Commission for Skylark finished for this past Valentine’s Day, as a surprise gift for their partner! Above is the mesmer virtuoso, “Tarcisio Chiavetta,” who is Damedarosa’s character! (Names mentioned here with permission.)
Above and below are detail crops.
Process sheets below!
Sketch 01: Initial sketch ideas.
For this piece, we began with a general range for the budget. I was given a fair bit of artistic freedom, and I offered to draw a series of thumbnail during the initial sketches, across a range of complexities within their budget. This way, the client could choose the idea which both appealed to them most, and matched their desired budget. The original sheet lists quotes underneath each thumbnail idea, which I’ve omitted here for the client’s privacy.
Sketch 02: Revised sketch, pose block-out
First-round revision after the sketch idea was chosen.
Sketch 03: Revised sketch, background block-out
Here is blocking out the background more before the painting stage began.
And here is the finished piece once more! This illustration has two versions – a “mesmeric magic” version at the top of the post, and this version above which places the focus more on Tarcisco’s figure.
Thanks so much again to Skylark for this commission!
I have this sketch of Malyck I drew last year, which I thought the composition might look interesting, and which I just haven’t had a chance to get around to doing more with it since. Largely because I since decided to draw a comic with him instead of doing more paintings, haha.
I would still like to finish this drawing at some point, though – indulged myself a bit this week and worked on it a little more. Just a portrait crop, for now.
I might not have posted the original sketch here – I wasn’t using this blog last year – just in case, here’s the original sketch below:
“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!).
“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:
Similar to the Trahearne & Malyck compilation post, I thought it might be fun to compile a post to house the Guild Wars 2 artwork I’ve made over the years. Like the previous post, this will be kept updated. Hopefully this might become a little archive that’s easy to browse.
My sylvari warrior from Guild Wars 2! Crop from the full painting.
I was inspired to paint after seeing the new mount option in Guild Wars 2! It’s a “roadrunner mount,” but I was very excited because it reminded me of a mount idea I had a while back:
Mount idea based off a “greater prairie chicken” from a while back!
This mount idea is based off a greater prairie chicken, which is one of my favorite chickens! They are beautiful creatures.
I tried to recreate my mount idea in-game using the dye system, and though I did not really succeed, I am happy with my turkey mount, haha:
My sylvari warrior with his turkey mount!
This screenshot is heavily edited, as I’m currently on a laptop with integrated graphics. GW2 runs surprisingly well on it, but I wasn’t able to find an area that lit the character models well enough for us to see them. I’ll post the original screenshot below!
Original screenshot! It’s fun to compare the two.
Anyway, here is what I ended up sketching!
It’s a bit of a chimeric melding of my greater prairie chicken mount idea, the GW2 roadrunner skin, and the greater prairie chicken itself. The painting manages to look nothing like either my sketch or the in-game mount, haha, but it was really fun to paint tonight.
Here’s how the rest of the painting looks.
And now for the thoughts about cynicism in today’s media entertainment!
Thoughts about cynicism in today’s modern shows
While painting the above tonight, my mind started to idly wander about general thoughts regarding media entertainment. We finished the season finale of The Boys earlier tonight, and I’m sure this what prompted tonight’s meandering thoughts.
The primary thought is this: I can’t get into shows that revel in celebrating the worst in humanity.
There is a certain cynicism that pervades many of today’s popular entertainment media. I suspect this is why many modern shows haven’t clicked with me. The ones I do enjoy seem to be fighting for a widespread audience (Cobra Kai being a welcome exception). My two other recent favorites, Person of Interest and Dark Matter, were both cancelled after only 3 or 4 seasons! (“Recent” by modern standards – both are several years old now.)
Let’s take Cobra Kai as an example. Cobra Kai introduces itself in a very deliberate way. In our current media climate of “dark and gritty, humanity is irredeemably evil,” you think it will go in a predictable way.
The show shatters this expectation. (At least, it did for me.) Instead of taking the predictable route of a villainous, irredeemable main character – as he is introduced – the show invites us to ponder the idea of bettering ourselves. And in doing so – at least this is my interpretation – possibly even bettering the world.
It allows us to contemplate this in a way media like Westworld, Game of Thrones, Black Mirror, The Boys, or The Witcher feel like they want to choke out this desire in its audience. They arguably disavow the notion of any good in humanity. They also seem to disavow the idea that people might be redeemable, and might become better versions of their past selves.
These shows appear to desire bludgeoning their audience under the premise that humanity has little to no positive qualities, and that humans are overwhelmingly, irredeemably flawed creatures.
Humans are unquestionably flawed – it is those flaws that probably inspire the majority of our literary history (at least the most interesting works!). Our flaws – and our striving to conquer them – seem to be a central part of what it means to be human.
Possibly I’m an overly optimistic Star Trek fan, but as long as we aren’t naive about or excuse these flaws, I don’t see negatives to aspiring to be our best selves.
