***SPOILER ALERT***

This post contains fan art depicting many scenes in The Warded Man and The Desert Spear. If you are still reading and don’t want to know what happens until you read it, tread carefully. I don’t think seeing the art will really ruin anything, but that’s a subjective thing. Proceed with caution.

Deviant Art (DA) is like facebook for artists, ranging from amateur to professional (and often line between the two is VERY hard to guess). There are so many incredibly talented amateur artists on DA that I am filled with joy at the creative power of humanity united under the internet.

I’ve had a DA account for a a few years, first created created so I could comment on Lauren K. Cannon’s original Arlen painting back in the day.  I have used the account quite a bit since, looking at and commenting on  the occasional bit of fan art google alerts pointed me to, as happened on Friday morning when a random alert pointed me to this incredible piece of pro-grade fucking awesome, Renna Tanner strangling the life out of  a wood demon:

This amazing pic is by Claire Adele. You can see more of her art here:  http://a-d-e-l-e.deviantart.com

On a whim, I checked the mail on my DA account (something I almost never do), and played with the search engine using keywords like “Warded Man” and “Desert Spear”, unwittingly opening myself up to a VAST treasure trove of warded riches heretofore unknown. I spent the next few hours in a joy-filled fugue as I looked at my characters, who are like family to me, coming to life before my very eyes. It was a heady and incredibly emotional morning, and to be honest, I am still dancing in the clouds of that natural high.

Collected in this post, by permission of the artists, are some of the images I found. I would like to note that I have ONLY posted images that I have gotten permission for. On rare occasions when I was overexcited and in a hurry I have posted fan art people have sent me without getting permission first, and the artists have never seemed to mind, but overall I try hard to practice good nettiquette and respect people’s rights to their art, even if it is fan based.

There is a war going on over the internet, with one army full of assholes eager to censor every little thing they can, and the other full of assholes determined to steal everything they can no matter who it hurts. Both sides are wrong, and their battle will go on eternally. But I don’t need to partake in it, and neither do you. We can just act civilized of our own accord. It’s not that hard to exercise the incredible power and freedom the internet gives us without being an asshole about it. We all have our missteps, and should be forgiving of one another when we can, but when people work hard on something, we should also be respectful and not say intentionally hurtful things for the purse sadistic thrill, or worse, just steal it.

There were a lot more images than what you will see below, more than I could have possibly had time to post in any event. Most of these are public on the artists’ respective DA sites sites. You can see an ongoing collection of thumbnails and links to the images in my DA favorites gallery: http://peatb.deviantart.com/favourites/.

If you like an artist’s work, give their pages some traffic. All of these artists have lots of other amazing images to peruse.

Here by permission:

This piece is by Grievere, an amazing rendition of Arlen’s first night out alone, surrounded by wood and rock and flame demons:

You can see more of Grievere’s work here: http://grievere.deviantart.com

Kite is a whole avalanche of of awesome. I pointed her out a few weeks ago on my twitter and facebook streams for her amazing Leesha portrait:

Since then, Kite has done three more incredible portraits, and has vowed to keep at it. Her bf, also a reader, is apparently jealous that one of their fav writers wrote to her, but dude, I’m the one who should be jealous. Check out her fabulous Arlen portrait:

Or her rendition of Inevera, so sexy it got flagged as naughty by some people’s work filters:

And just this morning, her portrait of Wonda Cutter. This may be Wonda’s first fan art appearance, and that makes me positively gleeful. I love Wonda.  When they put more hours in the day, I want to do a Wonda novella.

You can see more of Kite’s work here: http://kite-lupine-aquila.deviantart.com/

This next image is by Rainbow Sword, one of my first-ever German fans, and the first person to ever send me fan art. Her rainy-day gift a year or two ago was the inspiration for my first fan art competition. These are two images of hers, Jardir/Inevera and Bruna/Leesha, that I hadn’t even known about. They are great. Bruna is another character who could easily carry her own novella. Some day…

You can see more of Rainbow Sword here: http://rainbow-sword.deviantart.com/

Last but certainly not least is this fantastic Arlen and a rock demon by Ghost2:

You can see more of Ghost2 here: http://ghost2.deviantart.com/

One of my absolute favorites that I did not have permission to post at the time of this writing is this pic of Arlen clapping his hands to mock One Arm. Such a memorable scene, beautifully captured.
You can see it here.

Posted on January 16, 2011 at 2:45 pm by PeatB
Filed under Contests, Craft, Fan Art, Fans, Warded Art, Writing
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