I hope your 2026 has been good so far. I thought it was time to make a drawing post:
This was inspired by a New Year's prompt, "Midnight Kiss." In this, Dorian is about to kiss an unknown woman. Past regrets enter his mind, and he pulls away from her before they can truly kiss...
A singer I like released a song recently, and within the video she did hand-movements I found interesting. So, I decided to make a drawing inspired by one of those poses. This is of Arisias telling the future.
A portrait of Sebastianos (originally Sebastian). I wanted to redesign his outfit to be more Ancient Greek-like.
A drawing of Cecile Diggory. I like how her hair turned out.
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Which drawing is your favorite? Do you have any plans for the New Year?
As an update, this is happening slowly, but I am updating the character pages. Currently there is a new one for Reed, and I now have one for Elyerin and Arisias.
In the future I will give more in-depth updates on my novel projects, as I have been working hard on them, and realize I have not said much about them recently on the blog. A lot of things have changed and developed and I look forward to sharing them.
Here are the drawings...
This is a design of my character, Artemis. I have been experimenting with a lot of designs for her, and I finally created one that works. She is a character for a new short film and graphic novel that I am developing (which involves characters you may already know such as Elm, Oak, etc.).
Artemis's hair is partially inspired by a real ancient Greek hairstyle, and her outfit is inspired by a statue of Artemis.
This is an outfit I designed for my character, Reed, which is inspired by the myth of Apollo and Hyacinth. There are wind movement designs at the bottom of the mask (representing the West Wind), the sun can be seen around the sockets of the mask, and there are Hyacinth flowers on the sides.
His jacket is the color of the Hyacinth with looping designs, and the vest underneath repeats the movement of the wind designs accompanied by embroidered petals (as this wind brings Spring).
This was drawn in response to a prompt about "travel." This particular dryad is Oak's mother, a character who will appear later on in a project about her and Elm. The idea for the drawing is that the viewer is traveling to and entering the dryad's forest.
I have not drawn Elm in a while, so I decided that now would be the time to draw her.
It is currently taking me a little longer to do digital drawings of the rest of my Mermay art, than I anticipated. Instead of leaving you to wait or rushing what I was creating, I wanted to show the process that my art goes through to become digitized and introduce you to a character with one piece of art in particular...
I drew this mermaid and decided that I wanted to explore a character who found random objects at sea to use and wear. (In the picture above she is wearing a sewing needle in her hair like it is hair pin with the thread still attached.) This mermaid does not have a name yet, but I can see her as a character in a future short story. I do not know if she is interested in the human world in the way the Little Mermaid is, but my character certainly has enough of an interest to start a collection: books, broken dolls, and sewing materials, etc.....
Here is the video showing my process:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Would you like to see more art videos? What item would you most want from her collection?
Sorry about the accidental weird post I made. If you saw it in your feed, it was due to me trying to show a technical difficulty in my writing group to someone else. It was not meant to be posted as a blog post. 😁
To make up for that mistake, here is an actual post...
A drawing of Medea, she first appeared in this post. Medea is a magical artist who has embroidery magic. Medea is, also, a character in my Dorian Gray trilogy, who you will learn more about in the future. 😉
A drawing of Fiáina. I had not drawn her since 2023, and I do not know why. So, I decided to draw her relaxing after a run through the woods. Her appearance changes based on the seasons and in this drawing it is summer. This image was featured in a monthly showcase my writing group ran here (I recommend checking out my fellow writer's art, writing, and blogs, too).
A drawing of Denisse who I have not drawn since my style changed. I decided it would be fun to draw her again.
This fairy was fun. I created her through a fun character generator, and I thought the randomness would be an interesting limitation when it came to character creation.
You can find the official prompt list for Mermay here.
I've known about Mermay for several years but for a long time never participated. I liked seeing people's mermaid art, but when May came around I tended to forget. However, this year I decided to finally participate. The drawings you will see started out as sketches (in my sketchbook), and then were turned into digital art afterwards. (In a post some other time, I may show the photos of the sketches).
Like my previous Inktober posts, this will be divided into parts. I do have Inktober art from last year, however, I will need to find the sketchbook I was using, before I can post all of it. But, I hope to post that art soon before next October.
Let's begin:
#1 Mirror, thiswas the first sketch I did for Mermay. I decided to draw a mermaid looking at herself in a mirror underwater.
#2 Cosmic, I decided to draw a mermaid in a sea that was present in the sky.
#3 Hair, I decided to draw what a mermaid's hair might look like while underwater.
#4 Axolotl, a mermaid with her pet axolotl. I decided that it was like owning a poodle for mermaids. The mermaid's outfit and hair was based on 18th century clothes.
#5 Drama, this mermaid is performing in a play where the mermaids play different creatures from land. In this play, she is acting as a bird.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Which mermaid is your favorite? And do you have a favorite book, movie, or TV show that involves mermaids?
I thought it was time to do another drawing post. I have some watercolor drawings and Inktober art from last year, which I intend to share in a future post, so stay tuned. For now let me show you my drawings:
A drawing of Edith. I wanted to draw a full body drawing her since I had not done that, yet.
A drawing inspired by Blackbriar's song "Cicada." I enjoyed drawing her hair and the wings.
This was a drawing that I did with mixed media: the above image is a digital drawing, and the background image is a watercolor painting. This drawing was featured in a showcase, my writing group ran here.
I decided to play around with backgrounds and here is a potrait of my character, Genevieve. Her face is a bit different than some of my other characters. So, I thought she would be fun to draw.
