Promise Me

 When they see my drawings people often think Spark and Vahaadi are a couple.  They are not; but they are very intimate friends. This image depicts the meta versions of Spark and Vahaadi (non Loose Canon, essentially) from a scenario that Evie and I have been working on. It's less of a roleplay and more of an exploratory collaborative prose. Evie wrote about Spark kissing Vahaadi's wrist and I thought that was such a tender moment I wanted to illustrate it.  They've both just been through a traumatizing experience--notably more traumatizing for Spark than it was for Vahaadi, because he's endured it before--leaving Vahaadi drugged and injured and Spark picking up the pieces of her shattered self-created reality. 

The thick outline sketch style is one I picked up from Saibraeus.

In with the New

Some recent Christmas present projects. :)

First, for Mom,

Menolly (from Anne McCaffrey's Dragonsong trilogy) is her favorite character, so I decided to make her a bookmark featuring Menolly and her fire lizard Beauty.  I was a little unsure about the quality since I tried for a touch more realism than my usual style and went for really saturated colors, but Mom really loved it! She not only printed it as a bookmark, but she asked me to adjust the resolution so she could print it big.  She framed it and hung it over her desk! <3

Resources:
Texture 12 by JadedReality

For my brother Drew, who loves both World of Warcraft and The Legend of Zelda: the Windwaker,

His WoW gnome, Windwaker style!  This was lots of fun to draw, I really like drawing WoW characters even though their armor is always stupid-complicated.  I always have to end up simplifying it.

The fonts I used to mimic the Zelda logo can be found here: zeldauniverse.net

Star Gazing

Experiment with background and coloring.  I have so much to learn.

Sketch Dump

Just trying to compile and organize some sketches I've had kicking around so I don't have 358724651351 million papers to worry about packing and moving every semester.

An old expression study for my OC Kala

 

More recent posing, gestures, and hairstyle experiment for Kala

Yet another experiment with Kala's design and style.  This was inspired by the work of O-mie.  I really like it, but I'm not sure it's going to work for me

This was sort of inspired by an RP with Evie, but I actually mostly wanted to draw Thystle with wet hair

A scruffy, haggard, and furious Vahaadi.  This is a scene from his canon story; he's facing off against Iryl and the Heir.

Working on a concept for Vahaadi's fiend form, based on a savannah cat.

Size Comparison of Vahaadi and his fiend form

First piece of concept art for Tryvnah (QUITE old).  This is him at age 18, when he and Vahaadi met.

Leimira's ponysona, Snake Charmer (or just Charmer). Her cutie mark is a snake coiled in a heart shape.

Study of Fawn from the Tinkerbell movies.  I screencapped a picture of her talking and caught her making this appraising expression.

Bitty chibi Sparks!

I've been meaning to draw Evie's OC Armera for awhile now.  I found this thumbnail sketch I did of her to experiment with her pose and build. Evie once wrote her saying something about having arms like tree trunks, so I think she's probably got some sweet guns like Venus Williams, on account of all her swimming and trident-hefting.

Pretty sure this was another attempt at drawing Holly for AC.

 Design sketch I did for LC

Steampunk Spark I did for a RP idea pitch.  This eventually led into Loose Canon, because this was the first time we considered the idea of Spark getting her powers from Vahaadi instead of a comic-book-esque genetic mutation

And super recent, an unfinished Whirlwind from Skylanders

Brace for Impact

I'm so excited that I'm done with the art projects for AC that I decided I'd start another one because I am a glutton for punishment. OTL

I'm also posting the lineart because it turned out nice and tidy with the line-weighting.  AC, you're welcome to do what you like with it. :)

Princess Camilla of Zart

At the tender age of one, Princess Camilla of Zart had a run-in with an enchanted cauldron of plenty, resulting in six duplicates. Since there was no way to tell which was the original, the king and queen kept and raised all of the girls. Each was assigned a color and a new name to reduce confusion, and in time the seven girls each developed radically different personalities. All was well and good until the issue of succession came into play...

