The Previous Drawing, But Adjusted To Be More Accurate To Reference.

Just got some markers. These are my first two times using them. I still have a lot to learn, but they’re pretty fun.

Reference: https://www.pintrest.com/pin/20200919--70437486273223/

(Although I still haven’t quite learned how to do likenesses, so it doesn’t look that much like him)

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)

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.

🛥️

(Based on a picture on the Glacier National Park picture archives)

The right edge was a bit wonky on the previous version, so I decided to post a slightly updated version. I made the skull linger a bit more as well. I think it’s definitely an improvement on the previous version.

Irrelevant personal tangent under the cut

I’ve honestly been really happy so far with my forays into digital art and animation. I haven’t had much time to practise properly, so I’m not improving as fast as I would have liked, but nonetheless, it’s been fun.

I’m sort of in a bottle phase right now, so my next piece is probably going to be a ship in a bottle.

Playing around with Procreate. Here’s some fungi.

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.

Bit of fanart for actual play D&D series What’s Left of Us. This is an attempt at the character Emery. I’m happy with the pose, although for some reason it still seems a bit more rigid than I would have hoped, and I’m a bit disappointed about my colouring. Either way, it’s progress, I think.

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.

A plant study I did in watercolour. I actually really like it. It’s the first time I’ve done watercolour in a bit, and I’m happy how it turned out for the most part.