Road Home - Sketch.

I recently finally upgraded my production box after 12 years.  USB ports and an ethernet port began failing on the 'auldr Dragon' as I called it, and it was showing signs that it wasn't going to last.  Thus it put a delay on getting work done as I had to reinstall everything, get everything to work with each other again, and lean new quirks of fresh installs after literally over a decade of old comfortable tweaks.

And then the events of last week happened, which utterly wrecked my creative interest for a few days.  I'm not a U.S. citizen, but it still hit me hard since so many folks that I know are in the States.  I hope you all stay safe.

I finally managed to get enough of my braincells into a large enough pile to work on this though.  An elfin knight of the Rising Glorious Light (Saint Aurinvell) with his squire, a raixa mare that serves as steed, still learning the day-to-day of those serving the morning sun.

The pair was an idea from at least a couple years back now that I never really bothered getting around to until now.  Its been so long that I don't even remember their names if they had them.

Drawing the horse (raixa) in this was a bit of a nightmare.  I had to swallow my pride and take the advice someone I knew in the concept art industry gave me: "3D models aren't your enemy."  so I  just used a 3D model to get the position straight since none of my ref photos were close enough to fit this angle.  It was made equally hard to do by hand because the public house in the background is at a tilt to to give it a bit of a worn down 'slouch' that buildings like this could have.  So I imported a couple cubes to get the tilt right, and the horse was from DAZ Studio I think.  It was enough to figure out the plane she was supposed to sit on, after that it was just building up the pose from a stick-model I drew over it.

I've tentatively started making 3D rough-models in Sketchup to serve as references for backgrounds.  I don't know to what end they'll help, but when I need a cabinet with a rough looking sink, I have one, and don't have tons of detail to distract me from the design I want to give it in the inkwork.

Hoping to get a few more sketches done in the coming week.

To escape to worlds less insane.

-T.J.