In early September the illustrator Martin McKenna passed away, aged 51.
He illustrated many Games Workshop products in the 1980s, but was especially involved in the first edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. His pen-and-ink drawings were instrumental in establishing the game’s visual identity. He memorably illustrated most of the original Enemy Within campaign, including The Enemy Within, Death on the Reik, Warhammer City, Power Behind the Throne and Something Rotten in Kislev. He provided drawings for many other WFRP publications, such as The Restless Dead, Realm of Chaos, Lichemaster, Death’s Dark Shadow, Castle Drachenfels and numerous White Dwarf articles. In fact, there were few first-edition WFRP publications that did not feature his art. His work so effectively captured the Warhammer world that it was no surprise GW turned to him to provide all the internal art when it started its line of Warhammer fiction.
Warhammer was, however, by no means the limit of his work. He did illustration for Fighting Fantasy books; Magic: The Gathering; video games; film and television. He wrote books about digital art, such as Digital Fantasy Painting Workshop and Digital Horror Art. He produced the children’s picture books The Octopuppy and The Crocodolly. In 1995 he was awarded the British Fantasy Award for Best Artist. His talents will be missed in many places.
He is survived by his son.
A memorial fund has been set up to provide art workshops for disadvantaged children.
Title image used without permission. No challenge intended to the rights holders.
AWESOME LIES 
Sadly news. He was terribly young.
I saw a post from Graeme Davis yesterday but it was still unconfirmed then.
You are right that he provided the look of certainly The Enemy Within. His work for WFRP and the Fighting Fantasy books were a significant part of my teenage years. He’ll be missed.
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Thank you for this. Very sad.
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My favorite WFRP artist. The WFRP rulebook art by Tony Ackland was fantastically evocative, but it was McKenna’s artwork in Death on the Reik that sold me. A lot of my love of WFRP can be put down to his unique art style. His character portraits had so much life to them — the proud but down on their luck dwarfs and the foppish Plenipotentiary in Death on the Reik, the handsy doctor in Power Behind the Throne, the wonderfully detailed zombies in Something Rotten in Kislev … it seemed like even the little flying skulls in Grapes of Wrath had their own unique personalities.
Apart from all of that, he was one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. I just can’t believe he’s gone.
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A fantastic artist, whose work was even better than the reproductions at the time could convey. The care & attention lavished on them always showed. He’d really thought about and explored what he was doing and what was being conveyed, historical sources, mythic and popular imaginative correspondences from the ‘real’ world, and so on; and it was this, I think, that made them such a fertile ground for the imagination of the viewer – it’s a cliché, but they really made the worlds they portrayed come alive.
I have always had them in the back of my mind, but hadn’t realised the extent of his achievements – here’s some of his g.w. work (there’s a second album of these also, on the main page) : https://www.flickr.com/photos/153156532@N06/albums/72157688703646060
Especially down at the bottom where all the pieces are laid out together. It’s like looking directly into one of the wellsprings of this mythos.
Thanks, Martin.
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Very sad news, RIP Martin.
To echo your other commenters – his illustrations for DOTR are what really defined the mood of WFRP for me, from the unforgettable (the gloweringly serious Purple Hand cultist doing his ridiculous hand signals will be with me til the day I die) to the mundane (the landscape sketches, the countless ‘river life’ illustrations). The TEW v4 remixes have more technically polished full colour interior art that somehow just doesn’t work on the same level.
Martin also illustrated the three best FF books – the Stephen Hand trilogy (Moonrunner, Dead of Night, Shadow Warriors), all of which had an atypical low fantasy/WFRPesque feel to them, deeply atmospheric and scattered with genre/pulp references.
What truly amazes me is that he was so good so young – still in his teens at the time he was putting out this remarkable work in the late eighties.
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Martin’s art defined WFRP for me. That combination of sinister, dark, dangerous, exuberant, comic and ridiculous. Each character had the twinkle of real life in their eyes. RIP a unique vision.
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Martin was my friend. We worked together at Myriador for a few years back in the early 2000s. A great artist and an even nicer fellow. I miss him.
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