Sorry, for the long disappearance in December. I was finishing some important things I needed to do. But now I am back, and I have some drawings to share. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season.
In this post I will be sharing new drawings along with two older drawings I had not posted before. And I plan to post my final part of 2023's Inktober sometime soon.
This is a redraw of a drawing from this post in 2022. I decided I wanted to fix her pose and proportions. I don't draw frogs often, so it allowed me to go a little outside my comfort zone in getting the details right.
This is my new header. The drawing was taken from my intkober post (you can read the backstory behind the drawing there) and digitalized. I had a lot of fun playing with the lighting around Arcasia and the sword.
A drawing of Fiáina. I drew this drawing of her for May Day/Beltane, and never posted it. But I felt like I should post it now. I had a lot of fun drawing the braids in her hair and making it look as if she were wearing them.
Given my fantasy world's change to being Ancient Greek and Irish inspired, I wanted to change Karleon's design, since it resembled Lord of the Rings elves too much. While Lord of the Rings was my starting inspiration, it's not the end. So, I took some time to redesign his overall appearance, and I am much happier with how it turned out.
This is an older sketch I did that I never posted of Salissah. It is inspired by a painting called Moon Nymph (1883).
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Which drawing is your favorite?
In the previous two Inktobers (2022, and 2021) I mostly did colored drawings, but this time around I wanted to focus on line work and on characters. So, the goal for these Inktober pieces is to draw characters (my original ones, my versions of pre-existing characters, or merely ones I like from movies and TV shows).
Like the previous years, it will be divided up into three parts with ten drawings for the first two, and eleven at the end.
Here's the official prompt list:
And let's begin:
Day #1 Dream. Felix Moore from Dolls of Wax, Eyes of Glass.
The drawing was inspired by this quote from Shakespeare's Macbeth:
"Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
One thing I haven't mentioned about Felix Moore is his philosophical belief
that nothing is real, and that life is merely a dream and nothing more. This emerged
during the second draft and has been an important trait to his character.
Day #2 Spider. The Wax Witch (from Dolls of Wax, Eyes of Glass) despite having the ability to steal souls has a fear which she cannot get away from: spiders. This is assumed to be left over from when she was human. And since she is an old building this is a rather unfortunate fear to have, for there will be spiders in an abandoned building such as that.
Day #3 Path. Fiáina the goddess of nature. My idea with this image is that a mortal came across her when she was out hunting. She is slowly approaching them, in her domain (the woods).
In between the trees is an altar to a minor god, with jewelry and flowers placed on it as an offering.
Day #4 Dodge. Salissah. Given that she is a goddess of the moon in an endless battle across the sky with the sun god, I figured I would draw her dodging an attack.
Day #5 Map. It's been a while since I worked on this story (and I don't know what my plans are for it yet) but this is my version of Ichabod Crane from a Sleepy Hollow story I want to go back to. I imagine that this is when he arrives at Sleepy Hollow and is rather lost.
As for what is hanging out of his pocket (since it might be difficult to see), is a rabbit's foot charm. And since it's been a while since I drew Ichabod, I decided to give him a little redesign and give him glasses.
Day #6 Golden. Cecile (Ferdinand's wife) from The Haunted Sketchbook. I often describe her as having golden hair, so I thought she was a fitting character to draw for this prompt.
Day #7 Drip. I decided to do a Dungeons and Dragons inspired tavern for this one, with the tavern owner in the background (so not quite character focused, but I still wanted a character present). The dripping is from the drinks on the table.
Day #8 Toad. this is a drawing for my dad (who is helping me edit this post 😉). Since in one of my drawings of a frog, he pointed out that it looked like Hypnotoad from Futurama. So this is a drawing of Leela and Hynotoad in my style, rather than trying to copy the style of the show.
Day #9 Bounce. Skunk Girl in the middle of a battle bouncing
(probably preparing an attack).
Day #10 Fortune. I started with the Moores so I figured I'd end this part with the Moores. I decided to draw Matilda Moore reading Tarot cards, looking into her future perhaps or trying to find answers to a problem in her life through them. Matilda has an interest in Spiritualism and the occult (like with Felix, this emerged during the second draft), so I figured I would bring that out in the drawing.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Which drawing is your favorite? Which characters of mine would you like to see me draw in future installments?
