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.