One Mountain, Two Tigers: A New Species Of Gloydius (Serpentes: Viperidae) From The Upper Lancang Valley

A little colored pencil doodle cause I was hungry.

Elf.

An apple. It's really flawed, but I'm proud of it, since it's the best one I've done so far. Maybe next week I'll draw a better one.

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.

A draft of a sketch I probably won’t finish. I had like 10 minutes of free time(idk if you can tell but it was mostly spent on the dragon head. I’ve never, to my memory, drawn a reptile) then had to get back to work. Please excuse the handwriting.

Been having a bit of art block recently. Still keeping up with practice, but haven’t really finished anything I’ve been happy with. Decided to just sit down for a bit and see what came out and I got this thing. Idek what it actually is, to be honest, but I like it.

(Oops it has one two few petals. That was definitely an intentional decision and not bc I forgot what flowers look like)

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.

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.

Colouring update. I don’t have much time the rest of today, so that’s probably all for today.

A piece I’m working on. I’m bad at colouring, so I wanted to share it before I possibly ruined it. Nonetheless, I’ll follow up later with the coloured version.

A piece I’m working on. I’m bad at colouring, so I wanted to share it before I possibly ruined it. Nonetheless, I’ll follow up later with the coloured version.