Anatomy Practice / Lorcan WIP | August 12, 2025

Edit August 13, 2025: Added the fullbody WIP composition! 

In-progress drawing of a shirtless sylvari holding an oversized hammer.
Anatomy practice / Lorcan WIP | Lorcan with the “Onus” hammer skin

Anatomy practice! I’ve been practicing drawing anatomy construction from imagination this year, and this is one of those practices. So, please forgive me for any anatomical inaccuracies, as these are for practicing this type of anatomy construction drawing from imagination. 

I’ve been having fun running around in the “Untamed” build for my ranger, which I never knew how fun a spec it is to play (mainly because of the amazing vocal lines Brandon Bales recorded for it, haha – but also the main “unleashed” hammer skill is so fun and satisfying!). It gives me an excuse to finally use my favorite hammer skin – “Onus” – which I’ve never used before because I haven’t enjoyed hammer skills on any character prior. I believe it is also a Halloween skin – so perhaps hopefully I can finish this drawing by this Halloween! 

Here’s the full composition: 

Full composition (in-progress)

I also figured out a better way to draw chains with this drawing – when I’ve drawn chains for commissions before, I made a chain brush. I was too lazy to find or recreate that brush again for this drawing, and this time I just drew them manually – but surprisingly, this ended up being both quicker than when I used to use that brush, and I also like the visual result more. I remember the chain brush I made always had this uncanny “too even” appearance, which I then had to spend time making the links look more organic. 

With just drawing them with a regular round brush now, it naturally lends itself to an organic feel. (Of course, perhaps now it might be not even enough. Though between the two, my personal preference is a little too organic versus too inorganic or stiff). 

And a few extra/earlier versions in the rest of the post below: 

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Landis Animation Test | August 11, 2025

2d animation of a sylvari necromancer smirking and winking at the camera. He has a green color palette with faintly glowing eyes. Another silly animation test/practice. This is a small crop from a painting of my sylvari reaper I started a while ago, and it’s been on my back-burner to finish it sometime – dug it up today to practice more with Krita’s timeline/animating with frames instead, haha. 

Trahearne Animated Panel Test | August 8, 2025

Animated panel crop from "The Harbinger's Path" Trahearne and Malyck fan comic. Shows an angry Trahearne surrounded by vined thorns, ley-line energy teeming all around him. Both his bioluminescence and the ley-line energy around him pulse and flicker.This is a very, very rough test – but contemplating adding slight animation to the final page of chapter 2. 

I should probably be using fade/opacity transitions for this and not frames, but, I both don’t know how to do that in Krita (yet, if the function is there), and I’m also partial to frame animation to probably a detrimental degree, haha. 


Edit: August 9, 2025 

Practice 2d frame animation of Trahearne from Guild Wars 2. He stands near thorned vines as ley-line energy pulses around him.
Practice frame animation (Unfinished) 

Decided to practice a bit more with this (separate) test, and also widened the aspect ratio. I’m not planning on finishing this because it was mainly unplanned practice, and the way I set up the file is pretty messy. Mainly after the initial sketch, I made a layer and just drew on top of each keyframe – both the character and the background. This would probably make it too time-prohibitive if I wanted to try and fix every error and make the frames motion read more smoothly, haha. 

Really fun to do though, and it gave me a good sense for how Krita’s timework works now. Should make it easier for me to add some small animation to Chapter 2’s final page at some point! 

Anyway, earlier WIP versions in the full post below: 

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Caydren Paintover | August 4, 2025

Side-profile painting of a Nightmare Court sylvari elementalist from Guild Wars 2. He has long, bare branches for hair, and a red bioluminescent glow. He wields a "Fiery Greatword" over his far shoulder.
“Spellweaver Caydren” | 2025 paintover of a 2017 painting.

Felt like doing another “paintover” practice of one of my older paintings as a warm-up today – which I inevitably spent more time on than I intended. I wouldn’t consider this a “finished” painting, but I’d considered it “finished” as far as its intended practice. :D

This is my “spellweaver” Nightmare Court sylvari from Guild Wars 2, who is one of the main characters from my not-yet-released “Nightmare’s Embrace” project (a future short comic, separate from The Harbinger’s Path Trahearne & Malyck comic). His loyalty to Nightmare is what the quote refers to – like Cadeyrn before him, he believes Nightmare represents the “true” nature of all sylvari, and that the Dream is a corrupting force separating all sylvari from their true selves. 

The full version of the original in the full post: 

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“Mist Stranger Trahearne” Paintover | 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: 

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