Image of two battle axe illustrations in front of a red background intended to represent blood. There is a front view and an orphographic view. The axes have a metal counterbalance at the bottom, a long wooden handle with the grip area wrapped in blood soaked bandages, the blades are metal and shaped like dragon wings curving downwards. There is a crow skull attached to the top of the wooden handle.

Concept Art Portfolio

Battle Axe

For this concept art project, I created a battle axe using photoshop. It was initially inspired by fantasy and dragons, with the blades intended to mimic dragon wings but evolved into more of a medieval style as I aimed to mix a traditional concept with something new.

I began by laying down flat colours in various colour schemes to help me decided whhere I wanted each colour to go. After this, I focused on texture and added stippling to the blades and lines (intended to mimic wood grins) to the handle. I then found some free-use images of metal and rust and overlayed these on the blades using various blending techniques and masks. Finally, I added a bandage texture to the handle, made it appear less flat by editing the linework to mimic the natural curves of the handle, and added some blood stains to show it was batle-used.

After this, I focused on adding a skull to the top of the weapon. I decided on a bird skull and did various sketches of real bird skulls to get a feel for the anatomy. After this, I tried to replicate the shading of the skull in grayscale before adding colour values in later. Once I was happy with this, I found a free-use texture of bone and used the "difference" blending mode to overlay it onto the skull.

Weapons

My weapon concept art

The front view of the battle axe.
The orphographic view of the battle axe.