So, this post is a bit different than my other posts. It's a cross between a review and a question-oriented post. So let's begin.
I learned from other artists online that a recommended way to protect your art from A.I. is through a new program made by people at the University of Chicago. This program, which provides a mask for your art, is called "Glaze."
I was working on updating a character page, and just to see if I could get Glaze to work, I attempted to use it in three different ways. Unfortunately, the mask that it puts on my art ends up distorting it in ways that are obvious to me or just completely ruin the art.
To give you an example, here (above) is the unglazed drawing that I am using to demonstrate.
Now, here it is on Glaze's highest mask setting (most distorting). This one was put on the longer exporting setting compared to the other two (this one took about an hour and a half).
The other two I am going to show were set to the shortest exporting limit (twenty minutes):
I set this one (above) to the default setting, and it still made it look wrong. It ended up distorting the background, no longer making it smooth.
Lastly, with this drawing, even when I put it on the lowest possible setting, it still looks distorted texturally. The distortion is more seen in zooming in and in color difference than in distorting the whole image. It also has a tendency to remove the transparent background of an image, so if you want to mask a transparent image, it seems (but I could be wrong) that you have to do the transparent background part after you mask the image with Glaze.
If anyone who follows this blog uses Glaze to protect their art, do you have the same problems as me? Or is what I am running into going to happen always, since my art style tends to be flat in terms of shading?
Usually, these types of posts are for characters who have been created recently. However, I felt it was time that I reintroduce some characters that have very recently gone through a lot of changes. The characters are Matilda and Felix Moore from Dolls of Wax, Eyes of Glass. They have developed since I first wrote about them in 2021, and I want to show how they have changed, since I mentioned it briefly in an Inktober post.
I plan to update their character profiles soon, but I decided I should also reintroduce them here via a blog post. So, let's begin:
Felix Moore
Felix is the older of the two siblings. He believes that the world itself is a dream and nothing more. Because of this, he thinks that there is no meaning to life, and all events, actions, etc. that one experiences or takes essentially mean nothing.
He enjoys spending his time reading, thinking about different philosophies, and having discussions about controversialphilosophical topics with his group of friends. Due to a situation within their family (which he won't discuss), Felix has gone from being simply a brother to Matilda to having to act as her guardian. This has caused disagreements between them.
Matilda Moore
Matilda is the younger of the two siblings. She is a quiet person; however, she can also turn rebellious if she feels strongly about something. Matilda is a Spiritualist: she believes one can contact people from beyond the grave. She also has an interest in the occult and supernatural. Matilda often likes to daydream about different adventures that she could have, based on her favorite books. And, like her brother, she often spends her time in the library.
However, since Felix has become her guardian, there have been disagreements between them. Mostly, these disagreements come from Matilda's rebelliousness toward her brother, but they are also influenced by Felix's (supposed) desire to keep Matilda safe.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Between Felix and Matilda, which are you interested in learning more about (after their changes)? And how have your own characters grown and changed throughout the years?
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?
It's time for another drawing post. I've been practicing a lot of digital art, so I figured I'd show the recent drawings I've made.
In other news, two characters now have profiles here and here. I am also steadily working on the characters for Arisias's series and there are two categories in their Meet the Characters page--gods and mortals.
I've been busy, but sometime soon I plan to respond to the comments on my previous posts. So keep an eye out for that.
But anyway, let's begin:
Salissah is the goddess of the moon, wisdom, and strategic warfare. I played around with the background a lot in this drawing and with the lighting, so that the stars in her looked more like they were glowing.
And here's a video showing the process of how I drew it.
Here is my version of Dorian Gray from my novel, The Heist of Dorian Gray. I took some inspiration from the 1945 film version for his outfit (since in my version, Dorian has been living for a long time, into modern day, I thought it would make sense for him to wear something more modern). And I like how it turned out.
If you're wondering why my Dorian has blond hair (since other versions of the character have black hair) it is because of this quote from the book: Dorian was“wonderfully handsome, with his finely curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp gold hair. There was something in his face that made one trust him at once. All the candour of youth was there, as well as all youth’s passionate purity.”(The Picture of Dorian Gray, p. 17)
This is Edith Porter from The Haunted Sketchbook. I had drawn Ferdinand before in this new style, so I wanted to draw her next. I wanted to make it look as if there was spilled paint or paint being laid out on a canvas, and I think I managed to achieve that.
Here is Ivy Hughes from The Heist of Dorian Gray. Ivy is an artist, so I wanted to emphasize the splattered paint in the background.
This is Reed Hayward from The Heist of Dorian Gray. He has "art magic"-- while I do not show him actively using magic, I wanted it to be present in the background. I also had a lot of fun designing his outfit.
Finally, this is a drawing of Ophelia. I've been thinking recently about how Ophelia sees her herself, versus how someone else might. She is an elf, and so others (i.e. humans) would see her differently.
I'm also drawing this to help figure out what aspect of Ophelia's character I am missing, as I feel as if I am missing something but I am not sure what.
I've been busy and not able to post. But, I've been working on my digital art and I wanted to share some of the pieces I made, along with some much less recent artwork.
I've been doing a digital art course, and this was one of the drawings I ended up doing of my character Matilda. I plan to do this style more in the future.
I decided to do a black and white drawing of Ophelia. I like how it turned out.
A character sheet for Cheetah Girl. It was fun to draw her for it.
This is Marigold. I'm currently working on concept artwork for Arisias's story, and this was one of the drawings for it.
This is the water snake woman who appears in Arisias's story.
A drawing of Ferdinand. This is close to how I imagine him appearing, and I like how it turned out
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