What's on My Desk: Harry Potter Painted Journals

This week I've put away the miniatures and I'm back to work painting journals for my collaboration with Sweet Olive Books.  This next batch includes everything from Hunger Games to Harry potter, taking inspiration from well established and already beloved designs and also a number of originals I've crafted myself.

Let's take a look at what I have on my desk so far..

From Slytherin green to gothic baroque, there's a beautiful spectrum of colors to the covers to be painted.

Though the colors look great, and Jessie Alexander did a fantastic job hand-crafting them, there's still designs to be painted on their covers.  To to that, the first step is to create a stencil.   For each, I took a regular piece of 8 1/2 x 11 printer paper and sketched a design onto it in pencil before going back over the final draft with a fine tipped black sharpie.  Not only does this create a template from which to make more, but it also prevents you from having to edit on the cover and run the risk of marring it with eraser blemishes.

Here's the stencil I created for House Hufflepuff, it doesn't look like much now, but just wait!

After I transfered the design with a piece of graphite paper and a stylus to the journal's cover (a process I'll detail in a later post) I broke out the paints and finally got to work bringing the design to life in earnest.  At this point it was really rewarding to see the badger in full color and get a feel for what the end piece would look like.  Another hour and the finished project would look like...

I wanted each great house's coat to have a very individual feel, apart from their animal sigil and the arms' colors.  The helm and breastplate at the top was the perfect to add some extra details.  Hufflepuff's armor is surrounded by food and drink, indicative of the welcoming nature of its members and their hospitality.  In contrast, Slytherin's coat is decorated with the poisonous blooms nightshade and hemlock. 

A simpler, but by no means less elegant, design finished for Harry Potter is this HP cover.  Though it's not nearly as complex as a house crest I still think it looks quite nice!

Many of the journals Jessie and I are making come in two sizes, small and medium.  This Twilight journal is the same as one that I painted before, but this time its in a larger size.  The smaller size is perfect for a personal journal and the medium is a great size for keeping track of character stats in role playing games.  In fact, we plan to launch a line just for that purpose!

That's it for this week and the look at what's on my desk.  Come back next week and I'll be showing off a bunch of cool Urdaggar tribesmen for Freeblades.

Thanks for stopping by, and as always, happy hobbying and good gaming!