“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.
2025 Paintover; vertical crop.
Original 2017 version; vertical crop
The full version of the original in the full post:
“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:
The Harbinger’s Path | Chapter 2, page 2, panel crop
I think I’ll make this post for any page previews I don’t end up making a separate post for – starting with this preview crop from chapter 2, page 3. Will add to this post as needed!
The Harbinger’s Path | Chapter 2, page 3, panel crop
“The Harbinger’s Path” | Trahaerne panel preview (in-progress / artwork not final)
Wanted to do an update post! Chapter 2 for The Harbinger’s Path is about 85% complete now. I finished the first “refinement” pass for all the pages last Thursday, and began doing the “final refinement” pass for the first half of the chapter (if you’re confused about what I’m talking about here, I go into my rough process in this post).
While working on them last night, I realized that because the files themselves are spreads – with 2 pages per file – I thought I had done half as much progress of the “final pass” as I’ve made so far. I realized I had double the amount of progress as what it had been feeling like for the past few days. I feel very silly, but this means I am confident I can begin posting new pages for chapter 2 next Monday, June 23rd!
“The Harbinger’s Path” | Malyck & Trahearne panel preview (in-progress / artwork not final)
I’m going back and forth as to whether adding Malyck’s luminescence here adds or not – for the scene itself, I think it could work either way in terms of what it says about the character.
“The Harbinger’s Path” | Malyck & Trahearne panel preview (in-progress / artwork not final)
About 80% refined.
“The Harbinger’s Path” | Malyck & Trahearne panel preview (in-progress / artwork not final) | Black-and-white version
This a small panel in the comic itself, but one of my personal favorites. I really like the contrast it has in black and white (though it will be in color in the comic itself). I feel like it’s working better in the black-and-white version – still working out how to convey a similar feeling when color is added.
“The Harbinger’s Path” | Panel preview (in-progress / artwork not final)
Wanted to post a few panel previews from the current stage of Chapter 2! I have the majority of chapter 2 blocked out now – what feels like the bulk of the work for me. Progress is going smoothly, more than chapter 1, as I’ve been able to apply everything I learned from doing chapter 1 to chapter 2. Chapter 1 had sort of a haphazard workflow, because I didn’t really know what I was doing – the way I drew the pages was very inefficient. But necessary, I think, for figuring out a workflow that works for me and feels natural. I estimate new pages should be ready later this month.
Above and below are color tests from yesterday. Below was the initial color test. I liked the contrast of the warm colors, but comparing it with the cooler version (above), I thought the color version was a better fit for this page’s tone and dialogue.
Initial color test for the previous panel preview (in-progress / artwork not final)
I’m using a different method for coloring this chapter’s pages, which I tried on some practice pages for a different project alongside doing The Harbinger’s Path first chapter (Nightmare’s Embrace – a short side-comic about my personal sylvari characters, which I haven’t shown anywhere yet). I really like how the colors for those pages are turning out – they give me a little more control compared to the workflow I used in Chapter 1.
“The Harbinger’s Path” | Panel preview (in-progress / artwork not final)
This is a panel early in Chapter 2 I like – the composition for this preview is the full panel.
Close-up of the previous panel (in-progress / artwork not final)
Close-up of the previous panel.
The workflow I’m using right now is loosely: Layout >> Block-out >> Color or Refinements (order is interchangeable) >> Final Refinements
Layout = Very loose, messy sketches. Likely only understandable to me because they are incredibly loose (maybe I’ll post examples in the future, though they aren’t anything to look at because they likely won’t be very readable)
Block-out = Changing the loose layout sketches into readable forms and shapes. The color tests above are the block-out stage with very loose color just added, while the panel below is a little before I’d consider a block-out “complete,” because the shapes for Trahearne’s hair are not fully defined/decided on yet. But I also sometimes leave this to the “refinements” step, when they are smaller details like these, and if I think they will not take me too long to figure out during refining.
Color = Initial colors.
Refinements = Refining the block-out lines, as well as any color changes. Maybe this should be two steps, but I’ve been thinking of them as a combined step.
Final Refinements = Fix anything I’m dissatisfied with in the page at this stage. This is arguably the most important step, in some ways – Harbinger Chapter 1 hovered in the “Refinements” stage for a long time. It was “mostly presentable,” but there were many things on all the pages I saw I wanted to fix or improve. It wasn’t until doing a second “refinements” pass that the pages began to look more finished to me. They’re small changes, but ones that make an impact disproportional to what I’d expect (at least, it was surprising to me how much adding this step improved all the pages for chapter 1).
Above is just a personal favorite of mine – I really like how Trahearne’s expression is turning out. Doing these pages is forcing me to learn a lot of things about line weight which (to my detriment) I’ve never had a strong interest practicing with very much before, but which has become endlessly interesting to me for some reason this year.
