Unfashionably Late

My Christmas gift for Evie was unfashionably late (she just received it in the mail yesterday!) so with her present I included a pic of my characters wearing their most hideous yuletide yarns and celebrating the holidays with an ugly sweater party.  Inspiration for these sweaters was gleaned from here.

Characters featured are (from left to right):
Took, undoubtedly rocking out to Justin Bieber's Christmas album -- sweater based on this even uglier one
Iryl -- sweater based on my faltering memory of the Grinch's sweater from the Jim Carrey movie
Kala -- sweater inspired by the one mentioned in the first Harry Potter book that Aunt Petunia tried to force Harry to wear
Lanthriel -- sweater based on any number of tacky over-the-shoulder animal sweaters I have both seen and owned in my lifetime
Balthazar -- the snake's "sweater" (open-ended stocking? leg warmer? detached sleeve?) has the texture of a shag carpet. She is very displeased.
Leimira -- sweater based on this

Vahaadi was supposed to be present, but he um...didn't fit on the paper, haha.  If he'd made an appearance, I'd probably have drawn him wearing something like this if I wanted him to look remotely fashionable, or else I might have just forced him to wear some horrific cat-lady sweater like this. Perhaps he should be very glad he didn't make it to the party.

New and Old

You'd never guess by the lack of updates, but I've been drawing pretty much every spare moment.  Unfortunately, most of the things I'm working on are long, complex projects that will hopefully end up looking nice--but in the meantime, they're tedious. However, I have a couple doodles for a character design I can share...

( click to see full size, the thumbnail is really blurry DX )
This is an original character of mine, named Thystle.  She is a Huldra, essentially a troll from Scandinavian mythology, with a few liberties taken.  She's been straying around in my mind for a very long time and has a very important role in my story, but this is the first time I've drawn her whole body! This pic was inspired by the work of Kasai on deviantArt, who draws really lovely full-figured women with lots of motion.

Here's a turn-around I did to show Thystle's hair. I'm really proud of this! I've been struggling with Thystle's design for far too long.  I kept wanting to make her very complicated, especially in her hairstyle, so that she'd be distinctive, but finally I told myself that if I don't keep her shapes simple I'll never want to draw her. (fail, I just realized I misspelled "entwine" in my notes. /lame )

Here's a sketch page showing an earlier (thinner) design for her face and hair along with some other notes of her characteristics.  Most of these carried over, but I decided to make Thystle more solidly built and her facial proportions changed.

Thystle is in fact based on a much older character of mine named Dawn from a project called "Delay of the Sunrise." She was originally a centaur, and there's a high possibility she was inspired by Elora (the faun on the far right) from an old Spyro game that I never actually played, but I recall seeing LC's friend Jackie play the game over ten years ago and I guess I was really enamored with the design at the time. Looking at the pic of Elora now gives me a headache! Man, video game graphics have come a long way... I digress! Point being, Dawn is a super old character but one of my favorites so, while her original story has died, she's been revamped. For my amusement (and possibly for yours?) I dug through my archive drawer and exhumed all of my ancient pieces of her...holy crud, these are old. @_@ Lots of photoshopping was required just to make the faded pencil lines show up! This is a huge file, so you'll have to click to see it properly. By way of warning, there are some nudes included in this compilation...

Click the link to see Dawn's/Thystle's character development!

Whew! Hahaha, looking at my old art makes me cringe! So, here's something brand new...

 

I drew this piece just a few hours ago.  I had today off, and I'm tired of my usual pencil and CG fare so I went to Joann's and bought some water colors and experimented! It was fun to try something different. I could nitpick about what's wrong with this, but I should go easy on myself, since I am new to this whole watercolor business.

Here's another watercolor piece I tried, this time with Iryl. Iryl is a color-changing spirit (of sorts), so I went wild with the pigments on this one.

Here's my water-color station at the kitchen table.

