I never planned to document my journey through the Lands Between with pen and paper. When I first loaded Elden Ring back in the spring of 2022, I was just another Tarnished ready to be humbled. But somewhere between the towering Erdtree and the rot-eaten wastes of Caelid, the artist in me took over. What started as a quick character sketch grew into a full-blown illustrated playthrough journal — a chronicle of ink and memory that, even now in 2026, still feels alive.

FromSoftware’s masterpiece had such a profound impact on me, both as a game designer and as a comic artist. The macabre beauty, the intricate armor sets, and those unsettling faces of NPCs like Roderika or the loathsome Dung Eater — they screamed to be captured. Not with a screenshot button, but with nib and brush, the way adventurers once mapped uncharted lands.

I remember sitting at my desk in Manchester, the glow of Limgrave on the monitor before me. My Tarnished was a bandit — a wiry, hooded figure with a shortbow and a cynical gaze. I did a rough pencil sketch to get the proportions correct, then inked straight over it with a brush pen. No digital undo, no layers. Each page took about an hour, and that urgency forced me to truly see the game. The gnarled knuckles of Godrick the Grafted, the ornate filigree on the Carian knight’s armor, the way the light falls through the fog at the Lake of Liurnia — all of it found its way onto paper through my trembling, excited hands.

Now, looking back from 2026, that journal has become more than a relic. It’s a testament to how games can inspire analog creativity. When I posted the first few pages online, I expected only a handful of fellow art nerds to care. Instead, thousands of Tarnished shared their own stories. Some even mailed me their drawings of my Tarnished! The community turned my private journey into a shared celebration of FromSoftware’s dark fantasy world.

Every spread was an adventure in itself. I’d scribble small frustrations in the margins — “Who designed this chariot of death?” — next to a careful study of the octopus-headed squids. The dramatic cross-hatching I’ve honed since my Plok comic days gave each NPC a palpable presence. Hewg the blacksmith looked as weary on paper as he sounded in the Roundtable Hold. And Caelid? That cursed landscape bled onto the page with jagged lines and heavy ink washes, a hellscape that still raises my heartbeat even now.

By mid-2022, the journal had grown to over forty pages, but my in-game progress always outpaced the ink. I eventually defeated the Elden Beast, yet the journal’s final chapters remained unfinished for months. Life as a game designer — my brother John and I were already deep into our next indie project — pulled me away. But the Lands Between never left me. In 2023, I returned to the journal, filling in the missing shards: the Haligtree’s vertical beauty, the unending despair of the Frenzied Flame ending, and my personal favorite, a full-page portrait of Alexander the Iron Fist. A true warrior jar deserves nothing less.

As I leaf through the worn sketchbook today, I see more than just an Elden Ring playthrough. I see a designer’s mind, trying to reverse-engineer why certain vistas evoke awe and why certain enemies terrify. The journal captures questions like, “Why does Rennala’s library feel so sad?” right beside an attempt to draw every single candle in that room. It’s raw, unpolished, and utterly honest.

Veteran game artists often talk about “reading” a game while playing. By forcing myself to draw, I slowed down enough to read Elden Ring’s visual language at a granular level: the recurring motif of twisted roots, the symbolism of broken statues, the deliberate desaturation of color in the Mountaintops. These details sink into your subconscious when you spend an hour on a single enemy’s cloak.

I’ve since filled journals for other worlds — a grimdark jaunt through Blight: Survival and a more whimsical exploration of Tin Hearts — but the Elden Ring chronicle remains special. In 2025, a small gallery in Newcastle even exhibited the original pages, framed under glass, while a loop of the game’s ambient music played. Gamers and non-gamers alike stood there, baffled and enchanted. That’s the power of turning a digital experience into something tangible.

If you’re still wandering the Lands Between in 2026 — perhaps rejoining as a new character before Shadow of the Erdtree’s eventual follow-up — I urge you to try something similar. You don’t need to be an artist. Jot down your emotions, get a cheap notebook, and scribble that bizarre mushroom creature you just saw. It will deepen your connection to the adventure far more than any screenshot gallery can.

My Elden Ring journal is, at its core, a love letter. To FromSoftware’s world-design genius, to the art of comic storytelling, and to the unbreakable spirit of Tarnished everywhere. The ink may fade, but the memories — and the lessons — linger on.