Jenny Dolfen

Open shop window, new Inprnt prints!

Hey guys, with quite a bit new art soon hitting the shop (and the printer taking a loooot of time about it), I think it's best if I open my Etsy shop *before* the new art arrives (and then again when it arrives), to space out orders a little. I've got even more art coming up (I'll post a Maglor-in-progress later, along with my first ever use of gold leaf in Procreate!), so I'm a little scared of opening the shop after so long when there's also new stuff there. ;) 

Spirit of Fire

(I've used that title before, haven't I? Probably at least four times. Never mind that.) 

YAY for this painting style! Definitely something I'll be experimenting with. I used rather standard brushes (no watercolour ones), with a "Magic Canvas" texture from Lisa Glanz (which are absolutely awesome). 

Definitely a style I'll be doing more with. And of course it ended up lighter than I originally intended, haha. But not as much as it normally does. The stylised elements are...

Fëanor WIP …. Woo-hoooo!

This, guys! This is the digital look I've wanted to achieve for almost twenty years!! 😀

Still in progress, not there yet, but like 90%! I'm happy! =D

A Feanor happened.

I was sketching aimlessly yesterday when I realised I wasn't using Procreate to its full potential (especially considering the HUNDREDS of brushes that sit there in my menu). I was still trying to mimic my watercolours, and while I get near enough, it falls a little flat and leaves me unsatisfied. So I decided to do something more graphic, with bolder and darker colours. And guess who volunteered. XD 

2021-09-19 05:55:22 +0000 UTC View Post

Embracing the Digital

More fun with mockups! I'll probably have to find out how to make them, make smart layers and such, and make my own... 

Here's the art on its own. ;)

I have no idea why I'm so timid with colours when I work digitally. I usually paint much bolder when I start out, then in the end, I end up making the colours paler and paler again. Probably because I want to retain the pretty ...

More Jax art, shop opening, and LOOK AT THE CROWD

Spent my day off drawing more of my Tiefling Rogue Jax. I love this guy so much!

I put in an order of a few Maedhros and Hare-agorn prints at the local print shop, and will be opening my shop again for a day or so when they arrive! Hopefully next week or so. 😊

And also - WOW! So many new folks! I'm so glad you are here, and hope you enjoy the ride. I'm glad, too, that it's a bit more of a ride right now than it has been over the summer. 

Edit: Found a cool sketch...

Jax sketchpage (finished)

A few people were asking to know more about Jax, so I'll write it out here, to read or ignore as you please. ;) 

Jax grew up in the household of Matthew Falconblade, a Witchhunter of the Order of the Flaming Spear, in Kenabres. It wasn't long before he realised he was not Matthew's biological son - Matthew never married, and with his dark complexion, Jax looked very different from his adopted father's family. When he asked about this, Matthew told him he had been abandoned as a tod...

Jax sketchpage

Drawing my little quarter-demon boi, Jax - my new RPG character, a Tiefling Rogue. I haven't had this much fun playing RPG in ages. Yes, Paladins are cool, but they hold a lot of frustration potential when you attempt something heroic and then the dice fail you. With Jax, on the other hand, I can totally botch a stealth check for sneaking up on an enemy and go, "Whoa! You nearly fell into my dagger there! Good thing I was paying attention! No, don't thank me..." *runs* 

My husband ...

HAREagorn, finished

Hm. He seems to have lost some of his regal expression, but I think that was always due to the pure lineart stage. Hares have strange faces! 

HAREagorn, colour wip

Working on the colours. I'll have a free day tomorrow AND the kids out of the house until four, so I hope to finish this then. XD

I've never worked with pre-built palettes (not in digital media), but for this one, I used the colour scheme from one of John's most incredible photos, and plucked the colours straight out of the photo into Procreate. I know people do this a lot and you can even buy pre-made palettes for the programme, and well,  I'm a convert! This just looks so nifty!&...