Mischief Managed

Last Tuesday, my friend Britney and I were able to go to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Universal Studios' Islands of Adventure.  I'm a major appreciator of Harry Potter (I won't call myself a fan, though, lest I be lumped with the frothing-at-the-mouth variety) so I was duly inspired and also reminded of my collection of Harry-Potter themed sketches that I've had in my hoarding-drawer.  Most of these sketches are actually pretty old, but they're also still some of my favorite drawings.  I rarely ever draw what you might call "fan-art", but for fun I decided to send some of my own characters to Hogwarts (with a little adjustment to their designs to make them feasible, of course, including variations on their names).  These were all drawn with plain mechanical pencil on plain old printer paper.  I added a parchment texture to these for fun. I hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I enjoyed drawing them!

This is Kathrine.  She's a Ravenclaw 2nd year with a voracious thirst for knowledge.  She is surprisingly mature for her age and well-intended, but she's frequently in trouble for sneaking into the Forbidden Forest and the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts library in search of materials for her personal research. Her wand is made of willow with a core of phoenix feather, and she excels in Potions and Herbology.  Her true passion, however, is in the study of Alchemy.  She has a three-eyed cat named Kami.

I drew this picture while listening to a lecture in my "Reading Harry Potter" class (yep, I got college credit for feeding my own geekiness).  I actually drew it on the back of one of the hand-outs the professor gave--a map of Britain.  I hardly ever manage to draw this character as a full-figure, so I was excited when it turned out.  Hogwarts students probably have to wear more conservative shoes than the duds I gave Katherine, but her boots are pretty much the only aspect of her character design that I like too much to change.

 

This is Lance.  He's a Hufflepuff 6th year.  He also happens to be a prefect, which makes him all too well-acquainted with the trouble-making likes of Katherine, Ali, Iria and Dominic.  He is solemn and occasionally sharp with his misbehaving class-mates, but always fair.  Lance's wand is made of mahogany and Ashwinder ash, which makes it well-suited for defensive magic and counter-spells. His favorite classes are Care of Magical Creatures and Defense Against the Dark Arts, and his Patronus takes the form of a griffin.

I drew this one around the same time I drew Katherine, Spring 2009.  He's too tall for the paper, haha.  It was hard to make him look any younger than this.  LC said he looks more like a professor than a student, but I can roll with that.  He's just a very impressive-looking 16 year old!  After going to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter I wanted to draw a view of the towers of Hogwarts through the window, but I quickly dispensed with the idea.  Architecture fascinates but intimidates me.  Also...perspective? What's that?

This is Dominic, a young heir to one of the oldest, purest magical bloodlines.  He's a Slytherin 5th year, and quite a nasty piece of work.  His brilliance could rival Rowena Ravenclaw's, but he has little patience for school, having very nearly failed History of Magic ("this stupid class isn't worth my time!") every year to date.  On the other hand, he is a sweeping E-student in Arithmancy and Study of Ancient Runes.  He has a wand of walnut and dragon heartstring, and in secret he's an avid practitioner of the Dark Arts. His specialties are the Imperious Curse, the Memory Charm, and a ruthless ambition, all of which he uses to manipulate and terrorize his fellow students.  He does have at least one soft spot, though--a tiny little crush on his underclassman, Leah.

This is the OLDEST pic here, and I think you can tell.  I drew this Summer 2009, and it originally had nothing whatsoever to do with Harry Potter.  I actually just wanted to draw the character complaining about Spanish for Evie while we were both taking a class on it together.  He was originally wearing something different but despite many attempts I wasn't able to draw a fresh HP-themed Dominic, so I just hi-jacked this old sketch and put him in a Hogwarts uniform.  Now instead of Spanish, perhaps he's complaining about his T (T for "Troll"--the Wizarding equivalent of FAIL) grade on his History of Magic paper. 