I was commissioned by AC to design each of the girls based on her suggestions.  These girls went through NUMEROUS revisions as I struggled to strike the balance between individuality (hair styles, poses, accessories, expressions) and consistency (face shape, proportions, dimensions), on top of differences in interpretation with AC, and--of course--my learning curve. I also experimented with several different drawing styles and compositions before settling on what you see here.

Without further ado

Royal Princess Holly. Her color is red and her motif is holly berries and leaves, which I incorporated into her diadem.  AC first described her as being the most 'normal' of the girls, which I interpreted as being the classic demeanor of a princess and (in my mind) likely the favorite for the throne.  Because I wanted to focus on her demure, regal air, she often came across looking a lot older than her sisters in her multiple revisions, like she might have been their mother rather than one of the brood, especially since her diadem was originally a crown. Letting down her hair helped significantly.

Timid Princess Dawn.  Her color is orange and her motif is a sun-in-glory, which I incorporated into her pendant. Dawn became cripplingly shy after an unfortunate experience with an impatient tutor. I had the opposite problem with Dawn as opposed to Holly--she ended up looking too young.  Dawn went through the most revisions of all the girls, but they were worth it.  This is my favorite piece of the set.

Frail Princess Saffron.  Her color is gold and her motif is a crocus, which I incorporated into her veil.  Princess Saffron is an attention monger and a drama queen. She spends most of her life feigning illness so that she can shirk her duties and have constant pampering. The trade-off is that she actually IS quite weak and delicate since she's always slugging abed.  She was one of my favorites to draw, and I think her design was one of the first that I was inspired for.  Originally she just had a cluster of crocuses in her hair, but AC asked for something else so I tried this.  Nothing says drama like a veil.  I didn't expect gold lineart to look very good, but it turned out surprisingly well, methinks.

 Feisty Princess Ivy.  Her color is green and her motif is an ivy vine, which I incorporated into her tiara. In my interpretation, she's a bit of a thug, but she always means well.  She's Dawn's self-appointed guard dog and can frequently be found in scuffles with their bully of a sister, Sky. I envision her to be the type to sneak out of the castle in disguise so that she can get some action in the kingdom's street fights (which are illegal, of course, but Ivy's not about to rat out her source of entertainment.)  I had a lot of trouble getting Ivy's pose right.  Still not sure if I nailed the anatomy, but I'm satisfied. Ivy was another of the earliest I had figured out design-wise.

Ardent Princess Sky.  Her color is blue and her motif is a stylized cirrus cloud, which I incorporated into her headband. My understanding of her when she was first described to me was that she was very careworn and nurturing, but somewhere along the process of her development she did a face-heel-turn and became a stuck-up, parsimonious snip, and I had to change the drawing of her accordingly.  Sky was my favorite (at least in terms of art) until I finished Dawn.  I still find her one of the most aesthetically pleasing of the group. I want her headband.

Tough Princess Eve.  Eve's color is indigo and her motif is a crescent moon, which I incorporated into her earring.  She's the strong, silent type.  I like what I've seen of her interactions with Holly, as the two apparently work as a pair--Holly is the ambassador, and Eve is the tactician, general, and bodyguard. Eve and I? We tight. She gave me the least problems when it came to design and art.  Once I got the angle of her face figured out, drawing her was a walk in the park; not like her brat sisters, sheesh.  I should draw myself giving her bro-knuckles or something because she's so chill, f'reals.

Apathetic Princess Violet.  Her color is purple and her motif is a violet flower, which she is wearing as an accessory in her hair.  While Ivy might have been sneaking out of the castle for street-fights, Violet was sneaking out for street drugs.  I don't know how she managed to get away with being stoned all the time, but evidently her parents and servants either didn't care or couldn't see past their own noses.  The angle on this one was tricky.

Ebony the Rogue. Her color is black and her motif is a stylized ebony branch, which I incorporated into her tattoo. Rumors have been circulating of an 8th Princess Camilla, kidnapped by a bandit just after the Cauldron incident. Wild and ferocious, the ebony-dyed highway robber is said to be amassing a band of rogues to take over the kingdom and claim her right to the throne as the true and original Princess Camilla...

