Mermaids, Witches, Naiads, Dryads, Succubi, and other Femme Fatales. Imagine if World War II pilots put fantasy pinups on their planes!
Opium Tales is a website featuring Roman’s artwork, his blog, his dark fantasy short stories, and soon his music.
Roman’s artwork is for sale at the Opium Tales shop.
Dark fantasy short stories
His short stories are sprinkled throughout the blog section. If you’re into dark fantasy short stories, I’ll recommend some I’ve written.
Siren’s Song is about a guy who comes to America from Ireland for work so he can feed his family.
Opium Tales itself was the name for a TV show idea I had. I wrote Humpty Dumpty as the pilot episode. I put Humpty Dumpty here in short story form. Rather than being some friendly egg man who fell off a wall, I made him into a monster.
I wrote Siren’s Lament as a writing exercise. I had no plan whatsoever. Instead, I wrote whatever came to mind. The story got pretty weird by the time it ended. I liked it so much that I decided to share it with you.
The Voodoo Sex Shop is a very short story. I based the protagonist off of Leroy Brown. You know the Jim Croce song?
But with a twist. I put him in a brothel run by a voodoo priest.
And lastly, we have Princess for the Night. This started off as a song that I wrote for my dear friend Roxy, who you see in my artwork as the brunette model.
Roxy is one hell of a dancer. Sexy as hell! So I wanted to write a dance song for her.
I based the short story off of the song. Our heroine is a human sacrifice.
Why? Because the town lacks the hero (and the courage) to confront the dragon. So instead, they sacrifice a virgin every year.
Opium Tales blog
I keep the blog to share what I’ve learned with other artists. I also have a mindset section where I share mindset of an artist tips. The latter is so future artists can hear what I’ve learned over the years first as a guy who bought thousands of dollars worth of art and next as a professional artist myself.
My top articles so far:
Watercolor vs gouache – it’s funny that I put that versus in there. They’re actually quite complimentary. Whereas watercolor is transparent, gouache is opaque. The article highlights the strengths and weaknesses of both, so you could use them together and have both play to their strengths.
How to paint watercolor on wood. An underrated medium. Since watercolor is transparent, the wood shows through the painting. Nothing looks quite like it.
How to paint skin tones with watercolor. I’ve seen other articles on this and they’re confusing as hell. I intentionally keep it simple since I’d rather for one, keep things simple. For another, play to your strengths.
What are watercolor’s strengths? Layering upon layering. Rather than put different colors here and different colors there, why not paint in layers? This is how I get my skin to look so lovely with watercolors.
