Ogam Thorton, OR, The Third Wizard in Three Days

Another wizard. Because ANOTHER WIZARD. This is a big deviation from my normal style, if you can say my chicken scratching has a style. It's based on Gustie LaRu's sketch of one of my D&D characters, Ogam Thorton.

Erin's Sacrifice

When I started this blog, I had to use my ladyfriend's scanner, save the image on her mac, and email it to myself. A frustrating process, and one which made the difficult task of drawing and writing every day even more difficult. I'm still shit at both, but as of an hour ago I have my own scanner hooked up to my brand new computer. I've drawn nothing new for tonight, but I wanted to share a piece I drew a month ago which I'm still quite proud of. Aside from the awkward leg (which I swear was less awkward one of the other 30 times I drew it) the anatomy is actually quite good, by my standard. For the record, this is a character of mine named Erin, after she has plucked out her own eye, and chopped off one of her hands in an act of deference to her god.

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.

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.

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.