Some Real Characters (and Some So-Called Flowers)

Since the last time I popped my head up, I've passed the Series 7, and begun studying for the Series 66.   I am definitely understanding why some people feel the former is more difficult, and some find the latter more difficult.  I haven't decided yet which camp I fall in to... all I know is I'm quite tired and it's showing in my artistic efforts (or lack thereof).

Nia Sonome

Ah yes, another Consult-the-Grid evening.  It came up "original character", so here it is, a little illustration of Gwen's best friend, who is three-quarters Japanese, one quarter British, and 100% Californian.  Aaaaand then when I go looking for entries about Gwen to link to, I realize that there... is exactly one, and it doesn't really tell you much about the actual story.  Hoo boy.  Okay, long story short: the year is 1996, Gwen is a scientifically-minded teenage werewolf, and Nia is her fantasy-minded best friend, and of these two people only one of them is excited about werewolves being A Real Thing.  Their story has been in my brain for over two decades.  Good gods I need to finish it...

Moving on to what I did over the 16th, 17th, and 18th!

Head too squashy.  Oh well.

Recently in our campaign Severan got herself a wolf cloak back from the tanner.  I'd been waiting for this damn thing for over a year in real time (but less than a month in Game Time, apparently) so I was suuuuuuper jazzed about it finally materializing, and of course I wanted to draw it!  Which, to be honest, meant a lot of time staring at Jon Snow.

I was feeling pretty grumpy on the 19th, for no good reason whatsoever, so in an attempt to cheer myself up I decided to create a new D&D character entirely via rolling, and then challenge myself to give them a backstory that forced everything to make sense.

It was actually super fun, and the gods of chaos were obviously smiling down on me, because they gave me things I actually could work with.  When I immediately rolled a Drow cleric, I was a bit concerned, but then I rolled her as Chaotic Neutral, and like I said- it worked out.  And what it worked out to was Tytias Advyn:

I rolled for her features, too: round eyes, straight nose, small mouth.  And her hair (hip length: topknot).  And her coloring.

In fact I  had so much fun putting together Tytias (and her patron goddess, Skiffring) that I drew her mace last night (and a little sketch of her outfit, which, yes, I also rolled for):

I left off the scale mail... maybe tomorrow...

If you're interested in hearing how I made it all work, drop me a line in the comments and I'll post the backstory one of these days... maybe even tomorrow...  I'll probably just keep Tytias in my back pocket in case I ever play a one-shot that I can't appropriately bring my Level 5 Paladin to.

Today was a better day in terms of Grump, in no small part because of a lovely bouquet of daffodils.  So naturally, after a long hard day of eye-crossing studying, I decided I'd try my hand at painting said happy daffodils, really letting myself enjoy the bright yellow and the looseness of the medium...  I won't share the worst of my failures, but I will share the best of them:

Yep.  Those are yellow flowers.  Probably.

Turns out I have sort of regressed in terms of my ability to be patient, which isn't super surprising, given how little time I've been spending on these sketches, lately.  But I have to cut myself some slack- the time will come back, and then I'll be doing more complex/interesting/experimental things again.  And also: they're sketches.  They're not supposed to be perfect.  It's okay Owens OMG.  ::eye roll::

Also also, I'm really jonesing for some solid Writing Time.  ::sigh::  Too many interests, not enough time...

Death, and Other Beautiful Things

It's been an interesting couple of weeks.  I've been thinking a lot about death and acceptance of the inevitable, and it definitely shows in what I've been doodling.  Which is not to say that I'm in a particularly dark or depressing place (insofar as death goes, anyway)- just... contemplative.  I've also been listening to Hayden Calnin's Cut Love Pt 1 on repeat.  Soooo...

I'm going to put these up slightly out of order, for the sole purpose of making sure the preview photo is a decent one.  Ah, vanity.  One of my many, many flaws.

Why Do You Hide

Although this is, to me, kind of a sad piece (the sketch sprang from sad- although not death-related- musings), it was also fun to work on.  Because hair.  And rainbows.  And getting highly pigmented lines with my watercolor.  I kept meaning to go back in and add shadows with gray, and maybe  I still will, but at the time I needed to let go and move on.

To a super cute baby!

...and by move on, I mean I was hanging out at Boozeday and there was a super cute baby there that needed to be sketched.  Now let's back up a bit to the second:

We had a date night!  I wore a swanky dress!

Aaaaand back (to the future!) again to the seventh:

Ireland-ISH

I was feeling particularly uninspired, so I checked my table and saw that it was monochrome British Isles Landscape day!  Which I started, and then forgot I was doing monochrome so the sky is blue but that's okay.  I like the sky.

Purely Ridiculous

You may be asking yourself, "What the bloody hell is happening here?" and frankly, Dear Reader, I don't blame you.  Because there is a narrow segment of the population to whom this bit of nonsense might appeal/even make sense to, and that is the place in the Venn Diagram of Fandom wherein Fans of Elfquest intersect with Fans of Watership Down.  I doodled and painted this (over the eighth, ninth, and tenth) in response to a conversation with said people (ie my people).  It's two of the protagonists of Elfquest, Cutter and Skywise, done up as rabbits.  I regret nothing.

Speaking of Watership Down (aka my favorite prose novel)...

"What is, is what must be."

I've been dwelling a lot on death, and when one thinks about Death when one is also thinking about Watership Down, one naturally thinks of the rabbits' manifestation of Death- the Black Rabbit of Inle.  And knowing that black is meant to be a scary color, an absence-of-light sort of color, just as death is mean to be scary, an absence-of-life, but knowing also that black can be the presence of all-color... well, that lead down the rabbit hole (sorry not sorry) of making a Black Rabbit with rainbows glinting through his fur.  Which lead to the three days worth of experimentation you see on this page.

Which, in turn, leads us to today, wherein I was doing more Thinking About Death, but this time in terms of an entirely different Fandom: Harry Potter.

Gentle Creature

I love the whole concept of thestrals: creatures that can only be seen by those who have witnessed and gained an emotional understanding of death.  Poor, scary-looking things: I would pet one, if I could.

Which brings me, once again, up to date with my endeavor.  For now.

Things are getting pretty intense with my studies: I've done well enough that they've allowed me to bump up the date of my test, so now it's less than a week away.  Eek!  I'm definitely ready to be done with this portion, however: this entire process has really been laying some of my uglier flaws (arrogance, impatience, ease of distraction, temper) bare to the fire, only to crack a hammer down on them, repeatedly.  Here's hoping I can allow myself to be shaped appropriately.

Battle Steed

Look you guys, I've wanted a rhinoceros as a Battle Steed for literally 15 years.  I have a character I used to draw, creatively named Barbarian Princess, and her battle steed is a rhino, and I'm just saying that this has been on my Wish List since college, ya'll.

Needless to say, there was a certain scene in Black Panther that had me shrieking with giddy fangirl joy.

Lines last night, color tonight.

In the past I've drawn Battle Rhinos with war paint, but never with any sort of armor, so that was kind of fun to do.  Also, I could not find reference photos for that scene, so I worked with the impressions I could glean from a very short clip on YouTube, and a whole lot of Artistic License.  I like it!