A few days ago, winners of the 14th FanArt Brawl 'Art Grind' have been announced and we bring you their amazing work to feast your eyes upon! Host of this series is Anton Zemskov, an accomplished artist whose work you might have seen on 'several' Hearthstone cards ;-)

This brawl was dedicated to the Forged in the Barrens Hearthstone expansion and the goal was to draw a Horde character with simple armor/weapon gear (not higher than lvl 20) in the Barrens.

FanArt Brawls are a way for artists to hone their skills when given a specific prompt and get feedback and advice on their work from other participants or the community. There are no tangible rewards for winning, but no one can deny you the bragging rights if you do win! Also, you are meant to have fun doing what you love! 

You can check all the submissions on the Brawl's social media where you can also find works from previous competitions!

VK | Facebook | Discord

Legendary Winners

Doraig Art | Jose Pacheco | Anton Shakhov | Malkin Art | Sergey SerSpiriT

Epic Contributions

Pavel Yurev | Andrey Potemkin | Stefano Gil | Svetlana Brezina | Klar Jezebeth | Sharon Lau

Interview with the Winners

We got in touch with the five winners and asked them a little bit about the competition, why they picked the characters they did and their design process in general. Read what each had to say below.

Doraig Art - First Time Competitor, Already a Winner!

I participated in FanArt Brawl for the first time. This concept of competition seems very interesting to me! it seems to me that it is thanks to the competition between the participants that the skills improve much faster ^^

This was my first playable character in a WOW game. I had a release of the game on several CDs I've always liked Orcs, I've been a Fan of them since the days of The Lord of the Rings and the Second part of Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness! Therefore, I decided that the first art that I draw in the framework of interaction with Blizzard should be exactly the Orc.

I enjoyed competing with other artists, it was really fun and I really liked a few of the members' work.

I have been following the Blizzard company and their projects for a very long time. I think my love for drawing was also developed by imitating their illustrations and game concepts. I think someday my skills will be enough to become a part of this company.

I had a few more sketches with the creation of my art that I could show.

Jose Pacheco - Blood Elf Expansion? Yes, Please!

I had a lot of fun in the competition, it was specially motivating to get feedback constantly from other people participating. I am a big fan of the Warcraft universe, so anything related to painting WoW characters all day is a blast. Another thing I really appreciate from the competition is seeing how good the other entries were. Seeing the other submissions has me really motivated to participate again, as soon as there is another challenge.

I chose a blood elf monk, since I thought that would be very different from other horde races and classes you would normally see in the Barrens. It´s so fun to think of the blood elves becoming more orcish and savage thanks to their time in the horde. Also, I have been thinking of how cool it would be a blood elf themed Hearthstone expansion, so have been painting a lot of them, playing with that idea on other illustrations.

Anton Shakov - Practice Makes Perfect!

In general, for me, this art challenges are a great way to improve myself and it's always cool to watch people interpreting the same topic in different ways.

For the challenge it was necessary to make a character in simple armor. I immediately remembered the warcraft 3 (strategy series) and decided to make a set of cards from ordinary units from this game. I did 3 artworks for this challenge. Probably the first 2 artworks took the most time, at the start you always want to come up with something epic and complex to show everything that you can do, perhaps due to a lack of skills, they didn't look as good as the Tauren.

When you have a clear assignment it's a little bit easier to draw something. Why did this particular work turn out better than the previous two? Perhaps the practice helped, who knows :) Sometimes the work done faster is easier, it looks better than the one on which you spent a lot of time and effort.

Malkin Art - There Is Never Enough Goblins!

It's not the first time when I participate in fan art brawl but it's the first time when i'm among the winners and I'm super glad to get that achievement. I'm a fan of Blizzard and especially of Warcraft universe. I chose to paint goblin rogue cause i like goblins and sometimes when i don't know what to draw i just do drafts of goblins or dwarfs. I had a huge fun while working on a piece and I learned a lot (thx for the guys who gave me feedback), moreover I had a blast of inspiration to keep learning and achieving different artistic goals.

Sergey SerSpiriT - Having Fun Is Important!

First of all I would like to thank Anton Zemskov for his great idea to make such an interesting challenge like “FanArt Brawl”, which gathered many talented artists. I like that the main idea is not “to get the first place”, but to have fun and draw your favourite character, creature, class, etc. and share your ideas with other WarCraft fans :)

At the last “Art grind” challenge I chose my character from WoW Classic (tauren shaman) and the story came from the most obvious quest with raptors, which had been done multiple times when I just started playing World of Warcraft. The most interesting part of working on this illustration was storytelling - tauren in the trap. I tried to have balance between the amount of details and easy readable action. You can’t see all the little details on card illustration, so it’s important to show what’s going at first glance on a picture.

I like the WarCraft universe, so it's a pleasure to create something related to that :) Of course, I’m not only interested in card game’s illustrations, so I would like to try something like League of Legends splash art or to make fan art character designs for my favourite games ... some day :))

And there you have it! Next FanArt Brawl might start with the upcoming Barrens mini-set, or maybe later with the new expansion. If you wish to join or just tag along, follow FanArt Brawl on VK, Facebook or Discord.

What would be your Barrens character of choice? Tell us in the comments, or give the artists some ideas what to draw next!