{"id":5860,"date":"2025-01-09T14:39:18","date_gmt":"2025-01-09T22:39:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lizliu.com\/sketchblog\/?p=5860"},"modified":"2025-01-20T13:37:26","modified_gmt":"2025-01-20T21:37:26","slug":"happy-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/landylachs.com\/sketchblog\/2025\/01\/happy-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy 2025!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Kurt, one of the characters from my unnamed project.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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!<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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“Corveil,” from the same project as Kurt.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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Trahearne and Malyck from Guild Wars 2 | With support from ArenaNet.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Above is an in-progress crop of Trahearne and Malyck from Guild Wars 2.<\/em> 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. :)<\/p>\n

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Corveil<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Above is a practice painting of Corveil looking contemplative.<\/p>\n

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Corveil again.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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“Gul Dukat” from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And above we have a Cardassian (from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

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 Next<\/em> Generation<\/em> 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,<\/em> then Enterprise, <\/em>and then finally Voyager). <\/em><\/p>\n

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)<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I don’t think I quite captured his charming malevolence, though I am pleased with how knobby his Cardassian neck turned out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.…<\/span><\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,423,340,605,6,10],"tags":[74,642,644,386,643,387,157,459,645,646,640,641,458],"class_list":["post-5860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-digital-art","category-digital-painting","category-finished-art","category-personal-art","category-sketches-and-studies","category-work-in-progress","tag-corveil","tag-ds9","tag-dukat","tag-guild-wars-2","tag-gul-dukat","tag-gw2","tag-kurt","tag-malyck","tag-marc-alaimo","tag-michael-westmore","tag-star-trek","tag-star-trek-deep-space-nine","tag-trahearne"],"rttpg_featured_image_url":null,"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"Landy","author_link":"https:\/\/landylachs.com\/sketchblog\/author\/liz\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":"Digital Art<\/a> Digital Painting<\/a> Finished Art<\/a> Personal Art<\/a> Sketches & Studies<\/a> Work-In-Progress<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"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....Continue…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/landylachs.com\/sketchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/landylachs.com\/sketchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/landylachs.com\/sketchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/landylachs.com\/sketchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/landylachs.com\/sketchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5860"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/landylachs.com\/sketchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6208,"href":"https:\/\/landylachs.com\/sketchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5860\/revisions\/6208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/landylachs.com\/sketchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/landylachs.com\/sketchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/landylachs.com\/sketchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}