Been Having A Bit Of Art Block Recently. Still Keeping Up With Practice, But Haven’t Really Finished

Study from reference on Pinterest

Altogether, I’m fairly happy with it, but it does look a bit “off” in some ways.

Some miscellaneous things I’ve done in the past two days. All from photo reference, but trying out different styles.

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.

An attempt to draw Sancho from Limbus Company. I’m trying out a more simplified style for this one. I can’t do expressions at the moment, sadly, but advice on that (or just general art advice tbh) would be appreciated.

More stream-of-thought rambling under the cut.

Maybe it’s the text placement, but for some reason this gives me “live laugh love” vibes. Also apologies for the bad cursive. I was taught it in primary school but haven’t used it in over a decade. A few weeks ago, the thought came to me to try using it again, so I started doing that. Still not good at it.

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.

Winter milky way.

Aichi, Japan.

I remember seeing her video on this and being absolutely amazed by it.

YouTube

Frieda Lepold

Mixing historical Elements with modern Fabrics - usually for custom orders, but on this Channel I'm going to show you an inside look into my

Here’s her YouTube channel btw if ppl want to see.

Favourite Designs: Frieda Lepold "A Knights Dress" Haute Couture Gown

Some stuff I drew for a friend. It’s the characters Ashe and Bob from Overwatch. I haven’t played the game yet, but it was still cool to work on. I really enjoyed drawing the hat on Ashe and all the mechanical stuff for Bob. The colouring got sort of rushed at the end for Bob (see his right arm especially) and I sort of messed up the right shoulder, but I like these.

Elf.

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.