Ebony was actually an accidental creation of mine, born when my first pic of Eve looked a little too femme fatale.  I came up with her story on the spot as a playful suggestion, and with my permission, AC took it and ran with it.  Ebony's concept has since changed drastically; In AC's canon incarnation, Ebony is Violet's street-walking alter ego, which I alluded to with Ebony's purple bandana.  Alas, I'm still kind of attached to the idea of a rogue 8th Camilla.

In the process of making these princesses, I played with a number of styles and ideas.  First they started off as 3/4 sketches, then I decided I wanted to try my hand at art nouveau, then I got the crazy idea to make each look like a stained glass window, as evidenced by my earlier WIP.   Unfortunately, I could NOT, for the life of me, figure out how to render the glass in a way that was neither too complicated nor cheap-looking.  As I stared at Photoshop in frustration for about the millionth time last night, I thought of a tutorial I'd seen somewhere to give sketches a soft, glowing finish, and I experimented with it on the lineart for the girls.  I probably overdid it on the gaussian blur, but I really like the effect. Coloring the lineart of each of the girls afforded a convenient way to incorporate their assigned colors whilst making for an effect I find visually appealing, and it's definitely a style I'll play with again. Here are the girls without flat colors. 

And here's a dump of some of the versions I did that are worth showing:

I still like these.  These are the first versions of Dawn, Ivy, and the Eve-imposter that inspired the creation of Ebony.  I decided against doing shots like these of all the princesses because I was intimidated by the difficulty of getting all of their proportions to match and designing/drawing clothes for all of them.  I had a hard enough time with just their faces and accessories.

I thought about posting all of the versions I went through of Dawn, but I decided I don't want to relive that nightmare. *deletes them all* DX

Here There Be Dragons

This is a pretty old sketch (maybe as early as 2004? - EDIT: 2007 ish) that I decided to finally finish today.  It was a GaiaOnline freebie for AC.  The character is a fantasy variation on the crazy old cat lady stock character; the crazy young dragon collector. :3  The blue dragon is my creation, and the jealous green baby is a Gwee from GaiaOnline.

Cartography brushes by StarRaven
The style of the blue dragon was heavily influenced by the work of Jessica Peffer - "NeonDragon"

For Cousins

I've decided that if my art never amounts to any more than making the faces of other people light up when they see my work, I'd be OK with that.

This is Janetta, for my cousin Haylee! She's 15 and she loves stories. She's been telling me bits and pieces of her stories while I've been staying with her family this summer, so I drew her protagonist based on those. I'm also working on a color version of this because I completely feed off of her delight as she watches me work.

I also doodled up a quick picture for Halyee's little nephew Damon (her nephew, so that makes him my first cousin once removed? Or something? I dunno, he's my cousin Kimmy's son...).  It is not as polished as Haylee's, but he IS only five, and we all know how five-year-old kids are about waiting for something. X3 He asked me to draw a little boy fighting a dragon (and I feel like I've done something like this before...) for his story. He has yet to tell me this story, as it is apparently very long and he has informed me that it will take two whole days to tell.  The art was influenced by the work of Ben Caldwell because I needed a look that's cooler, more whimsical, and quicker to draw than my own style.

Lined paper for the win.

Fluttershy

Watercolor for a kind friend. :) The character is Fluttershy from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

"I'm an action figure!"

When I was about six, my favorite doll was my Mattel Gymnastic Whitney (friend of Stacy). I loved her flexible little body, which fit so nicely into my flexible little hands. I lost it when my family moved. Years and years later, I thought fondly back on that little doll and decided to acquire another on Ebay--my justification was that I wanted to use her as an alternative to those lifeless wooden pose mannequins to practice drawing, but the honest to goodness reason was sheer indulgence of nostalgia.

Long story short, after taking her out of her box and fiddling with her for a few minutes, my nostalgia was satisfied and Whitney took up residence alongside my other well-loved but retired childhood toys on my shelf, where she may have very well remained...

Until, in a moment of idle observation, I though of how much she reminded me of another acrobatic, freckled, flat-chested, body-suit-wearing girl with super-shiny red-brown hair...

And I thought of an upcoming birthday date for the creator of said girl...

