Hey all!
Still alive, and still drawing.
I've been working pretty hard on practising the last month or so, drawing every day, even if it's only a little thing. Been going over some older lessons, and fundamentals to try and improve them - less coloured images, but I'm gonna be doing some study for colouring later. I'll likely end up taking all these line arts and colouring them in as I learn how to do that properly and not just kind of making it up as I go.
The unfortunate part of going back over fundamentals and doing a bunch of line arts and sketches is they're a bit less cool to look at than the finished product fully coloured - but I hope you can appreciate some of this anyway!
I realize this is a very very rambly post, and I'm not even sure who is still around here these days - but for those who are, and care - this is a kinda IRL journal update on me, and my artwork journey. <3
So looks like I last updated this around October time...
So, after that I went to play Destiny again for a bit, catching up on the last year or so of content I'd skipped. Fun for a while, but I got the same feelings of a kind of getting addicted to games and taking a lot of my time not achieving much of anything, so I quit again in early December, and I picked back up with art study and practice pretty hard.
So - I had come up with a character concept, and I decided to fully draw it out. This is Seren, a Warforged Favoured Soul. Her outer shell is made of porcelain that's repaired with gold and precious metal, themed around Kintsugi.
Late October -
Early November - I decided to have a little bit of fun, and drew some of my FRC characters in a cutesy chibi form.
Late November - I was running a little low and dry on ideas, so I just started to draw something - and ended up landing on this kinda half-corrupted character in the hells or something. It was fun playing with the lighting, and having a more interesting background than a damn gradient.
Late November - As I said, I went back to play Destiny for a hot minute. I decided to draw my main character, my titan.
Back in January of 2020 I drew Paige. My monk from a D&D IRL campaign I had played in. It was sort of the benchmark for my ability at the time, and it's something I refer back to when I feel like I'm going nowhere. That image is at the bottom of my last post in this thread, it's pretty dire to be honest, haha.
Late November - I decided to redraw Paige, doing a headshot and a full-body, and fully colour it. It went okay, but it was around this time I was noticing that a lot of my fundamentals with faces and forms are just not quite right, the eyes are huge, and the poses are boring.
Mid-December - right as I was stopping Destiny. I drew Gnar, a bugbear Barbarian I rolled up for a one-shot group I joined. As ever, D&D and fantasy remains a strong source of inspiration for me, likely in large thanks to books I read when I was a kid, and spending much of my early and mid 20's playing here on FRC.
Mid-December - I wanted to try and practice my painting. I do a lot of line art then colouring in, and it's fine - But where i'd like to one day be is fully lineless painted artworks. I've got such a long way to go - but I wanted to try and gauge my ability and draw my ol' gal Dreshae again.
Late December - I wanted to try drawing multiple character images, so I tried one of Dreshae, Alyndra and Tasar, after a conversation with ElvishNation over Discord for ideas of what to draw that day. I followed it up a couple of days later with another image - this one of Shaline my ol' druid, and Gwynnestri, Elvish's old cleric of Shevarash. I have a lot of very fond memories playing Shaline, her RP was very engaging for me. I always get a nostalgia pang when I think about that.
Alright - 28th December - is when I started to go back over some older art lessons and really double down my focus on fundementals. Sort of unhappy with my progress and the quality of my best efforts at making cool works. So, I went sort of back to basics - these are mostly line arts that follow. A mix of character pieces, and fan art pieces. I was, and am still doing two of these a week, inbetween other art lesson assignments which arent as cool to look at (lots of very sketchy and foundational body forms, anatomy study, etc.)
Late December - Eranin (my wizard from FRC!) & Eris Morn (Destiny)
Early January - Harriet Asheton (another character I had for a different D&D thing) and Agrias Oaks (from Final Fantasy Tactics)
Early January - My beloved druid of Talona, Shaline Aers. And Tifa Lockhart of FF7. Before the thing with Italy happened... lol.
Mid-January - I decided to draw a bit more of a scene. Putting into practice some of the revisions I'd done on fundementals. I drew Eranin, and Nadia (a character I veeeerrry briefly played on FRC)
Mid-January - about a week or so ago? I drew Vi from Arcane (and Leauge of Legends), and Paige my monk. Again. I like drawing Paige.
Late January - Okay, so, this one took me about four days. I had been watching and listening to some podcasts, as I do when I'm drawing sometimes. And I had heard mention of an art contest in one of them, so I decided it might be fun to enter, and practice drawing something that's outside of my wheelhouse. So I drew this scene of alt-reality future Dreshae who is now an Imperial Knight Freeblade pilot, battling chaos dreadblade knight daemon engine of nurgle... yeah, it.. yeah.
And finally - today I drew Rosie. My hin bard from FRC I played a while back. She was fun.
I appreciate that's quite rambly and a big dump of artwork. I didn't include all of them, I did a few traditional sketches, and a few other digital ones that were kinda for fun and not taken very seriously. Thanks for reading and taking a peek over, I hope you feel.. inspired, or happy for me, or something, for the work that I've been putting in. It's been a nice thing to return to and work on, especially in the midst of this crazy world we're in. For those who aren't aware, I'm a healthcare worker, and COVID has not been kind to my family, or my workplace. So, it's nice to have had a hobby to dive into that doesn't feel like I'm just indulging in pure escapism and not achieving anything.
I hope you're all staying safe, and much love to all. I'll check back in here again, in a few months for another dump, I'm sure.
Until then - stay cool, FRC.