HAREagorn

Why, yes, I haven't drawn in four months and now I'm springing (see what I did there) Aragorn as a hare at you. What else did you expect? =D 

John Garth (of Tolkien and the Great War fame) has been posting photographs he took of hares all summer, and seeing them, I wanted to draw them. They looked so majestic, so serious, so full of business, so don't-mess-with-me. I absolutely don't know where this is going, if indeed it's going anywhere, but I love this guy.

And she learned to wield her art with left eye...

... a lot more slowly than her right had been. ;) 

Maedhros and I can start our own Paralympics team. He'd be the Amputated Swordfighting champion, and I'd try my hand (ha-ha) at Visually Impaired Arting. 

It only really works on the iPad right now - always perfect light, and zooming in to dimensions that make my magnifying glasses weep with incompetence. This was done with some pencil brushes and a watercolour splash or two in Procreate. (I've completely forgotten almos...

Shop is open! =)

Sorry for the ten-minute delay! I know the holiday option is one of three tabs on the Etsy dashboard, and on a bad WiFi day, checking all three and finding it's the last can take ten minutes... X) 

Next Etsy opening tomorrow morning!

I'll open my shop around 10.00 am CET tomorrow morning! That's between 2 and 4 am for the US, and later Sunday for Asia/Australia. I will hopefully be able to leave the shop open for about 6-8 hours. And this time, I will actually, hopefully have a week of totally uneventful summer holidays to take care of them!

I can't believe the holidays are almost over, and I spent most of them in sweaters, hoodies, raincoats, or wellies (or at doctors')... Art hasn't really crossed my mind much, bu...

Flooding update

We were mostly spared by the devastating floods that ravaged our region a week ago; but we have friends and family who needed our help, so we spent several days clearing up in the hard-hit adjacent town of Eschweiler, and I'm a bit behind on packing Etsy orders. I hope to meet the deadlines, but it's possible I'll need a few days more. 

That the next heavy rains are predicted for the next week is not very helpful either. :(

Our area is still heavily affected, even for those w...

Etsy shop opens!

... and I've got the much-requested large versions of the "Hunt"! I'm sorry I haven't been able to take any pretty photos - I usually take those outside, but I haven't seen the sun since the weekend. And we're much better off there than some unlucky villages nearby - some have been evacuated, in one, a shopping centre roof has collapsed under all the rain. O_o 

Here's the shop link, with three new originals listed, too! <3 

2021-07-14 17:00:36 +0000 UTC View Post

Etsy opening date, and some very cautious art

I'm slowly easing into the holidays - last week was full of doctor's appointments with absolutely no result other than me being a superbly healthy person (at the cardiology department, they kept bringing in student trainees to "Look at what a healthy person's heart looks like, see here..."); this week is full of apocalyptic rain, but in between checking on the basement and building a bucket chain or two, I'm going to try for some art... 

I've found that by putting a plaster over my...

T-shirt sale! Some Etsy orders may be delayed (but just a bit)

Hi guys, sorry again for the radio silence. My eyesight is no better, and stress in the final school weeks hasn't helped. 

Spring (formerly Teespring, where you can get my t-shirts) is holding a sale this weekend, with 10% off all orders with the code HEATWAVE!

(I think the code is a little tasteless, but it's Spring's idea, not mine... People dying in North America, and my part of Germany bei...

Shop is open! =D

Excuse the three-minute delay! Why didn't anybody tell me Germany play at 6 pm tonight? XD 

https://www.etsy.com/shop/JennyDolfenArt

New normal... pins and originals sale

Hey you wonderful people (and the warmest of welcomes to the NEW wonderful people who have signed up even though times are so uncertain), here's a post of me trying to find a new normal with my screen settings set to even bigger size. Forgive any typos athat I didn't catch - believe me, the teacher in me is appalled already! 

If you want t o imagine how I see these days, I've found this comparison: Imagine you're wearing a standard late medieval "hounskull" type helmet every minute...

Not-so-good news

So it seems I've got an answer to my eye problems, and it turns out it's most likely non an eye problem at all, but a congential heart problem. I will not go into any more detail here any more, to discourage well-meant medical advice. 

