I did this warm-up sketch a few days ago (the b&w one below), and added color today as another quick warm-up. I want to consider doing more warm-ups which add upon previous warm-ups, as I think I’m more personally satisfied with the results. This is also how the 2d animation with the both of them was worked on earlier this year, which makes me think this type of workflow might work for how I draw,
Though, to be fair, I’ve essentially been warming-up this month by making more progress with “The Harbinger’s Path” Chapter 3 pages. Doing line clean-up/refinement, or blocking in rough drafts, seems to be effective for me to work on before doing commission painting.
Warm-up line sketch
Shaded version I decided I didn’t like as much as flats
Maybe I should have made a post for all the “Wintersday Trahearne-Malyck” sketches for this month. :p In fairness, I didn’t foresee I’d do more than the first one with Trahearne holding that candy cane.
“Canach and Akoni” | GW2 “comics-style” commission
A Guild Wars 2commission for Kyris finished earlier this month! This was an especially fun one, as Kyris asked me to try a commission in the style I’ve been drawing for The Harbinger’s Path webcomic. I’ve grown to love drawing in this style over this past year, but hadn’t thought too much about potentially doing it on commission. I’m grateful to Kyris for suggesting it, as I’m pretty pleased with how this style turned out in her drawing!
“Akoni Wolfsbane” | Detail close-up
I’m especially happy with how Akoni’s face turned out. I think it is one of my favorite feminine faces I’ve ever drawn!
A few process images below:
Initial sketches.One of the sketch rounds with revisions after feedback!Work-in-progress lineart after the composition was decided on through the sketch revisions.The final piece once more!
Spurred from a conversation with Jasmine on bluesky yesterday where she said, “trahearne is back and he’s santa– 🧑🎄” – which gave me a variety of amusing mental images I immediately wished to draw.
This is a warm-up sketch that I might finish another time.
This is 3/4-body in the full composition – putting it in the full post, because I think the shoulder is a little off (this is another anatomy construction practice from imagination drawing). Edit: Updated the 3/4 version it slightly; I guess I’ll leave it without a readmore now, though there are still off things about it – still a sketch/potential WIP).
I’m not sure if I prefer the earlier version to these. I started painting over in the earlier version, and in this version, I tried tinkering with the lineart layer more. I’m leaning toward this version because the drafting has a better foundation here.
Original post below:
Small sketch of my Guild Wars 2 reaper/necromancer.
I can’t believe it’s December already! A month or two ago, I was expecting December to be on the more relaxing side. But what’s tended to happen every year now, is it inevitably becomes filled up with various events as the year draws to a close. I’m hoping I can still finish the progress on the personal projects I wanted to do – which is mainly the page updates for The Harbinger’s Path comic.
I was out of town for about a week in November, and I was originally sightly concerned I’d have to put the comic updates on a hiatus for about 3 updates’ worth. I learned I’d be heading out of town a little on the later side, and I scrambled to finish about 3 pages a week earlier than I had originally scheduled. These were pages 15 – 17.
Once I learned of this trip, I drafted a schedule for how much time I had and how many pages I’d have to finish to be able to still continue with page updates while out of town. I was leaning toward announcing a hiatus for that week/those pages, but to my surprise, I was able to finish the pages early. This makes me think I’m probably too lenient on myself when it comes to project management for my personal projects when I haven’t hard deadlines, haha.
Anyway, with all the new events that are now planned for December (mostly holiday-related irl ones), I am hoping I will be able to still keep my intended schedule for this chapter’s updates. But December has a good deal more going on than November did – which isn’t surprising, and something I should have anticipated earlier than now. I am slightly wary that I might have to actually do a small hiatus this month. It’s still too early to say, but I don’t want the quality of the pages to suffer if time truly becomes an issue.
Detail crop from the final page of Chapter 1 from The Harbinger’s Path | Retouched Version
Detail crop of Trahearne from the finale page for Chapter 1 of The Harbinger’s Path. Always meant to post this at some point, and why not today!
It’s curious for me looking at this again. At the time of this page’s completion, I was quite pleased with this portion of the page, in particular. Though they’re very loose, it was much more line-focused than I’d done before attempting chapter 1, and this panel was probably the most heavily line-focused drawing in the entire chapter. (And if it is not, it felt this way to me.)
Before this chapter, I was never very happy with my line drawings – it’s why I almost always added color to drawings before showing them. I didn’t think they looked presentable on their own without some color or value to back up the lines. This drawing was the first one I made in years where I thought it turned out decent even without color or value – I didn’t have to shade this one as much as I normally would for the drawings I was doing at the time.
Even so, as it tends to happen when doing a longer project like a comic, I can see the way I draw Trahearne now is a little different compared to how I was drawing him in Chapter 1. I’ve been aware that the style in the comic shifts a bit – mostly from chapter to chapter, but even within pages of the same chapter. Some if it is intentional experimentation (I’ve been drawing several expressions for Trahearne on page 15 this week, where he looks a little more “seinen” or older – and I might need to tone this down to not make him look too different from earlier pages), while other times it’s been a natural progression from how I’ve grown to enjoy drawing him.
But there are a few different stylistic ways I like to draw him – mostly between a little more youthful or “bishounen” and slightly more mature or more “seinen,” let’s be honest, haha. I enjoy drawing him both ways, but I hope it doesn’t look too inconsistent in the comic. At least, not in a way that is distracting while reading.
Oddly, I think I am more consistent when it comes to Malyck – but I haven’t done a full read-through of the entire comic from page 1 to the current page in a while. I might change my mind if I give that a go sometime.
Edit: Ironically (or predictably?), right after making this post, it made me want to retouch this drawing. I’ve done so above (and to the live page) – the original will be below in the full post, preserved for comparison!
I did this warm-up sketch a few days ago (the b&w one below), and added color today as another quick warm-up. I want to consider doing more warm-ups which add upon previous warm-ups, as I think I’m more personally satisfied with the results. This is also how the 2d animation with the both of them was worked on earlier this year, which makes me think this type of workflow might work for how I draw, 
