Starface

Painting this little portrait of my DnD character, Severan, was a bit of a bear, and by bear I mean Emotional Roller Coaster (the quote of the day, as inspired by my first wash of red, was "Everything is Failure and Death.")  In the end, however, I'm not displeased with it, and I've learned the potential healing power of multiple washes.  That being said, I do plan on spending some time learning how to more believably render scar-tissue, be it on scarlet flesh or otherwise...

Hair tied back, to better show the scar, of course

Not bad, not bad.

(and in case my tiefling paladin's sobriquet "Starface" sounds vaguely familiar to my regular readers, here's why.)

Cutting Edge

We had a pretty epic gaming session today (over six hours, which was amazing but also exhausting) so needless to say, I've got things like blades and armor on the mind, which directly inspired this evenings experimentation:

Ooo, shiny!

It was a useful exercise, and I definitely want to come back to it to gain better control, but I feel like I could sketch in a tiny bit metal now without too much difficulty. Which means maybe there will be a drawing of Severan in the near future...

Storm Tossed

Quick update tonight- so quick the paint literally isn't dried, and I am planning on going back into it.  But we had company this evening (eee!) so I only just now threw pigment on paper... and it's way past bedtime.

Linework- I wanted to get more intricate, but I was running out of time and really wanted not to skip a painting.

Too impatient- more bleeding than I'd like.  And we'll see how it dries down.  But for now, I really like it.

The point, of course, was to once again try my hand at using natural black hair as a decorative element, like swirly silky hair.  I think this is proof that it can absolutely be done- and probably much better than this hastily-thrown-together attempt.

To bed!

Revisiting Savah

I decided to revisit the fluttery green silk of Savah's robes today, and try a few different things.

Now that's yellow!

I started off with a yellow wash, thinking to get some nice glazing in, and while it was nice, I think I should have toned the yellow down a bit, because it was just a smidge too neon to match my vision.

Nobody talk about angles.

I wasn't displeased, per se, but I also wasn't pleased, so I tried yet again, this time with many many pale layers.  And as I waited for each of the many many layers to dry, I worked on a doodle of my hair, which was cooperating with a fetching updo.

Both Unfinished.

I think I'll just have to keep keeping at it.  Like so many things in life.

The full sketchbook page (for now).

I'm thinking of painting the little portrait tomorrow... we'll see how I feel.  It's definitely my favorite thing that I did today, but alas... not actually watercolor... sooo... as much as I like it in black and white, I might just have to remedy the situation... plus I want to put some more linework into her face (shading-wise) so we'll just see.

Desert Sketch

Pretty much exactly as described:

I didn't have a lot of time (or energy) tonight, so I kept it extremely simple.  I'd like to revisit it on a day when I have more of both, so that I can do a better job.  That being said, I do like how the sky came out.

Savah

ElfQuest is getting very, very close to the conclusion of The Final Quest, and as such I've found myself awash in nostalgia.  Part of my initial love of watercolor came from the old Starblaze Editions of The Original Quest, so it's only fitting that as I struggle to learn the craft, I return to the characters I fell in love with over 25 years ago:

Some simple linework.

That's Savah right there, aka Mother of Memory to the Sun Folk, adorned in my take on the outfit she wears when she first meets the Wolfriders.  I really, really wanted to paint her fluttery, transparent-ish green robes, sooo...

Not bad for a 4" high doodle!

Now, I did not get the effect I was hoping for, which means that I will be revisiting the subjects of ethereal silks at a later date, but that aside, I'm actually quite pleased with how it came out, and I hope you are, too.

Afrodite

Last night I was watching a tutorial on drawing hair (I actually have a pretty good grip on that, but you never know when you might come across a new tip or trick that hasn't yet occurred to you) and it struck me that the hair in question was all very, very white-girl-ideal-type hair.  Like, long, and silky, and manageable.  And I'm pretty damn good at that kind of hair.  But.

But.

That is not the only hair in the world, not by a long shot.  And while yes, it's very easy to take hair like that and turn it into a decorative element, it seemed to me that there's no reason other textures couldn't also be decorative, if I spent as much time noodling with it as I had over long silken locks.  Which got me to thinking about how I'd played with wet-on-wet to do yesterday's hair, and how much I'd liked the effect I got with my clouds on Saturday, and I thought to myself, "I'll bet I could make a really gorgeous afro using that technique," and then it was stuck in my head so hard that I decided that's what I was going to try my hand at today.

And then there was a lot of careful consideration over what I wanted my black lady to be wearing, because exoticizing, etc, which brought me back around to a conversation with my boss (who is black) about how his community needs more awareness of black professionals (outside of the realms of sports/entertainment) so I thought to myself, "Hell, I'll put her in a suit," and I did.

Don't adjust your monitor: the photo is blurry.  But it gives you the idea of how the hair looked wet...

...vs dry.  So soft!  Such gorgeous texture!

I loved how her hair came out (very close to my vision- I can see how I'll tweak it next time), but when it came to the rest of her... well, once again my lack of patience bit me in the ass (turns out I do need to literally remove myself from my desk during drying-time, not just read-a-book-until-I-think-'it's fine...'), but I really think I managed to salvage it, in the end.  Except for her nose (it's killing me that the plane break ended up so much higher than I'd intended) but I'll cut me some slack.

And, obviously, I'll give it another try in the future.