I am Melissa A. Benson of Ranting Centaur Studios, a fantasy illustrator and fine artist with a colorful, realistic style. I work mostly in a mixed media of watercolor dyes, and color pencils. My black and white work is high contrast multi-weight graphite pencil. I also work in oil.
My name is best known in the gaming industry for creating powerful and imaginative illustrations for many of the top collectible card game (CCG) publishers. I worked with Wizards of the Coast before they became a corporate giant, when they came out with
Magic: The Gathering in 1993 and created several iconic character designs for that game. I did illustrations for many subsequent expansions as well.
I have also worked with White Wolf Publishing when they started
Vampire: the Masquerade, Iron Crown Entertainment's
Middle Earth game, the
Dragon Storm game published by Black Dragon Press and the oriental card game
Shadowfist published by Z-Man Games among others.
I specialize in believable anthropomorphic creatures and people in natural and historic settings. The bulk of my recent work has been private commissions for clients who want an accurate portrait of their role playing characters. I take their descriptions and make suggestions (you really shouldn't have EVERY piece of equipment they own in the picture) until they are confident that they will be getting great results. Testimonials from several happy clients can be seen on the
Testimonial page of my website.
I have a number of shops with several of the "Print on Demand" virtual malls where I sell my work on a wide variety of apparel and gift items and I sell 14 different limited edition prints on my website www.melissabenson.com
make custom gifts at
Zazzle
