#MalazanMarch Live

I’ve been lamenting skipping out on my annual #MalazanMarch fan art activities this year. So instead I’ll live stream my Malazan fan art with a friend Donovan Rittenbach who’s read the the series once. I’m gonna kinda test him to see if the art jogs any memories and ultimately try to convince him to jump onto a re-read. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH-91w2XOOL7zl4b18UIoCA 2:00pm PST

So What’s #MalazanMarch?

For a couple of years now I’ve been playing a sort of fan art game with my social media. I call it #MalazanMarch – the rule is simple, post a piece of Malazan themed art for as many days of the month of March as I can. They don’t all have to be new pieces, some are revisions to previous works, maybe I’ll finish something I started; but nothing beats the feeling of finding a piece to be suddenly inspired about and bring it to completion. Having it liked on various platforms is nice to, but there’s something about finding sudden inspiration and seeing it through that I find most nourishing.

So what’s Malazan?

According to the fan wiki: The Malazan Book of the Fallen [Ma-laa-zan] is an epic fantasy series written by Canadian author Steven Erikson. It depicts events in the history of the Malazan Empire and other nations that share its world. The series incorporates a vast number of characters (human, immortal & non-human). Unlike most fantasy series, the Malazan sequence mostly consists of single novels with their own self-contained storylines with only subplots and some characters continuing between volumes. The closest thing to a main storyline follows the machinations of an alien deity imprisoned upon the Malazan world and seeking to escape.

True life confession: I’ve never read the books, but I’ve listened to each audiobook probably a half-dozen times. I discovered audiobook several years back as an effective cure to road-rage during commutes. Soon after, they accompanied Milo and me on our long hunts….  walks. I discovered Malazan after looking for something as “meaty” to read as George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series.
Developmental sketches of MalazanMarch themed fanart
You can see that one of those sketches grew details before I suddenly shifted gears and went full-digital for the piece I would end up completing. I even created this two-minute video for any of you interested in witnessing how that piece took form.

As to what what became of that final illustration? I call it The Moment of Truth. You can find in the gallery below.