Moved all the edits log to the end of this post to make the post read more easily. :)
Original post below:
Here’s an illustration where the original sketch was from a long time ago – November 2023, in fact! I’ll add a crop of that version at the end of this post.
This painting has a loose idea behind it, but it is primarily meant as one of the front portraits I seem to do of my characters every now and again. I believe with this one, the initial drive was to paint Corveil’s current design, which I had been tweaking here and there at the time. He originally had hair on the darker side, which I decided to change because too many of my characters were looking similar. I tried him with much lighter hair for a while, which I thought worked better for him, but didn’t completely fit.
For a bit now, I’ve been drawing him with something in-between – still fairly light, but a more warm grey or ashy, light brown. Though it’s probably not noticeable in this piece, specifically, since I did add more shadows for contrast. Haha.
I have a few alternate and earlier versions of this one I’m still considering, which I’ll add below:
With some red accents added.
Without the palm glow.
Similar, but with added rim lighting to the fingers.
With the palm glow, and some added haze.
Earlier in-progress version before adding more contrast.
This is also an even earlier version, before I added more contrast. I sort of like the softer look here.
The initial idea and some additional thoughts in the full post below:
I decided to refine the Malyck drawing a bit more, seen above! I since wrote on the following page, and there was quite a bit of see-through. I tried to remove it as best I could digitally, but it makes me consider acquiring a pencil board in the future. There is a Hobonichi pencil board I was eyeing the other day, and looking for an excuse to justify its purchase… haha.
Anyway, since I ended up adding more to it today, I changed the date on the drawing to today’s.
Original post below:
Malyck pencil sketch, pictured with my beloved Staedtler 0.3 mm drafting pencil
Did a warm-up sketch of Malyck earlier today, initially with the intention of inking it. I’m very out of practice with clean pencil drawing – I mainly use one for jotting a quick note or a rough sketch idea, nowadays – but I was enjoying using it a lot today. And ended up adding more to it in pencil instead, which may or may not have been to its detriment. I’ll try an ink test another time. :)
Earlier version of the sketch
I was going to leave the sketch like this, before deciding to draw on it a little more and ending up with the sketch at the top of this post.
I love working with mechanical pencils, and it used to be the medium I used the most often. I still use one (the Staedtler 0.3 mm drafting pencil is a thing of beauty, and incredibly durable), but it’s more infrequent than I’d like. I mainly use it for jotting down quick ideas, and not finished drawings. Maybe I’ll try doing some cleaner sketches this year.
Recently finished this GW2 commission for Rafael! His character, Lilly, who is a bloodstone-themed elementalist!
Initial sketch ideas! I had several ideas come to mind based on Rafael’s description for Lilly, as he had a specific mood and personality in mind for her portrait. I always love working from a written description. It’s very satisfying to imagine what a character’s personality is like, and then try and reflect that outward in their visual portrayal.
Kurt, one of the characters from my unnamed project.
Happy New Year! Wow, it’s been a bit since I last updated here. I’ve been meaning to start updating my sketchblog again for a while, and the new year seems like a prime time to start. My plan is to start using this blog as an additional archive for posts I make on social media. Which is sort of funny, as when this blog was first created, it was intended as the main archive, and social media was the secondary avenue – how it switched during the heyday of social media during the 2010’s!
Now, with how turbulent social media has become post-2020 (which I largely think began during the NFT-fiasco, and the nail in the coffin was generative AI images – though BlueSky is now sort of a tentative phoenix rising from the ashes), it’s lead me to pursue keeping this blog updated more seriously than I have in the past.
To start, I’ll post a few of my favorite personal artworks from within the past few months, in no particular order. Mostly of my original characters, and two fan pieces.
The first one above is a painting of Kurt with his original blue hair design, instead of the pale brown/blond he’s had for most of his design. I was practicing some painting techniques with this one, something more smooth than what I usually do. It was a fun experiment, and I’m happy with what I learned from it.
“Corveil,” from the same project as Kurt.
Above is a sketch of Corveil, in a looser style I’m more drawn toward. I really like the looseness, though I suspect it might be a little more difficult to read as a viewer. Though I haven’t posted more anywhere yet, I’ve been developing more about these characters over the past few months. I would really love to create a little story involving them, just small ones to explore their characters. I’ve done several small one-shot comic pages involving them, which are in various stages of thumbnails to flats. I’m not sure which of those I’ll finish – their quality varies immensely – but they’ve felt really rewarding to do just for myself over the last year.
One thing I seem to be forever struggling with is coming up with a name I like for the project involving these characters. I’ve tried several last year, and I still am not enamored with any of them. I really want to have some kind of name to unify them with, instead of a vague “my characters,” though I’m leaning toward this not being very important right now and that I’m overthinking it.
