A Whole Mess o' WoW

I've been drawing a lot of WoW stuff to get myself back into arting.


Clockwise from topleft - Djirasi, Ugrasha, Neronar and Aeveus.


The satyr Prince Alilantras gives Aeveus something to think about in Felwood. That's gonna hurt in the morning.


A sleepy Aeveus, in a robe. Even paladins need to sleep sometime.


Aeveus and Neronar pore over a map to figure out where to go next. And, because it's me, that's Chandakali and Cintille in the background giggling about how gay they totally are because they're totally looking at a map together and Nero's hand is totally over Aeveus'.


...okay, he's not from WoW, but Kirby had to go somewhere.

Guitar Heroes

Lawl.

Sketchblog Fail

Ugh, it's been so hard to find time to draw lately, and I feel like such a heel for not drawing more. I figure now's as good a time as any to get back into sketchblogging, though, so here's a cascade of artspam to make up for months of inactivity. First up, a whole bunch of naked lady.

BEACH PARTY

If ever anybody should be shot for drawing anything, I should be shot for these. It's probably not as bad if you don't know who the characters are, but suffice it to say...get those handguns ready.


L-R: Foreshadow, Jeremiah sitting on Pergion's shoulders, Billy sitting on Nostrum's shoulders, Silvertongue.



L-R: Kinetic Force, Anya, Tricolore, Shrike, Hellion.

...*gunshots*

Has this actually made it into the Oxford dictionary...?

A rare moment of idle amiability between Foreshadow and Silvertongue.


I still find this picture hilarious.

All My Night Elves

This is an oldish picture, from a drawing session in uni, and while it's only a sketch it's one of my favourite pictures. This is as much for the characters as it is for the drawing. So this one is going to get a bit of a story behind it.



Neronar and Neranae, the two night elves on the left, are twins and were very devoted to each other. Both grew up in Darnassus, and both joined the resistance in the Third War against the Burning Legion. After the fall of Archimonde and the World Tree, both twins joined the Alliance army - one wouldn't function without the other.

On a visit back to Auberdine, Neranae met Keleanthris, the bucko on the right there. He didn't fight in the war, being a simple fisherman and cook, and Neronar never thought he was good enough for his sister. They got into huge fights about it, which is where the picture above came from.

Eventually, the twins were split up as their fights were affecting their battalion. Neronar was sent to Silithus to cool his heels with the Cenarion Circle, and Neranae was sent to the frontline in the Plaguelands, where she and her entire battalion were ambushed by Scourge soldiers and killed. When Neronar found out, he deserted the Army and became a mercenary, convinced that his sister is still alive somewhere.

You should all be crying from the tragedy of it all right about now.

Isn't Duskwood tropical?

Usually I don't like to post works-in-progress, but I'll make an exception here for crits et al. Aeveus is out on patrol in Duskwood on his trusty steed Jacob, being closely followed by a pair of ill-meaning Worgen (are there any other kinds...?)



I'd love any constructive crits on this one. I'm using my work tablet to draw it, bless it, and I'm totally buying one for home. I have at last come to realise that my tablet, however loyal...is about the size of a postage stamp.

The obsession grows...

So, since I started WoW again, I've been slowly but surely migrating over to the RP servers because of lack of people I know on normal servers. Better to be creative with people than to be lonely and bored, right? I just transferred my character over to Moon Guard, the mother of all RP servers, and I cannot describe the EPICNESS of it in mere words.

I play Aeveus Bleakheart, antisocial no-nonsense paladin defender of Darkshire. I'd play him even more antisocial if I could get away with it, but then I wouldn't get any RP at all. So here's a sketch of him, looking all moody and irritable.



He's probably in Goldshire. HARHARHAR WOW RP SERVER JOKE THAT NOONE WILL GET.

It's been far too long...

...since not just posting here, but also doing anything Complainoman related. So to get me back into the vibe, here's some Complainoman.


And introducing the newest Complainoman character, as-of-yet-unnamed Elkhound! He is Hip P. Dog's sort-of-partner, who comes and goes when he's needed and is Hip's rival for the affections of Vicki Fox.

