Month: July 2025

“Mist Stranger Trahearne” Paintover | July 29, 2025

Posted on July 29, 2025

Vertical portrait painting of the sylvari Trahearne from Guild Wars 2. He's wearing the hood from the "Mist Stranger" outfit. He's looking back toward to the viewer, smirking. — “Mist Stranger Trahearne” | 2025 paintover of a 2021 painting; vertical crop.

This is a 2025 practice paintover of one of my older paintings of Trahearne from 2021. I’ll put the original at the end of the post, and you can flip between them for comparison (and judge me on how much I’ve improved or not since, haha).

I remember thinking this fan theory quite fun at the time – it is not my fan theory, and I believe I saw it mentioned on both Reddit and Tumblr occassionally, at the time. (I can’t recall if it originated from one person, or multiple people – if you happen to know, feel free to share and I’ll add this info into this post). Edit: Found some links from the time! On Tumblr and Reddit. Thanks to @scarlet-briar on Bluesky for the Tumblr info (it is their theory and Tumblr page in the link!).

Full horizontal composition of the previous vertical cropped painting. We see Trahearne's Mist Stranger-clothed glove grasping the mask from the outfit. — “Mist Stranger Trahearne” | 2025 paintover of a 2021 painting; full composition.

The general theory is that the Mist Stranger might be Trahearne, perhaps from an alternate timeline. While the idea doesn’t fit into my “headcanon” projects for The Harbinger’s Path and Nightmare’s Embrace, it’s still fun thinking about alternate possibilities people cleverly speculate on. Especially as, this one involved the possibility for the character reappearing again in-game.

For this painting, I remember being fond of the overall composition, or perhaps the concept of the composition – but when I randomly saw the file again over the weekend, I realized the composition had some problems. Some visually awkward moments. The full version is a horizontal composition – which I think I’ve improved slightly from the original, though I still prefer it as the cropped portrait version at the top of this post, instead of the full canvas above.

The main thing I wanted to try was some of the techniques I’ve been using in The Harbinger’s Path comic pages, but applied to a painting/illustration. Quite fun!

Below (in the full post) is the 2025 paintover, followed after by the original 2021 version for comparison:

“Nightmare’s Embrace” WIP Preview | July 25, 2025

Posted on July 25, 2025

Work-in-progress comic panel crop showing Trahearne speaking off-camera. Text reads: "It is a trick of Nightmare, Valiant. An illusion." — “Nightmare’s Embrace” | Work-in-progress panel crop

Small preview from “Nightmare’s Embrace,” my second Guild Wars 2 comic I’ve been chipping away at here and there. This is an early color test from a few months ago.

Originally, I was planning to start working on “Nightmare’s Embrace” after I’ve finished “The Harbinger’s Path.” I might still do this, but I’m also thinking about perhaps working on them side-by-side – mainly depending on how long Harbinger runs.

Maybe I’ll do something like, one chapter of The Harbinger’s Path, then one chapter of Nightmare’s Embrace. Still considering which to do.

Shows more of the previous image, up to Trahearne's waist. — More from the previous panel.

Here’s a fuller shot of the panel – I need to fix the arm proportions in the final.

Trahearne and Malyck Pixel Art | July 23, 2025

Posted on July 23, 2025

Trahearne and Malyck pixel art from 2022, when I became enamored with Aesprite. It’s still one of my favorite art programs, and I’d love to dabble more with it sometime.

Corveil WIP | July 18, 2025

Posted on July 18, 2025

Progress shot of Corveil from a longer painting. I have a few personal work paintings/illustrations that have been hovering at this ~90% progress state for a while. I keep telling myself I’ll finish them after I make some progress with the comic, but I’d like to try and figure out a way to work them alongside the comic, as I am becoming impatient with how long they’ve stayed in this not-quite-but-almost-finished state, haha.

Arquel Paintover | July 8, 2025

Posted on July 8, 2025

Digital painting of a front-facing male figure sneering at the camera. He has a desaturated blue color scheme, more saturated and the lips and eyes, the eyes shining scarlet. — 2025 paintover of a 2021 painting | Work-in-progress

I’ve had this drawing of Arquel around for several years, that I first did during one of the days for “Paint-ober” in 2021. This was a daily painting challenge I made up for myself during October of that year (if it existed prior, I don’t think I saw anyone participating that year). I was inspired to try this challenge by the ubiquitous “Inktober” which used to be in vogue years back. Ironically, I decided to do my own, non-ink challenge at the time, because I didn’t have interest in doing line or “ink” drawings back then. Oh, how making comic pages has transformed me! Haha.

I’ll always adore painting, of course – it’s still what I am more comfortable with. Anyway, I always liked the concept behind this Paint-ober Arquel painting – I mainly thought the color palette turned out in a pleasing way. I intended to finish the painting after the month-long challenge, and I did fuss around with it here and there, afterward.

Below are the original and an earlier version:

2023 paintover – this is how the file looked when I opened it today

My dilemma with this painting is it always felt like it was “almost there” to me, but never “there.” I felt that with the original drawing, and also with the 2023 version (this version is how the file looked when I opened it today). This caused me to set this painting aside for long stretches of time, and dabble with it infrequently – with years-long stretches, apparently!

I had the random urge to revisit it again today – from the filename, for the first time since 2023. And now, there’s the current 2025 version, at the top of this post.

I still don’t think it is “quite there,” but each time, I think it’s veering closer. These paintovers are fun for me, though rather self-indulgent, as it would probably make better sense for me to start a new painting of the same idea, at this point. But, I am enjoying fiddling with this painting now and again, because I enjoy seeing what I would do differently each time, compared to the last time I opened the painting. The 2023 version I started approaching faces differently – slightly more defined forms and shadows – which I think is further developed in the 2025 version today. Today’s version also had much higher contrast compared to how it looks now – I might update this post with that version to compare.

And here it is:

2025 paintover, earlier version with higher contrast

There are some things I think might work better in this version, but I’m leaning toward exploring more of the subtler, more atmospheric tone of the one at the top of the post.