Paizo Where is this image from?

[Dragonhelm]

I am using this piece as inspiration art for a character in a friend's game. I'm fairly certain this comes from a Pathfinder book, but am having trouble finding it. An image search on Google is not giving me any definitive answers. It's driving me nuts.

Any idea where this image is from?

 

[ErisIndomina]

I'm not 100% sure, but best guess it's from the Reign of Winter adventure path?
Edit: I looked through all of Reign of Winter, as well as the setting books for Irrisen and the Land of the Linnorm kings and couldn't find it, and those seemed the most likely sources to me.

 

[Dragonhelm]

I'm not 100% sure, but best guess it's from the Reign of Winter adventure path?
Edit: I looked through all of Reign of Winter, as well as the setting books for Irrisen and the Land of the Linnorm kings and couldn't find it, and those seemed the most likely sources to me.

I just looked at Reign of Winter myself and can't find it.

It was a good guess. Thanks for the assist.

 

[ErisIndomina]

Ruled out People of the North and the module called The Witchwar legacy as well, and I think that's all the likely candidates from the stuff I've got. Sorry I couldn't find it!

 

[HDScorpioDragon]

This illustration portrays the character Imeckus Stroon, a powerful human evoker wizard from the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. [1, 2]

Sourcebook Origin
The image was originally created for the Kingmaker Adventure Path published by Paizo Inc. Specifically, he serves as a key antagonist and court mage in Pathfinder Adventure Path #34: Blood for Blood. The character is also featured in the compiled, hardcover Kingmaker Adventure Path omnibus edition. [1]

The Artist
The piece was illustrated by fantasy artist Nikolai Ostertag, who has contributed a significant amount of character and NPC artwork to various Pathfinder rulebooks and adventure modules. [1, 2]

Would you like to explore more character art by Nikolai Ostertag, or are you looking for Imeckus Stroon's stat block to use in an RPG campaign?

 

[HDScorpioDragon]

I did an image search using Google then asked the AI to expand the information for me.

 

[Dragonhelm]

I've had AI on Google give me two different answers. I'll follow up on it. Thanks!

 

[Spectral Anomaly]

This illustration portrays the character Imeckus Stroon, a powerful human evoker wizard from the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. [1, 2]

...

Bravo on your propagation of inaccurate AI slop!

 

[cbwjm]

Using a reverse image search I got this hit on Pinterest: which names an artist as Jake W bullock, but I can't see any evidence of the image on Pinterest and it just leads to a 404 when going to deviant art.

 

[Justice and Rule]

Using a reverse image search I got this hit on Pinterest: which names an artist as Jake W bullock, but I can't see any evidence of the image on Pinterest and it just leads to a 404 when going to deviant art.

This was actually very helpful. So the artist is Jake W. Bullock (as you discovered), though it seems like he moved/deleted a lot of his previous art repositories in 2020 (such as his DeviantArt; he has a new one that does not include that picture). As it stands, in looking around I both was able to see the old DeviantArt through the Wayback Machine and also on his Facebook (which he did not clear out): here's the Facebook post, for anyone interested.

As far as I can tell, it is just a standalone piece of art with no book, posted in December 2014. Sadly the gallery itself isn't archived to the point where I skip forwards when they started letting people put things into specific collections (a lot of artists like to put stuff into collections based on who published the art), so that didn't tell me anything. I checked Paizo books around 2014 (including stuff further back like the NPC Codex) but found nothing. I didn't check adventures, admittedly. I also looked up Artists on the PathfinderWiki and he doesn't seem to appear in the master list, nor did he turn up in a search there. On one of his pages he says he's done art for various TTRPGs, but he does not give any actual specifics.

So yeah, it really looks like something from Paizo (probably because it really gives a Russian/Eastern European vibe and everyone remembers Reign of Winter), but it apparently is just a very well-done piece by an artist. But maybe I just didn't look deep enough to find it.