And an ambitious project was born.

Tools:
1 Mattel Gymnastic Whitney doll
Cheap fire-engine red fabric
Cheap black fabric
Red and black thread
2 sewing needles (one was lost, somehow...)
Gold and silver metallic paint Sharpies
Black Sharpie
Red Sharpie
Super-glue
8 inch shiny gold elastic thing used as a decorative ribbon on a candle
1 Cheap, black craft-foam hat
3 trips to JoAnn's and lots of scrounging through landlady's supplies

Process:
I will preface by saying that I am NOT a craft-y person.  I occasionally get these wild crafting hairs, but for the most part, I stick to drawing and writing to express myself. Thus, my process and the result are pretty rough around the edges, but fortunately, it didn't end up a total disaster!

I started by attempting to style her hair to match Spark's. The doll's high ponytail was already similar, but Spark's face is framed by a sort of bob. Getting that effect on the doll without exposing any bald spots was actually way more difficult than you may think, and honestly I had to eventually give up. Her hair was simply not rooted in a way that allowed her hair to frame her face, and no amount of hairspray or gel seemed to help. I also tried pinning it down, tying it down, and almost resorted to gluing it down, but I lost my nerve on that one. I continued to fight with her hair all throughout the project.

Once I had the fabric I made a fool-hardy attempt at making her body suit. I ripped out the seams of the doll's original costume and used it as a pattern.

Using some terrible hand-stitching, I managed this! I gave the suit a TON of give so it ended up being far too large for her (in the pic I'm pinching most of the fabric behind her back). The rubber band around her head was another attempt to make her hair flatten, but the only thing I actually gained from this attempt was a really creepy picture that reminds me of The Watcher in the Woods.

Several undocumented steps later, and she was finished!  The original plan was to make the black parts of her costume with black fabric, but I found sharpie really did the trick. The costume and mask was also supposed to be removable so that Evie could dress her in something else if she chose, but drawing the mask onto her face ultimately just made more sense and I had to take some shortcuts in fitting her bodysuit that involved restrictive stitch work and super glue, so, alas. No Mighty-Morphin' feature.

I really wanted to make Spark's ponytail super long, but I couldn't find an economically feasible way to do so. At least the color is right! Ignore the awful stitch work.

The most difficult part of this whole project was her shoes, by far. I sewed the two finger-puppet-like boots, tied and re-sewed them to her legs to make them vaguely boot-shaped, and then sewed two tiny foot-shaped pieces of foam to the bottoms of each to create her platform soles. I thought about making them even thicker to match Evie's drawings, but I was too fed up by that point. If I'd had gold jump rings I would have used them for her boots. Again, sharpie magic provided a nice shortcut. The silver on her boots was intended to make them look reflective, like rubber.

I leaned her against the video games just to make her sit upright for the photo, but the juxtaposition of the titles is pretty awesome.  Spark's life is nothing but Epic Nights.  The bruise on her temple is surely an indication of some heroic battle, and has nothing whatsoever to do with smudged ink from her mask.

I used red sharpie to change her purple eyes more brown-colored, and gold sharpie to make the purple earrings the doll came with match her outfit. Spark doesn't wear earrings so far as I know, but she DEFINITELY doesn't wear purple earrings.

 I wish I'd had more time to take more pictures of mini-Spark in all sorts of mischief (trekking around Epcot, chillin' in my seven-year-old roommate's ostentatiously pink, 3-story Barbie town house, interacting with my Took doll, encountering any one of my Pokemon plushes, etc.) but I didn't have time for all of that. So this would have to do.

In closing, Krissy would like to make one thing about her plastic super-heroine counterpart ABSOLUTELY CLEAR:

Stained - WIP

Color and comments on these pieces are forthcoming. These are 8 separate pieces, but I've paired them here for aesthetic and simplicity.

Royalty and Rogue

Tough and Timid

Feisty and Fragile

Ardor and Apathy

Slippery Ix - WIP

I was asked by a friend to draw an original character for him, one "Slippery Ix," and I thought drawing him would be a great exercise and a nice break from my projects. Here's a work-in-progress shot.