After a year of drawing pretty much nothing due to artblock/burnout that came after a few years of battling my mind to be able to draw, this drawing marked me finally being able to return to art this November 2023 with a fresh mindset of less perfectionisim and more focus on my own enjoyment of the process. I had a limited timespan to work on this, a gift for my grandmother's 80th birthday, as I only began the process the day before I needed to email it across. Compared to the months it has typically taken me to finish anything in more recent years, this presented an extra motivation to abandon "perfect" in favour of "good enough". It's not as detailed as some of my prior works, but given the limited timespan and that I'm out of practice I am nonetheless happy with the result. As usual, I combined a graphite and ink drawing with digital colour+shading.
Jean is my clan leader on the dragon petsim Flight Rising, in-game she is a nature elemental female pearlcatcher. Her in-game profile is here https://www1.flightrising.com/dragon/4025429
Lore outline: Originally born in the nature elemental lands she found herself enchanted by the stars above the canopy, and journeyed to the light territories in search of knowledge. But these dragons had little in the way of passion besides snobbery and a burning desire for truth. In her love of the night sky and shunning of the sun she did not fit here, and was bullied for it. One particularly bad episode altered the golden runes that her scales bore, covered her with patches of glowing gold - a permanent mark of the burning sun. But she did not only come to harm in the light flight, for it was here that she came across a clan of misfits just like her, formed by a guardian dragon who wanted to protect all those who were different. And then she, along with the clan, moved to the territory of the arcane flight - the home of curiosity, and those that loved the stars. They have been there ever since.
Art method: I started with graphite and ink on white A4 paper, scanned it into the computer and set to multiply then used photoshop to add colour and further shading + a simple gradient for a background on the layers beneath.
Sometimes, I re-read books and they don't have the same impact as before. Sometimes, I re-read them and they hit me harder.
Roadside picnic by Brothers Strugatsky made me cry. This is my favorite book by them, although I do so love Monday starts on Saturday. But this book! I wish more people would read it.
This one I designed when I was 7 years old,hence the silly name and simple design,but effective......I Recently stumbled upon yugioh card "ryu kishin" and really liked pose he was drawn in,so I tried to redraw my Vampis in that pose while using ink and polychromos colored pencils. I always imagined Vampis being some kind of mischeavius minion using shadows to move around doing all sort of childish pranks,like throwing rocks at windows,or setting houses on fire....it's one of the two monsters that I remember from young age and I kept redrawing him every year or so.
The idea was to create a nice scene of the sun shining down on a house. The skies are showing off shades of blue, and brown, and yellow. I love the rustic style and I feel like I accomplished that look in this painting.
I had to learn so many new things today just to get this done. It's a simple comic but the digital process is very different from what I'm used to. I love comics and I'm finally making my own.
Of all the things to jumpstart my inspiration for this, I never had an eye-test and a fresh set of glasses the day after the Samhuinn Fire Festival took place… but alas, here we are!