I found out about a challenge by a Kick in the Creatives that involved drawing portraits throughout the month of February. I decided to do the challenge as a way of drawing my characters, who had not gotten a lot of attention.
Like my Inktober posts, I will be dividing this up to into parts of 9 drawings per part, with 10 at the end. And for context, for those who don't know my characters well, all the gods (and also Ophelia) in this post come from The Princess Arisias Mystery Series, which is my fantasy/murder mystery series. As for the non-god/goddess characters I will be saying where they are from.
Here is the official (optional) prompt list:
And here are the drawings for the first part:
Day #1 Glamorous, I decide to draw Nisis/Nyro. They're the god/goddess of love, beauty and marriage, and can appear as anyone someone loves (romantically or platonically). They can also look similar to a type of person an onlooker is attracted to without looking like a real person they know. Because of this, Nisis/Nyro doesn't have a defined form. So, this isn't exactly as they appear because their appearance will always change depending on who is the onlooker. I always when drawing them drew one side, and never did a split face drawing showcasing both sides (Nisis (the female side) or Nyro (the male side)). So I figured, I should draw that, and I like how it turned out.
Day #2 Baby, I find babies incredibly hard to draw so I challenged myself with this one.
Day #3 Hidden Face, Ophelia putting on her cloak for a ritual/healing ceremony. Her cloak doesn't so much "hide" her face, as it is only partially covering her face during rituals. But I thought it matched the prompt of "hidden face." This was also inspired by a Pre-Raphaelite painting of Olivia from Twelfth Night by Edmund Leighton.
Day #4 Bored, I decided to draw Felix Moore from Dolls of Wax, Eyes of Glass for this one. He probably went somewhere and is thinking about something, so not exactly bored, but more thoughtful.
Day #5 Sad, I drew the god of time for this one, since I figured out his design. One side of his face is young and the other is old. In the drawing, I wanted to draw attention to time passing with the depiction of one of the flowers wilting and dying.
Day #6 Hairstyle, I drew, Salissah (pronounced sil-is-uh), the goddess of the moon, for this. She has hair with stars in it, so I wanted to draw attention to that.
Day #7 Makeup, I drew Skunk Girl from my super hero story for this. I decided she would use green lip-stick. My backstory behind this image is that Skunk Girl and the other super heroes got brand deals for merchandizing for things such as action figures, makeup, etc. This is done in order to get money from visiting tourists (who travel to see the super heroes), and to pay for the damage that villain and hero fights cause.
Day #8 Pouting, I drew Tesariel "Tess" Short for this one. She is from the first novel ever I finished the first draft of (Eyes in the Night). I've gotten back into drawing her, so, I decided that I should draw her for this one.
Day #9 Tongue Out, I drew Karleon, my trickster god of mischief for this one. While most of my characters (whether they be gods, elves, super heroes, or 19th century gentlemen) would not make this facial expression because they feel it would be undignified, Karleon and Skunk Girl are the exceptions. I already drew Skunk Girl, so, I decided to draw Karleon.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Which portrait is your favorite? Are you doing the February Faces Challenge or another challenge this February?
I decided it was time for another installment of Look Into a World. This post is centered around two gods, one of which I introduced in this post.
By the way, in the first installment of Look Into a World, I posted a song that inspired a part of the world-building. I should say this cover of a song inspired a part of world-building for this post:
You'll see which part when reading...
The War in the Sky
In the world where Arisias lives, the humans and elves believe that the sun and the moon are in a constant war, where each night/day one of the gods wins, temporarily.
The moon goddess represents strategic warfare. Mortals who worship her call upon her in battle or when they looking for a strategic way to win. The moon goddess does help people outside of war, as well, with philosophy and non-war related activities. In contrast, the god of the sun, represents bloody warfare, and doesn't care about strategy only blood-shed.
During the night, the moon goddess overpowers the sun god by using his own light against him. In the daytime, the sun god uses his light to overpower the moon goddess. Hence, while the moon may appear in the sky during the day, the moon goddess did not win that fight.