Trahearne and Malyck from Guild Wars 2 | With support from ArenaNet.
Above is an in-progress crop of Trahearne and Malyck from Guild Wars 2. I really love painting this characters, and I have so much I want to explore with them – which I have plans for later this year. :)
Corveil
Above is a practice painting of Corveil looking contemplative.
Corveil again.
Here’s a sketch of Corveil looking a little malicious. I’m personally fond of this one, though I also suspect this one doesn’t read very clearly.
“Gul Dukat” from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
And above we have a Cardassian (from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) study, which I just did today as a warm-up painting. Though I first watched DS9 three years ago – and I even did a small painting of Garak afterward, which I had completely forgotten about (it’s not my favorite drawing, otherwise I would post it here) – but that first watch was as background material I had on while I was working. I had the random urge to rewatch the series recently, and upon a rewatch (I’m in the sixth season now), I realized I had missed so much during my initial rewatch.
There is so much that is lost if you are primarily watching the show while not actively viewing it, as I had – so much wonderful physical and non-verbal acting by the performers which adds incredible layers and depth to their characters. I went into my second watch with The NextGeneration as still my favorite Trek (DS9 was the last series of the pre-modern Treks I watched), and by very early on during this rewatch (by season 2 or 3), knew that DS9 had overtaken TNG for me. It is now my favorite Trek, by a long shot (incidentally, TNG is probably now my second-favorite, followed by The Original Series, then Enterprise, and then finally Voyager).
This study is based on the quintessential Cardassian, pioneered by Marc Alaimo – none other than Gul Dukat, of course! After I read how the makeup artist (Michael Westmore) largely based the Cardassian design on Alaimo’s “unusually long” neck, I knew that if I decided to learn how to draw Cardassians, I would start by studying Alaimo’s Gul Dukat appearance.
I really love Alaimo’s portrayal of the Gul Dukat character – there is so much subtlety and nuance to his performance, and his voice has this ASMR-quality to my ears that makes him intoxicating for me to listen to.
I love Alaimo’s/Westmore’s physical representation of a Cardassian so much, that I didn’t want any drawings I do of the character to be a replica. We have seven wonderful seasons to admire their work on the character for that. I knew from the beginning I wanted to try some kind of merger between Alaimo’s physical appearance, and an artistic interpretation of the character. I’ve done a number of “Gul Dukat” sketch studies before this one to try and figure one out – I’m sure this won’t be the end version, but this is probably my favorite result so far.
I don’t think I quite captured his charming malevolence, though I am pleased with how knobby his Cardassian neck turned out.
Happy Thanksgiving! We are likely cooking up a storm in the kitchen right now, but let’s cross-celebrate with a compilation post with a few recent sketches.
Above is a profile sketch practice of Corveil. I was mainly imagining a slightly different shape for the tip and bridge of his nose. Also, his hair was originally toned a bluer hue, but became more grey as the painting progressed. I think I still slightly prefer the bluer tone, but the more monochrome look seems fun to potentially explore.
I do have a story-based reason for tinting his hair more toward blue (it’s probably not too difficult to guess), but still experimenting to see if I like where it goes visually.
This was an Arquel practice painting that was really fun to draw. It didn’t quite turn out the way I was imagining, but it’s closer than past attempts of a similar idea I’ve had for him.
I’ve been experimenting more with Vaknaa’s design, and redesigning her to be slightly more practical. Oh, why don’t I post the very rough sketch sheet I made for her a while back: Main changes are making the head crest feathers more balanced proportionally, reducing their overall size. Same with the horns, and also adjusting their angle to not compete with the crest feathers. I also tried out a few different horn shapes, and this was the one I liked best so far. The most recent painting above deviates from the ref sheet, because I’m still continually adjusting her design to see which works best.
I’ll post a few of the other thumbnail concepts below:
I did an array of sketches, and these were the ones I narrowed them down to.
Here’s the full page of concepts. Not compiled neatly, because I wasn’t intending to show these. But since it’s my blog, I figure why not! My idea for Vaknaa that I’ve been toying with is that I want her & her species to have crests of head feathers, ideally visually identifiable as “feather crests” instead of “head wings.”
I was browsing some old files a few days ago, and nearly forgot that in her very old design, she had outright head wings. Which is a very cool and fun design feature that I always love seeing on characters, but I wanted to see if I could come up with with something that is still distinctly feathery, but more evocative of the crests you see on real birds. I was curious to see if I might be able to come up with a design like this that worked well with the humanoid skull shape.
It’s still an ongoing process that I don’t think completely works yet, but I think I’m getting closer to something I like for her!
Close-up of the painting from further up in the post.