Ali is a 7th year Slytherin, and a star Chaser on Slytherin's Quidditch team.  He's a recent transfer student with a smooth, charismatic personality and a solid talent for Transfiguration and Charms. However, he's also quite the delinquent.  The primary use of his yew and hippogriff-talon wand is theatrical mischief for the pure aim of garnering attention, and no amount of DEtention seems to faze him.  But behind his unabashed zest, he's vulnerably sensitive and cripplingly weak-willed.  He spent much of his first year at Hogwarts enslaved under the Imperious Curse as Dominic's unwilling henchman, forced to attack younger students like Katherine for Dominic's own purposes.  He was finally freed thanks to Katherine's problem-solving intellect and Lance's bold intervention.

This sketch was also in the set of pics I drew during my "Reading Harry Potter" class.  This may or may not be my favorite, but I may or may not be biased because this character is fun to draw (so I draw him all the time and neglect everyone else DX ).  I think I may have drawn him first, actually, he tends to be the seminal inspiration for lots of projects.  Just how he likes it.  I enjoyed drawing him in modern clothes, even if he thinks they're too stuffy for his tastes. Clearly.  I wonder if Hogwarts has rules for how many piercings students can have?  Not like that would reign in Ali's love for jewelry in the slightest...

Iria is a Gryffindor 1st year.  Most would agree that she's quite the obnoxious sort, characterized by chaotic magic and an over-bearing peppiness.  She can't wait to be a second-year so she can audition for the Quidditch team as a seeker, but in the meantime she entertains herself by elbowing her way into others' company.  Her love for practical jokes and illusion-type spells has earned her the nickname of "Hinky-punk" and sometimes just "punk"...among a slew of many far less nice titles.  However, for all of her grating idiosyncrasies, she's a sweet, fearless, and loyal friend and will emphatically stand up for others, even if it means a "duel to the death" with an older student.  In fact, she seems to eagerly prefer that kind of challenge, much to the amusement of her "foes" and the chagrin of the professors and prefects.  Iria is strangely comfortable in robes that are much too large for her, and her hands are often lost in her over-sized sleeves.

This is dramatically newer than all of the pics--I drew it just this week after touching up the other older sketches.  I wasn't originally planning to include this character, but when I realized I didn't have a Gryffindor character in my line-up...this happened.  I think in some ways you can tell it's newer because I worked with a more complicated pose and a slightly different angle, yet my style still meshes with the others.  I guess that's good, it means my art is developing consistently, if not slowly.  Anyway--yay, Iria!  This character is actually genderless, but I catch myself calling it a 'he' so I decided to make Iria a girl for this project because I already have too many male characters.

P.S. I hate pleated skirts.

This is Leah, the living proof that kind Slytherin students DO exist, despite the House's reputation.  There's a striking but unconfirmed possibility that she has a dash of mermaid blood mingled with her descent from Indian fakirs, and the magic she conjures from her wand of holly and Runespoor fang is distinctly exotic. Leah's affinity for animals makes Care of Magical Creatures her favorite and best subject, but she's also skilled in Potions and practices Legilimency. Her willingness to speak to anyone and anything on their level (and often in their language--she is fluent in Parseltongue, Mermish, and Gobbledegook) makes her wonderful at deflating conflicts.  Though just a 4th year, she is already poised to work for the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.  Her favorite creatures include any kind of snakes, cockatrices, and basilisks.  Her least favorite animals to work with are human boys. 

The last of the four sketches I did in my Harry Potter class. As I recall I fussed with her pose the most, and I do believe I failed a couple times before I succeeded in drawing this one.  I also fussed with which Hogwarts house to put her in--at one point or another I considered her for any of the four.  Originally she was in Ravenclaw with Dominic, then I decided nobility is more important in her character than brains so she went to Hufflepuff (and Dominic was sent to Slytherin), but then I thought about giving her credit for her form of bravery and listed her under Gryffindor, but ultimately I realized that there were enough things about her that would land her Slytherin.  When reading the books, I was disappointed that all the Slytherins in the Harry Potter series were rotten to some degree and would have liked to see a genuinely nice student or alumni in its ranks (I don't think Slughorn counts).  Leah is my answer to that.  So to Slytherin she went, and she's stuck with Dominic again--her least favorite species of human boy.