He also needs a name! I'm open to any and all suggestions. Gimme your best shot!

Well...he looks *KIND* of cute in it...

Now, I have a massive pet peeve when it comes to doujinshi, and that is when guys are dressed up in frilly girly dresses for absolutely no reason. Maybe it makes them more vulnerable, maybe it makes the subsequent yaoi canoodling...less gay or more gay, depending on how you look at, maybe a lot of doujinshi artists just share the same fetish.

Whatever it is, I really don't like it. Something about it makes me go eek. Like the first time I saw Cloud Strife in a dress Vincent Valentine in a dress. Brr.

So why, I hear you ask, have I chosen to draw Silvertongue in the self-same style of dress?


I don't know. I just don't know.

Set your WTF-O-Meters to OMGWTF

Gah! I haven't posted for like a month! Bad me! Bad me! :( I need to get back into my draw-something-every-day habit.

Having said that, I do have some pictures in the works, but I don't really want to post the different steps until the finished piece is done.

So I'm going to give you implied Vash The Stampede/Gibbs from NCIS.

YOU READ THAT RIGHT.

Gangsters are AWESOME

This here's L'il Billy. He's a gangster. Billy belongs to a friend of mine which in no way stops me from abusing the hell out of him.

I did this as an exercise in character design, to design faces that actually had recognisable features because they're actually...you know, different. In the top right of the first image, you can see the list I was given to build Billy on. I played a lot with his hair and beard, trying to get a nice design.

My favourite of the lot is the picture of Billy giving a piece of "friendly" advice about some unknown situation to Nostrum, who does illegal jobs for him on a freelance basis. I love how Billy looks there - very "hey look, it's not ME who's saying it, it's THEM. You and me? We're still buddies. 's all good."



I just realised that I forgot to put scars over Billy's right eye in the one with Nostrum. Oh, silly ould me.

I haven't drawn in way too long, so here's some Pose of the Day madness. First one is the muscle study, second one is...a really shitty picture of Rien.




I need Photoshop.

NOT RAIN NOR SNOW NOR GLOM OF NIT

NOR BAD WIRELESS NOR CAPPED INTERNET WILL STOP ME FROM UPLOADING MALE NUDITY

Sort of, anyway. I've been putting off drawing Nostrum's cyborg-y bits, so I finally decided to do it. And here he is.

In all his glory.

Jage

A quick sketch of Jage, the character I play on Meadows MUCK. She's a Norwegian Elkhound (of course she is), a 7-year-old ex-hunting dog who is struggling to get along alone in the wild. I based this picture really heavily on Scout, because, let's face it, all elkies look really similar...but I don't think I've caught the right expression of intense experience on her face. I'll keep trying.

Any excuse'll do, right Daredevil?

A while ago, a friend of mine sent me some scans from an old Marvel comic in which Spider-Man, for some reason or another, becomes blind. Being blind himself, Daredevil takes it upon himself to help Spidey overcome this by helping him out in any and all tasks.

Needless to say...things got out of hand rather quickly.

Or should I say, into hand.




The first two are actual scenes from the scans I was given. The sketches are from a while back - I found them recently and Photoshopped them up because...well...it still makes me laugh like hell.

Because Only A Real Warrior...

...WEARS PUCE INTO BATTLE!

Life Drawing at the Arthouse

Annie, Eugene and I went to the lifedrawing session at the Arthouse Hotel on Monday. It was two and a half hours, so I'm just going to upload my favourite drawings from that night.

Mmm, skinless woman

Another Pose of the Day. A little looser, a little...less colourful.

Mmm, skinless man

TWO POSTS IN ONE DAY?!

MADNESS I TELL YOU

IT'S MADNESS

Okay, one of them was scanned by Allie, so maybe it's less madness than it could be. So it's a bit of madness. You know, the I've-had-twelve-Mars-Bars-in-a-row-and-I-don't-care-who-I-hug madness.

This was drawn from the Pose of the Day at this place: http://www.posemaniacs.com/pose/thirtysecond.html

Kim linked it me ages ago and I just found it again. I decided to colour all the muscles to differentiate them, so I could use it as a reference later.