The times we would consider the winter and summer solstice, are the times when holidays around victory of a certain god are considered. If the day is shorter than the goddess of the moon won the battle for the meantime and is making the god of the sun weaker, if the god of the sun and it is the summer solstice and the day is longer, it is believed the god of the sun won the battle for the meantime.
And when there is a solar or lunar eclipse, it is believed the gods are fighting in closer quarters than usual.
(Salissah and a comet).
Salissah (the goddess of the moon) and god of the sun choose warrior spirits to fight alongside them. They are warriors who died in battle, and are chosen to fight. So they fall in a second battle for their selected god. When they fall, they are represented as shooting stars/comets and are then sent to the afterlife.
The war between the two gods was foretold by Karleon. However, the sun god did not believe this prophecy, for he believed Karleon was tricking them somehow. Salissah believed she could find a way to avoid the consequences. It is unclear what event exactly caused the war in the sky, however, one answer tellers like to say is that the fay and human war is what caused it. For every god had to pick a side in that war. Because of their opposing sides, the sun god and the moon goddess were destined to be enemies afterwards. It is often modified by the teller what the true cause was, depending on the place or time period.
Relationship Between the Devotees
(a devotee to the moon goddess (left), a devotee to the sun god (right).)
Interestingly compared to Karleon and the god of time, the devotees in this case are rather nice to each other. They have a hope that one day the war between the sun and the moon gods will be resolved. And while they don't agree on everything, and fights do sometimes happen, most devotees don't get into heated debates over this.
However, other devotees are not very calm about the human and fay war, and they always ask "which god are devoted to?" in order to gather what side that person may be on. However, because the war related to the humans and fay is so complicated that even knowing the gods that the person is devoted to, may not tell you their opinion on the war as a whole. This is especially true since the person may disagree with their gods' opinion.
It happened that Elyerin (aka Detective Inspector Time) fought in the fay and human war before becoming a detective. He was on the side of the fay during the war. And while he ended up being devoted to neither god (he instead ended up being devoted to the god of time), his side of the war strongly honored the goddess of the moon.
I thought it was time to do another miscellaneous drawings post! In regards to later posts...I have two Inktober posts planned, as well as a post introducing my novel for this NaNoWriMo, and a post involving Shakespeare coming soon...
But back to this post...since Halloween is near I sprinkled some spooky drawings throughout the post, along with my Fantasy drawings:
A drawing of Elm, I really like how it turned out.
I thought I would include the sun necklace she wears in the drawing.
A drawing of Karleon, the god of mischief, from Arisias's world.
This is a drawing of Galadriel from Rings of Power. I drew this long before the show came out, since I saw a promotional photo for Galadriel and thought her armor was awesome. My main focus in this drawing was the shading, which I think turned out well.
As for the show, I'm watching it now and am I really enjoying it so far. However, there are bits that bother me (the way the elves act--they're too human for my taste, also don't get me started on their hair).
A drawing of Salissah. I figured out that she is the goddess of the moon, but also the goddess of strategic fighting (fencing, archery, martial arts, etc.), as well as philosophy, much like the Greek goddess, Athena. Whereas the god of the sun is like Ares, and just cares for bloody warfare in general.
I've recently been drawing illustrations for a story with a dog character, and I decided to make another dog character. The dog doesn't have a name yet or a story, but I plan to come up with one later...
I figured with Halloween being this close, I couldn't not include a drawing of this eerie door. I drew this a while ago, and I decided to include a figure hidden in shadow on the other side of the door.
A drawing of Arwen from Lord of the Rings. This was inspired by the scene where Arwen rescues Frodo from the Ring Wraiths.
**Warning eerie drawing ahead**
This is a drawing that I created a while ago. I put the warning up in case viewers don't like spooky things, so they can scroll past it. But, my idea for the drawing, was that the woman had her dead fiancée (or husband) return to reunite with her in death. I am thinking of turning it into a short story sometime.
But this drawing also helped me explore making some of my drawings spookier, which is something I intend to do when I illustrate (and publish) my book Dolls of Wax, Eyes of Glass.
**The eeriness is over now...**
Willow the dryad. This is a reimagining of a Pixton character I created. I didn't include it in the post where I introduced her, since it wasn't a majority vote. But I like how it turned out.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Which drawing is your favorite? And do you have any favorite animal characters?
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