge (+3 flame whip) as the DM I hate that whip.
Do you have a link for Romonanio? I'd like to look at his work, I've been thinking of using a commision, I draw myself but I still thoroughly enjoy other people's art.
Check out his stuff at http://www.avatarart.com
What are some other resources out there?
What are some other resources out there?
I've had excellent luck with commissioning Kyle Hunter for pieces... they weren't character portraits, but any reader of Dragon and Dungeon magazines should be sufficiently familiar enough with his work. He's frequently backlogged with work, but his rates are very reasonable.
- Ashavan
I like drawing the chars as much as I like making their stats and back story
Me as well.
Recently, I've been surfing Elfwood and DeviantArt websites. The quality of artists varies on both from very amateur to professional, but you can get an idea of artists' styles. Many artists on elfwood do commissioned pieces for characters (NPC or PC).
Myself, I occasionally try to draw characters, but I'm not very good at it. Sometimes it is best to spend money on things one doesn't have time to get good at oneself.