Shallan's Sketchbook

Shallans Sketchbook fan artThis page contains my lego fan art of Shallan's Sketchbook from The Stormlight Archives by Brandon Sanderson.  The novels contain official artwork by Ben McSweeney (a.k.a. Inkthinker) in the form of sketches before some of the chapters.  The sketches are meant to be in-world, meaning they are depicting sketches described within the text of the novels, drawn by the character Shallan Davar.  In my lego builds and photographs, I have tried to recreate the scenes depicted in these sketches as closely as possible.  Since the sketches are in black and white, I have tried to use the color references in the text, but in many cases I had to guess.  I may also have missed some color descriptions.  As such, not all colors depicted herein are necessarily canon.

In case you'd like to compare, Ben McSweeney's original art is available on Brandon Sanderson's official site.  The artwork from The Way of Kings is located here, and the artwork from Words of Radiance is located here.

Spoiler warning: this album has minor spoilers for The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance, which are the first two volumes of The Stormlight Archives. I personally think the potential spoilers are rather mild, but if you have not read these two books, proceed at your own risk.

You can view the files either through the gallery below or the individual image links just below the gallery. Below that, I have included a discussion of the builds and some of the customization involved, followed by copyright and use information. If you're on mobile, the menus are at the bottom of the page.

Gallery

Individual image links

Sketches from The Way of Kings:

Sketches from Words of Radiance:

Sketches from Oathbringer:

About these builds

This is one of my favorite albums.  Using lego bricks to make something that actually looks organic is a fun challenge.  This was also one of the few times I've tried to recreate a specific visual image -- the other times include Keep Venture, which Brandon based off of Washington National Cathedral; and my build of Ostagar from the video game Dragon Age Origins, which I haven't uploaded yet because it was the first build I did as an adult.  Recreating something specific is tricky.  In particular, getting the relative placement of items in a 3D scene to line up with what is depicted in a sketch is challenging.  As such, I enjoyed these builds because I had to figure out ways to achieve a particular look, with no cop-outs when something proved to be difficult.

The chasmfiend had its own challenge -- in the absence of spren, it collapses under its own weight, even in lego scale.  By using the strongest joints lego makes and by using three joints side by side in one place, I was able to give it enough strength so that I only needed one artificial support; you can see that support under the chasmfiend's center of gravity in the large sub-image showing the chasm.  At first, I tried using supports underneath the Sathid as well, since it doesn't have legs.  Those were too hard to edit out of the photos, so I put the Santhid on its back and took the photos upside-down.  Now it is hanging from my ceiling via fishing line.

Legal stuff

The artwork on this page is copyright 2017 by Richard Martin. The source material is copyright 2010 and 2014 by Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC (Brandon Sanderson's company).  With the permission of a representative of Dragonsteel Entertainment, I have included the text shown in the original sketches; this text is copyright 2010 (sketches from The Way of Kings) and 2014 (sketches from Words of Radiance) by Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC.

Feel free to download the images in this gallery and to use them for non-commercial purposes. If you wish to re-post them online, you may do so as long as you give me credit by either citing me (Rick Martin) as the artist, linking to this site, and/or linking to my Facebook page.

I am not affiliated with Brandon Sanderson or Dragonsteel Entertainment in any way. This page is in compliance with Brandon Sanderson's official policy on fan art.