Jenny Dolfen

Will in progress

I'm a little worried about all the colours in the crown, but I'm going to tone them waaaay down. Oh, and I added poppies since the lineart I posted, because the piece wasn't sad enough yet... Because I love poppies and include them at any chance, and because Orym Druidcrafted poppies in Laudna's hair when they tried to resurrect her. </3 

First colours laid down:

And I'...

It’s ooooon!

Do you know the feeling whe you can’t wait to start something, but you're also just as scared to? That's a lineart waiting to be coloured, baby. 

Midsummer Will (lineart)

Is it weird to love a character we've seen on the show for less than five minutes? Well, I guess it's not, as anyone Orym would want to spend the rest of his life with has to be beyond gorgeous. =)

I love the lineart here. Well, I love it now. I totally forgot I was going to do a piece with easy, large shapes to do in Holbein pencils. =O

But then, coloured pencils are the medium I like best for colouring darker skintones, so that's a plus...

Goldberry's washing-day

Goldberry among her water lilies. 

Prints are up on Inprnt! (Which is STILL having a sale despite constantly telling me "Last day of sale!", but hey, all the better for you!) =D

Next up: Will in a midsummer crown (as suggested by M.), to give the Holbein pencils an outing! Here's a first sketch. =)

2023-07-09 05:55:06 +0000 UTC View Post

A little sketchalong for CR3_E64 (spoilers)!

Finally did a little sketchalong again!
Reunion with Fearne (in the version where she's not a raccoon dog, haha), Prism casting Enlarge on Orym and suddenly he’s 6'6, and Deanna breaking up with a god. 😱

Goldberry (now with left hand)

I briefly considered just updating the file and pretend she always had a left hand on her left arm… but now you can still enjoy my previous shame in all its glory.

I have never yet put the wrong hand on an arm. Three hands, yes, that's completely understandable (Erin will remember a temporarily 2023-07-05 16:55:56 +0000 UTC View Post

Goldberry - colour washes

I'm absolutely in love with the colours here! Details next. =)

Sketch to lineart video: Goldberry

I always see these little reels on Instagram, of artists pretending that this is how lineart works. 😂 It is kind of magical. And of course totally glosses over just how long lineart takes (here, a relatively quick two hours). 

Fun fact: It took me ages to understand what kind of flowers Goldberry loved, because of another mistranslation in the German Lord of the Rings. There, they trans...

New fun stuff: Stickers, jelly bean freebies, and the poll results are in

Welcome to five new Patrons! Jeff, Apis, Stefan, Robert, and E. have joined us. Yay! 

I've been busy, too: New stickers are on the way, because they are really popular at cons, and people kept asking why I didn't have more. 

What I've also ordered again is freebie jelly beans to throw in with orders (and Patreon welcome packs). So, every Etsy order now gets a little packet of Haribo jell...

Cat familiar - finished!

Here's the finished little kitty from June suggestion runners-up! 

He gave me a lot of grief scanning. My usual "fix watercolour scan" setting in Photoshop did nothing. He really is this bright even if it looks as if I punched up the saturation! 

Cat familiar, Holbein artist pencils on Hahnemühle Britannia hot-pressed watercolour paper. 

I cannot WAIT for the suggestion round for July! The ideas that have already come in are so good already. I may end up doin...

Cat familiar taking shape (and a lot of colour)

Boy, those Holbein coloured pencils are incredible. I don't have some of my favourite colours from Holbein, though, so I often fall back on Polychromos... and using them side by side, it's almost frustrating that the latter are so relatively hard! 

Look at the gradients - they blend like an absolute dream. 

"We're at war" - finished

“Demons run when a good man goes to war
Night will fall and drown the sun
When a good man goes to war

Friendship dies and true love lies
Night will fall and the dark will rise
When a good man goes to war

Demons run, but count the cost
The battle's won, but the child is lost”

(Doctor Who)

This whole scene was so eerie that it felt natural to use very unusual colours for me...

I can't wait for Orym to at least meet up with Fearne again next epi...

"We’re at war" - lineart

I may just have drawn my first quasi-zombie. Overgrown with roses. I should start designing tattoos! 

I'm *incredibly* proud of this lineart! The format, too. I was initially going to do this maaaaybe in coloured pencil, but of course I went totally overboard with the detail. Maybe if I print it in A3… 

A great lineart like this almost makes me hate the situation less….

New sketch (spoiler for Critical Role 3_63)

Aaaah, the holidays, where I can work on two artworks at the same time and still feel confident I can finish both within a week, and where I can work on Critical Role trauma. >_<

Last episode was HARD, you guys. I've come across a lot of people in the past who said, "I can't wait for when Orym finally snaps! He's just too much of a good guy!"

They all should have realised he'd snap inward. </3 

After the betrayal of Bor'Dor, Orym takes out a locket he ...

Cat familiar - progress shots

A warm welcome to new Patron, Apis! =D Make yourself right at home! 

I'm working on the wizard cat in Holbein coloured pencils. They were recommended to me by my neighbour at Feencon, Jessika (we constantly exchanged art materials at our tables, haha). She gave me a white to highlight with, and it felt like butter. <3 They're still really durable and layer extremely well, an...

Cat familiar

This one just flowed! I'm going to use this one to try out my brand-new Holbein coloured pencils. 🧡 With swirls, because you gotta have swirls! 

I started packing the little welcome packs for you guys on Forest Guardian (and equivalent) tiers! I'm starting with the ones who've been with me longest, and saw that my Patreon has been on for ninety-nine months. 🙀Consequently, some of you have been with me for that long! (And before that, even.) T...

Orym and Will - finished!