Colours make me scared.

Loopholes

After Semipermanent, Annie, Allie and I went to Sussex Centre to grab some food. I nicked Allie's sketchbook, and I think the only criteria I got before I put pencil to paper was,

"Don't draw slash."

So I didn't draw slash.

It's a CRIME that it's taken me this long to upload any EBA fanart. A CRIME.

U PHAIL

The Height Rule is thus: in a fandom, whenever you have a pairing, the taller of the two is always the aggressor. It doesn't matter if the shorter one has the alpha personality, it just doesn't look good.

And here we have Starsky demonstrating quite clearly why Hutch will always be the aggressor.



...this was a lot funnier before I figured out that Hutch, quiet though he is, is in fact the alpha personality of the two.

Damn.

Fun with lighting

More practice for shadows and lighting.

This time, instead of drawing over the top of the photos, I drew these side-by-side with the photos, to see if I could get the colours and the proportions right. I'm still using the eyedropper tool to get the colours right in these - my next stop is judging colour on my own. I get the feeling that I am going to have a lot of trouble with that one...





I think these turned out better than those drawn over the photos, go figure. I'm not happy with the image of the girl looking up, though - I think it's time for some facial angle practice.

Anyone seeing a theme?

Well, I suck at colouring. And shadows. And lighting. And all that jazz.

So, I want to do something about it, but, well, everyone starts at the bottom, right? So, I remembered listening to a pair of young concept artists giving a talk at SMASH, saying they spent hours a day practicing and that they started off just doing black and white practice pictures from photos, to get an idea as to how light worked.

So I took some of the pictures I found of male torsos and gave it a shot. These are all done in PS, using the photos as a guide layer and touching them up after getting rid of them. I think I need a lot more practice before I can get lighting like this without looking at references...

Beware, the last image is slash.











I probably ought to upload some girls, just for the balance.

...

Nah.

Well, at least he has a shirt on...

This is so out of proportion, but I just wanted the image out of my head and down on paper. It's Trace again, wondering what it was he was drinking last night. It took me so long to get this pose even REMOTELY right that once I got the vaguest resemblance, I just went right ahead and tight-pencilled it. And oh WOW, do I need to practice drapery or what. Mercy me.


No, he isn't wearing any pants.

I should stop doing this...

I have an unfortunate tendency to willingly draw anything - ANYTHING - that people ask me to draw during an arty get-together. Which is what happened here.

Kim, in superhero spandex and a tutu, riding the Stig.


Originally she had a mohawk and thick man-eyebrows, but they got phased out...

Aren't I gratuitous?

So, the fact of the matter is, I wasn't particularly happy with Trace's anatomy from the other day. His torso looked vaguely torso-like, I'll grant, but apart from a few little lines and scratches here and there to give the impression of pectorals, he didn't look...pretty.

And I wanted him to be pretty.

So I kicked about on the 'Net, and looked up some torso images to get some practice in. The single best thing about being an artist is having a legitimate reason to stare all day at well-defined men flexing. I may be crude, but I'm honest.

After a bit of drawing and sketching to reacquaint myself with the major muscle groups, I came up with these:


They aren't perfect, but they're better than the previous. Up the top there is Larrikin, and that's Trace again on the bottom. Both these images were based on photos found at...some free photo site or another. I forget which.

I don't know if it's noticeable, but I tried to make their muscletone different - Larrikin a little more built and well-defined because he actually works out, and Trace skinnier and more angular because he can put his body down to good metabolism rather than regular gym visits.

I promise my next upload won't involve a shirtless guy.

Detectives are awesome

My detective boy, "Trace" Draven.

You know, I could say I just wanted to do some more character design on him. I could say I wanted to practice anatomy, or everyday poses. Hell, I could try to cover up my true motives like I did here, by doodling little images of him getting ready for work and pretend I was doing a sequence of events, in order to justify myself.

But the fact remains:

I just wanted to draw Trace without a shirt on.

I probably would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids if I had actually looked up the poses before drawing them.

Scout

Colour sketches of my elkhound Scout. He kept moving around and wandering about the house while I was doing the top drawing, until he finally dropped off to sleep.