Owen William Weber Illustration

Hello Again, So this time I will be showing the process of painting the latest card of mine that has been released.  The new Lord of the Rings LCG expansion pack from Fantasy Flight Games, "The Road Darkens", has become available, which has my "Leaf-Wrapped Lembas" card. When I received the assignment, around this time last year, I was immediately excited.  I had been wanting a good excuse to do a highly detailed bread still-life, in the tradition of 18th c. Spanish painters like Luis Meléndez.  I then researched what Tolkien was intending his Lembas bread to be similar to; it turns out he was thinking of Bannock bread.  Luckily enough, I told my wife about this, and she instantly whips out her obsession: Yvette van Boven 's Cookbook, Homemade Winter .  She has a great recipe for Bannock bread.  So we quickly fried the bread that night; fried, because it is cooked on a pan over the burners.  It looked great, I was quite happy with the outcome o...

I painted this piece for Levi Stack back in December.  It's the cover for Mr. Stack's newest young adult novel, the second book in the Card Game series, The Magic Trick.  The novel has just become available digitally.  I'm not sure whether it will be released on paperback like the first book.  I hope it is, because as much as the image looks great on a screen, I love seeing my work printed.  Here is the original painting, and also the version with the type laid over it.  I'm very happy with the outcome and think this cover is better than the first. The Magic Trick , 13.25"x20", Oil on Paper on Masonite, 2013. Buy the Book on Kindle Here

Ashemark Councilor , 13"x10", Oil on Paper on Masonite, 2013. ©Fantasy Flight Games. Last year, I painted this piece for the A Game of Thrones LCG from Fantasy Flight Games.  It was released within one of the newer decks, "Prize of the North."  This guy is a character completely made up for the game, Ashemark gets barely a mention in the novel.  This character is supposed to be a lordling with allegiance towards the Lannisters, hence the lion banners on either side of the archway.  I'm happy with how the piece came out, but I have no real personal story to tell along with it, so I thought I'd just show a couple process images along with this painting.  This was my main reference picture.  No too much to say, I did many poses with this "staff", and this one seem to have a good diagonal positioning.  The art director also put in the description that it should look as if the character is hindering someone from entering the archway, this seem...

Magaretville, NY , Oil, 7.75"x12", 2014. Back in June, we were upstate, in the Catskills for a long weekend.  While I was busy relaxing and taking in the beautiful scenery, I took some time out to paint this landscape.  It took about 3 hours.  In my opinion, there is nothing as pure as painting en plein air.  One becomes completely zen with the surroundings and painting becomes less about depicting a particular scene or composition and becomes more about the feeling or nature of the scene.  It's hard to explain, and can sound extremely corny, when describing the feeling that comes with painting en plein air.  I am constantly moving the brush, painting things that happened 30-45 minutes ago, changing things on the fly, building up paint as it dries.  It's totally different from how I normally paint.  Very freeing, very rejuvenating. Also I will, again, have a booth in the Art Show area at Gen Con Indianapolis this year.  It's a wond...

Hemelhaven , 7.25"x11", Oil over Ink, 2014. A couple months ago, I was very bored and was having a bit of artist's block.  So to kick myself out of this rut, I started drawing castles on big rock cliffs in the middle of the ocean.  This is a composition I drew all the time back in high school.  I got quite imaginative with some of them.  So, after getting back from the Netherlands, I wanted to do a castle city in a more Dutch aesthetic.  This isn't too important of a piece for me, just a fun exercise.  I was also playing around with doing an ink drawing and painting on top of it.  So I did the ink drawing, sprayed it thoroughly with Krylon UV Archival spray, then mounted the paper to a board using acrylic matte medium.  Luckily, it did not smudge at all.  So, this is the final image, but I thought I'd show the black and white version also. Hemelhaven , 7.25"x11", Ink, 2014.

Swarming Mosquitoes , 11"x11", Oil on Paper, on Masonite, 2013. ©Fantasy Flight Games I have been meaning to post this painting for quite some time now, since the card it was painted for came out a month or two ago, sorry if you have been waiting with baited breath.  The description for this commission was to show swarms of hazardous mosquitoes attacking a random ranger in the Dead Marshes.  In order to approach this kind of painting, where the motion of the character swatting at bugs, I couldn't just pose my model in a static position and take a picture.  So my friend, Scott Murphy, came over, dressed in full ranger garb, and flailed around as I held my finger down on a rapid fire setting on my camera.  In a matter or minutes, I had about a hundred pictures from which to choose.  There were some great shots that really showed the motion I wanted, this being the best, in my opinion. This card is part of The Lord of the Rings LCG from Fantasy Flight Game...

My wife and I went on a ski vacation in mid-January to the Catskills, and I brought this piece to work on while I wasn't skiing.  I had taken a photo of this scene about 6 years ago, when my wife and I first started dating.  The folds in the sheets were too perfect to not take the photo.  So, now years later, I was finally going to take some time to paint the scene. About halfway through my second day of working, I got a phone call that my father had had a heart attack while he was in the hospital, and was being air-lifted to another better hospital.  We dropped everything and rushed to his side.  He survived that heart attack, and I was able to spend some quality time with him before he eventually died about a month after that to a second heart attack. I will always look at this painting and remember that time in my life; the hardest and worst time in my life.  This painting gave me some beautiful distraction from the hardship going on in my brain. ...