Last of the Shai

This is Beloch Shrike. One of my first characters. I haven't messed with him in years, but he still holds a special place in my heart, despite being painfully gary stu.

The art is pretty bad. Hands continue to be a problem for me, but I refuse to stop drawing them. At least his front leg turned out halfway decent.

Princess Champions Rebellion

A few years ago, Morrie and I had a long conversation where we made up this royal family who was very oppressive, and the 12-year-old princess ended up becoming the champion of the rebellion. I really don't remember much of it, but I've had a sketch Morrie drew hanging on the wall for a year or so.

This is my rendition of that sketch. Turned out pretty well, I think!

Halfling in a Hallway

I am pretty darned happy with this. It took some time, but it seems to have worked pretty damned well.

Inspired by yesterday when I spent 30 minutes looking for images of a group of adventurers exploring a dungeon, and didn't find anything.

Truly Terrible Hands

Didn't have much time today. Actually haven't slept since before the last image I posted. So just a little sketch today. Every single one of these hands turned out abysmal, but quality isn't the goal. Consistency is the goal. Quality comes with practice.

Star Wars Choices of One: Grave Shooting from his Bacta Tank

I missed a day, but that's to be expected I suppose. Technically this is being posted two days after the last drawing, but that's only because I went to bed immediately after work on Tuesday, and woke up at 1am on Wednesday to do all of my normal Tuesday-evening stuff.

Just before doing my drawing for today, I finished reading Timothy Zahn's latest Star Wars novel, "Choices of One," which features the same group of five stormtroopers he featured in one of his other recent novels, "Allegiance". The book was really quite good, and just before the end there was a scene where the stormtroopers were pinned down.

Abruptly, the last two survivors seemed to wake up to what was happening. They boths pun around, dropping down with their backs to the kegs, their weapons tracking around to their rear...
Toward Grave, lying in his now-open-topped bacta tank, the blaster he'd concealed as the attackers ran past with barely a glance braced against the edge of the opening. His weapon spat one last shot, with his usual deadly accuracy, and one of the two aliens collapsed to the floor, his own final bolt shattering another piece of wall.

The drawing is somewhat off from what the book describes. The gun isn't braced against the edge of the tank, and I'm pretty sure the tank in the book was horizontal, not the more standard vertical, but meh. This is what I pictured so it's what I drew.

While it doesn't look great, I'm somewhat happy with it. Drawing people from the side has always been difficult for me, but I think this turned out well. Particularly the shape of the character's head. The arm he's leaning on would look a lot better, I think, if I had moved him over in the tank a bit. But still, it doesn't look abysmal.

Guns are difficult to draw. I've never liked drawing them because of that.

Final Fantasy 6: Edgar Firing His Autocrossbow

Edgar Figaro is one of my favorite characters in Final Fantasy 6. Along with every other character. That game really was remarkable, wasn't it?

I'm pretty happy with this drawing. It's not as much of an action-pose as Terra Escaping from Narshe, but I'm really happy with the way Edgar's hair turned out. Hair is always difficult. The only truly glaring flaw, for me, is the forward hand. It looks simply abysmal, but I couldn't really get it to work the way I wanted to, and I decided to call it quits.

Still, overall, I'm quite happy with this. That makes 3/6 posts I'm happy with so far, since starting this blog. 50% success rate isn't bad this early in the process, I think.

Ascendant Crusade: The Whispered Queen Overlooks her Forces

I sketched this once on lined paper. It was one of those sketches which really didn't look good, yet somehow looked like it had a potential to be really cool if I just did a better job with it. This is my most recent attempt to recapture whatever made me feel that way about the original sketch, but no luck. It really just ends up looking like I'm putting a bunch of shittily drawn characters next to each other.

I don't think I'll attempt this again until I'm significantly better.

Champagne Flute Closeup

Yesterday I drew a vampire getting stabbed. He was holding a champagne glass, which was spilling as he twisted in his death throes. I quite liked the image, but I realized after the fact that I had drawn the vampire's grip incorrectly. A classy gent never holds the stem of the glass, and certainly never in a fist.

I figure I'll be doing a lot of close-ups like this on busier days when I can't spend too long on the drawing. Besides, it gives me an opportunity to focus on the details for things which would be tiny in a larger drawing.

I'm not very happy with this. Nothing really works well IMHO. But what are you gonna do?

Ascendant Crusade: The Whispered Queen Gains her Throne

Fun fact, in the last few years 90% of my drawings have been about events which occur "behind the scenes" in my Ascendant Crusade campaign. So many of my drawings will likely be from that.

This is a scene I've imagined many times. Vecna's Chosen, a lowborn woman, is guided by her god first to acquire his hand and his eye, then to kill the vampire king who leads the cult of Vecna. She obeys her god's command with brutal efficiency, gutting the false king from behind, and earning herself the mantle of The Whispered Queen. She goes on to become one of the most ruthless and dispassionate conquerors the world has ever known.

I'm really happy with this drawing. It's far from perfect, but it's much better than yesterday's fare. Plus, it's not exactly simple. Most of the time I just draw single characters. Here I drew two characters touching one another, and it didn't end up looking completely terrible. There are some big problems, such as all the eraser smudges. The vampire's fore-hand is also all fucked up. I was going for "twitching in death throes," but it came off more as "awkwardly giving the viewer the finger."

Still, I'm really happy with this.

Ascendant Crusade: Orcish Herald of the Crusade

In my Ascendant Crusade campaign, the villain is a woman named The Whispered Queen. Among her many forces is a tribe of orcs which I actually detailed quite thoroughly. They're called the Tribe of the Wolf. The Queen was so impressed with them that when she subjugated them, she made their chieftain a member of her honor guard, and brought the rest of the tribe to the Citadel of the Seed to serve as its defenders. This particular orc is a standard bearer, and is lazing against a nearby wall as he waits for the troops to assemble for an upcoming offensive.

I'm really, really not happy with this. A few times I considered scrapping it, but that's not what this project is about. This project is about improvement through volume. So, yes, I drew something shitty. I also got more practice, and hopefully learned a few things not to do.

I'm not entirely upset about the standard itself, though. I designed it several years ago. It never looks great, because hands are difficult, but this simplistic style doesn't look awful.

Final Fantasy 6: Terra Escaping from Narshe

In the opening scene of Final Fantasy 6, the character of Terra has a mind control device (Slave Crown) removed from her head. Immediately after awaking with amnesia, some thugs show up looking for her, hoping to make her pay for the crimes she committed whilst under the control of the crown. She's forced to flee into a series of nearby caves, still delirious.

This is the first time I've tried having a leg fall back into shadow, which I've seen many artists do. I was a little cowardly about it, so I hid most of the leg behind the rock. I think the most obvious thing I need to work on here is hands.

Simplified character design taken from this remarkable piece of fan art. (Though her hair is GREEN, damnit!)