I love commissioning artwork of my D&D and novel characters–and now I’ve managed to do both at the same time! I’m currently working on adapting a D&D campaign written by my hubs, Quinn Sellers (who is now a dungeon master for hire) into a true novel format for young adults, and I commissioned Rachel Denton to bring my three main characters to life.
This post is to highlight Rachel Denton, or @tallinier on Twitter, and her clean, bold and beautiful drawing style. You can also find her on Instagram, Twitch, YouTube, and Artstation. She’s also on Patreon, and that’s pretty much the best way to get onto her commissions list. Here’s an example of her artistic mastery, with my three commissioned characters on top:
Rachel is a delight to work with, and she’s incredibly fast, highly skilled, and intuitive. She communicates really well and did an amazing job on my characters and their baby dragons.
In fact, as a means of motivating myself to finish the outline for this story (it’s a bit scary, drafting a new novel for the first time…I’ve been editing Imaginary for a while now), I created a mock book cover for the new story using my married name.
If you want to see Rachel’s drawing process in progress, you can always check her out on Twitch or her older videos on YouTube. Below is her drawing of the character I played in the D&D campaign, Nitzee, a forest druid with a deaf green baby dragon named Sashi. Nitzee is the eldest of three sisters on a desperate quest to save all dragon kind when their village is destroyed by invading dragon hunters.
For a bit of fun, I still have some pictures of this campaign (below). My husband started the campaign out as a one-shot to teach his sister and her friend the rules and mechanics of D&D 5th Edition, and they liked it so much they wanted to keep going (I also thoroughly enjoyed playing with the girls). The campaign turned into a year-long adventure over the course of 10 sessions, 4-5 hours each. It was so much fun, and it was also the very last time I failed to take detailed notes about a campaign. Thankfully, Quinn is a great DM and outlined his sessions in advance, and kept his notes to help with remembering the broad strokes of the story we’re telling.
Back to the purpose of this post: I’ve commissioned several artists before, and I would highly recommend joining Rachel Denton’s services to learn from her and to try to get your characters drawn by her. She is so gifted and truly does give life to these fantasy creatures that normally only live in the theater of our minds.
If you’re interested in learning more about hiring a dungeon master to run a game for you, check out my husband’s services and feel free to contact him about his availability! I’m sure he looks forward to talking with you!
lauren-hanley-brady-la-mesa-attorney, lauren-brady-sellers, lauren-sellers, hanley-brady, lauren-hanley-brady-san-diego-attorney