I'm totally in love with the colouring here! I recorded over an hour of real time painting and am working on a video tutorial now. =)

Happy Pride! (I really meant for this to be done much earlier, for the beginning of Pride Month, but then there were two cons and end of term…)

Throwback Thursday: Fields of Gold

It's hard to believe that this piece is twenty years old! And the song it accompanied is exactly ten years older. It was in the charts the summer I was eighteen, travelling through Denmark with my brother (and shooting photos in fields of barley). 

And of course I thought about doing a "Fields of Gold revisited" version, but Orym in a field of barley is really totally pointless. 😂

Little progress video: Orym and Will

Finally painting these two darlings! I plan to do a full narrated vid later (holidays ahoy).
Here's where I'm at with the piece:

I think some of the reds are too red. I always forget digital watercolour does *not* fade when it dries. 😂

Look what just came in the mail today!

I'd tried...

Feencon sketches!

I had some darker paper with me, which resulted in even more POP with the white Polychromo than on the other paper.

I will put all these up on Etsy, Thursday 23nd June, 6 pm CET. (Click on the bold text to get it converted to your time zone!)

Orym (available) - I swear he's getting sweeter every episode AND every picture.

Essek (...

Feencon Bonn blog post!

A warm welcome to new Patron, Kat! =D 

Feencon in Bonn was a very, very full weekend, with some lows and a lot of highs. It was my first time there, and I know by now that the first time at a new con can't be compared to the experience at a con I've been to for years, so I expected fewer sales (which was fine, as Tolkien Tage had been so incredibly successful that I could afford it!)

I came back with a good handful of sketches to sell, so look out for the Pat...

Froggy shenanigans

• Welcome to new Patrons Martin, OrkenspalterTV, Andrew, Míriel, Anissa, and Regina! 🎉

Here's the refined sketch of Maedhros trying to tell off his twin brothers. In the end, he just wanted to know whose bed those frogs were meant for… 

I used the same red-then-brown-then-white technique digitally here that I used for the Éowyn sketch earlier. I hope to do so...

Art suggestion sketch: twin trouble

Here's a first sketch (to be refined) of the sketch suggestion that won this month's poll! The suggestion was "Maedhros attempting to scold Amrod and Amras", and the twins very clearly have been up to no good. 😂 A very fun scene to draw! 

I'm posting this to all tiers for now, but please note that the "Dormouse" tier will get slightly fewer sketches than the rest going forward. 💛

I've also started to do a little piece for Pride month, Orym and Will snuggling. May be NSF...

Back from Tolkien Tage with a LOT of sketches!

What a weekend! I still haven't caught up on the sleep I didn't catch, but the weekend was a total blast. Thank you, all of you who stopped by to chat (or stock up on pins)!

My eyes behaved exceptionally well, especially as it was dry and dusty and there were open fires with their smoke - and considering the fact I sketched, on paper, for two days straight. I hadn't drawn anything on paper in six months and suddenly it all flowed. Must be the con vibes.

I sold nearly all of these ...

Never felt so small - finished

Deni$e: You're going to be okay. The minute you're not okay, you die.

Orym: The thing is, I don't think I've ever... I just don't think I've ever felt so small.

I went for a quickish colouring style here, for which the loose watercolour brushes I recently got work really well! These are again from PeDeDesigns. 

I hope to get some sketching done over the weekend (Tolkien Tage in Geldern!), and I do hope to sketch some Squirrelpunk then. I've had a few fun ideas for side ...

"Never felt so small"

Deni$e: You're going to be okay. The minute you're not okay, you die.

Orym: The thing is, I don't think I've ever... I just don't think I've ever felt so small.

(Yes, Liam, go ahead and break my heart… again.)
Deni$e (money sign instead of the s) and Orym bonding over a bottle of liquor and the third watch of the night. One of many wonderful scenes of the last episode (too many to draw)!

I'll be at Tolkien Tage in Geldern this weekend! Any of you also there? 

Squirrelpunk (no new art *yet*, just a refresher and art dump)

So yes - that project I started in 2020 which then was cut short by my worsening eyes? I'm ready to revisit that! For those of you who joined after that, or could use a refresher, here's what I have: 

It started with the above illustration, with no real intention of a full thing developing from it, but I quickly fell in love with the idea and the setting and two protagonists were born: Rick, an adventurer finding her place in a hostile world (vaguely post apocalyptic but with cute ...

Stuck on your tier (now with workaround!), ... and Orym showing off

After two months of no Orym, there was such a plethora of scenes, and this spoofy little cartoon was the first thing I drew (to quote Fred Weasley: "With all the ear-related humour open to you, you go for HOLE-Y?"). So, Bells Hells meet new friends, one weirder than the next, and I loved this bit - Emily obviously didn't catch Liam saying he did a back walkover, so Orym clearly showed off and Prism clearly didn't even look up from her clipboard.

Also, no, you can NOT have Orym doing gym...

Shiny new ACEOs, shiny new Patreon tiers!

It's here! I feel up to discovering another new normal*, with a revamped Patreon, all new tiers, and these little precious ACEOs! I actually squealed when I picked them up from the printer's yesterday. Seeing my art in miniature print always makes me weirdly giddy, it's just always spectacular.

My Patreon now has four tiers again, all easy to manage for me and filled to the brim with the stuff that's been most popular with you lovely guys in the past. 2023-05-27 05:42:40 +0000 UTC View Post

"It’s not goodbye" finished

I love this so much! I tried another set of brushes this time, and it’s got some that allow you to geeeently drop a second colour into an existing one, which has been my life's blood with real watercolours, and I'm so happy to be able to achieve this look again! It's "Powerful watercolour" by PeDeDesigns on Etsy, and I’m totally in love. 

Detail:

First attempt with my usual flat ...