I Doodled This On The Back Of My Laptop(pencil Rubs Off Easily, So I Haven’t Ruined It Or Anything),

A watercolour piece of a kitchen. Reference from Pinterest. I honestly prefer the uncoloured version and other steps in the progress to the actual finished product, but I’m still learning, so that’s fine, I guess.

Did a portrait from a Pinterest reference today. I’ve been trying to get the hang of digital drawing, and I think it’s been working. Of course, I still have a lot to learn(for example, the eyes are a bit wonky) but I’m fairly pleased.

I’m not really happy with it, but I wanted to post something. I’ve been pretty busy recently and was trying out transparency. I’m not there yet.

My attempt at drawing Elphelt Valentine from Guilty Gear Strive. I haven’t played the game and don’t plan to, but her theme has been encouraging and motivational for me even though I generally don’t tend to like metal as a genre(Although I have found a few songs I like. There’s no genre I dislike as a whole.)

This is the first time I’ve used my digital drawing software, so it’s definitely amateurish. I only used one layer and didn’t even attempt colouring. It also came out looking a bit unhinged. Nonetheless, I’m happy with it.

Started as a pose study from Pinterest, but I think I want to turn it into something more. This is just the sketch before I do the watercolours over it, but I probably won’t get to colouring for a bit, since I’m fairly busy this week.

Little potion two frame gif for my neocities website(no link since it’s still under construction). Looks much better with transparency, but I couldn’t get it to export that way.

Playing around with Procreate. Here’s some fungi.

I tried to tag the post but warning: Frieren manga spoilers ahead:

I heard good things about Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End from some friends of mine, so I decided to read the manga. I ended up getting through the whole thing in a day. This was an attempt to paint Macht and Glück from the Golden Lands arc on one of the watercolour cards I was given. Honestly, I prefer the sketch to the finished piece. If anyone has advice on how to make the painting look better, I’d really appreciate it.

More thoughts on the manga and this piece under the cut.

Thoughts on the Manga:

Overall, I think it was beautiful and I really enjoyed it. I like the exploration of people finding meaning in long lives and the value of interactions and friendships with other people.

The demons themselves made a bit less sense to me, since although they canonically do not have many human emotions, they are shown expressing things like concern for other demons or demonkind, or other such emotions, even when humans were not present.

Although demons as a villain make sense as sort of a parallel to Frieren, who has been able to improve and find meaning through her connections with people, it does seem like a bit of a strange choice on a meta-level to have a species where the correct choice is always to kill them on sight (they don’t even need to eat humans, they just do because reasons I guess). That being said, I do disagree with people who view having demons as an “evil” fantasy race as inherently racist. I just think in this specific story, it can be clumsily handled at times.

Putting that aside, as a standalone case, I find the story of Macht and Glück very intriguing and well written. The characters are believable and have interesting interactions with each other, and it’s sort of sad that despite genuine effort, Macht’s psychology is just ultimately incompatible with peaceful coexistence with humans. Glück was also an interesting character. He was clever and used Macht’s goals to get what he wanted, but he knew what the outcome would ultimately be. All of his behaviours were knowingly evil in search of what he believed to be the greater good. Even when his plan for clearing out corruption succeeded, he achieved it through unforgivable means, and he was willing to accept the punishment he knew he deserved. His actions were “deals with the devil”.

My thoughts on this piece:

Unfortunately, I sort of fumbled it when painting Macht’s face. I’m really pleased how Glück came out, but the hair and the face on Macht were definitely weak spots here. As I mentioned above the cut, I much prefer how they looked in the sketch. If anyone has advice on how to do hair better, I’d really appreciate it. General watercolour advice or art critique would also be appreciated.

I’ve been really in my head recently, and haven’t been drawing as much since I haven’t been getting good results with my art in the past week. To get out of it, I decided to try and draw in ink and cross hatch(I looked up tutorials). I think even though these aren’t good, it was helpful to try something different from what I generally do, and something which I know for sure I’ll be bad at. It takes some pressure off.

Little 15 minute sketch I did. Idk who it’s supposed to be, since it’s from imagination, but my quick sketches usually look much worse, so I’m happy. Sorta reminds me of the face I image for an OC I haven’t drawn yet, so maybe it’s them.