Spotlight - Jon Hodgson, artist

I can't believe that I once turned down an offer from Jon Hodgson, via rpg.net, to post him my newly-acquired copy of the Dragon Warriors core rulebook for him to sign. Incredibly I politely declined. Why? I had already lost two copies of some sought-after books and one I had sent out in the Royal Mail and I was loathe to lose my copy of the book, as it had taken me a while to get hold of it. You may all line yourselves up and kick me up the arse.

This guy is one of my favourite artists. The atmosphere he invokes in his images is remarkable and his work for Dragon Warriors, and now Cubicle 7's new Middle-Earth RPG 'The One Ring' is stunning.

From his website at www.jonhodgson.com -

'At the time of writing Jon Hodgson is in his late 30s and lives in Scotland, UK though he happens to have been born south of the border in England.

His career has spanned art direction, set building, props making, graphic design, story boarding, historical illustration, card game art, board game art, computer games cut scene art, educational illustration and roleplaying game art.

So far in his short career (Ten or so years full time at the last count) Jon has made over 200 pieces of card art for collectable card games, solo illustrated 15 books with 30 plus illustrations each for Warhammer Historical, has provided cover art for some 30 gaming books as well as numerous pieces of packaging art, made illustrations for the biggest roleplaying game in the world - Dungeons and Dragons, as well as for some of the smallest. At one point he was a story boarder for the children's animated show Bob the Builder.

For the last 18 months Jon has been hard at work creating art for the forthcoming “The One Ring” rpg from Cubicle 7 Entertainment Ltd - a new Lord of the Rings roleplaying game, featuring the art of John Howe, Tomasz Jedrusek and Jon Hodgson.

Jon is also currently art director for Cubicle 7 Entertainment Ltd.

In 2009 David and Charles/Impact Books published Fantasy Art for Beginners written by Jon, which is available in all good bookshops.

Jon trained as a "fine artist", specialising in abstract painting. Apparently.

Jon uses an Apple iMac, Artrage, Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter X, a Wacom Intuos 3, and a lot of coffee. As well as pencils and paper, and very occasionally actual real paint.

Selected Clients: The BBC, Accenture, David & Charles, Wizards of The Coast, Games Workshop's various subsidiaries - Black Library, Sabertooth Games, Black Industries, Warhammer Historical, Upper Deck, Paizo, Cubicle 7, Ulisses Spiele, Uhrwerk Verlag, Euromoney Magazine, Digital Artist Magazine, Drumond Park, Red Redemption, Project Quest John Adams Trading, Magnum Opus Press, Mongoose Publishing, Green Ronin, Alderac Entertainment Group, Hot Animation'

Hopefully, Jon will continue to illustrate Dragon Warriors now that he is part of Serpent King Games who are re-releasing the game with new material.

In fact, the guy has a talent I'm horrendously jealous of, so just forget you read this blog entry, yeah? And don't even think of going over to his Deviant Art page.