The damage to my eye is, in all likelihood, permanent as well.

I still haven't drawn and painted in weeks and I have no idea when I will again. What I will do is to leave my Patreon up on a pay-what-you-want basis. I'm pretty sure I will not st...

Billing for June is paused (+ now with Ko-fi link)

Hey all, just letting you know that I paused billing for June, meaning that those of you who pledge on a monthly basis will not be charged next month. 

I've felt compelled to do this as I've had a few rather painful departures, quite obviously in reaction to my recent announcement, and that's something that I find difficult to deal with right now. 

Yearly pledges, as far as I know, are not affected, because you already paid ahead of time. If you feel that was a ...

Things are slow, sorry...

I'm sorry if things are even slower than usual for me right now - I managed to get myself an eye infarction (retinal artery occlusion) this week, on top of my other visual impairment, all concentrated in my right eye and totally unrelated to each other. The good news is that this one is probably temporary (whether it's related to my Covid shot is still under scrutiny). The bad news is that my eyesight now resembles a Swiss cheese, and I'm glad if I just make it through any given day.  2021-05-21 11:41:27 +0000 UTC View Post

Returning to life, slowly!

It really feels like slowly returning to life. Infection numbers falling. Returning to school on Monday. Both hubby and I got our first shot. Restaurants and shops could open again soon. And I have a glorious four days off to get some gouache painting done! 

That was my first gouache landscape; in the second attempt, I tried to get a bit closer to my usual colours. Still very bright and colourful - it's so much harder to tone down paint in gouache, when in watercolour all you need ...

Arien preview, too!

I did get a photo of her yesterday, too, but the photos looked so off-colour that I was afraid to show you, haha. The manu sent another one today, and this time I'm really excited! The sheen in her dress will look beautiful. (As with Tilion, I went for a large area of enamel for the pearly effect.)

I also did some gouache homework yesterday - some boring gradients that were harder to do than they look, and some face attempts, which show exactly how hard they were, ouch. 

2021-05-06 06:13:08 +0000 UTC View Post

Some hodgepodge news

Hey you lovely people! I'm sorry for the long radio silence - we've been in lockdown again for over a week now, and teaching is more time-consuming and less bearable than ever. The shops and restaurants have been closed for a whopping six months. For the last ten days, it's been all I've been able to do to keep up with Etsy orders and get my school work done. 

There's some good stuff I can share though! I got a sample pic of the Tilion pin in production today, to show the pearly ef...

Gouachy mouse

This was weird. 

I sat down and thought I knew exactly what I wanted to paint. Of course, when you don't know your medium, it's almost impossible to paint what you want. So I painted something else, hated most things about it, thought I'd just finish the face, and maybe the leaf here, oh and let's do some leafy stuff over there, and what the heck, might as well do some darker shadows there. 

I turned away to check my emails (with new school closures on the horizon), then...

The Question of Bling

So, all the designs are done, vectorised and almost ready to go... as soon as  settle on the Question of Bling. 

Most people said they dislike glitter, and I concur - BUT my manu can do pearlescent enamel, which looks absolutely spiffy and held-back, and I'm definitely using that for the dark blues in Tilion, and Arien's dress!  (Here is an example from Etsy, ...

Dormouse pins are here!

They arrived yesterday (four days ahead! <3) and GOSH, I LOVE THEM. There's an exhilarating feeling to opening a box of newly arrived (well-done) pins. You'll remember that my very first unboxing involved the horribly flawed Maedhros pins, so it's always a little nerve-wracking, but so satisfying when they're good (and ever since I switched to this new manufacturer, they're always absolutely perfect). 

I'll try to take a few better photos later - photographing enamel pins is suc...

Celestial bodies and other pins

It’s been difficult to scrape out time for art last week, but I finally finished designing the next batch of pins. Celestial bodies plus nerdiness plus fandom moment. ^__^ Eärendil, as always, is inspired by the 1919 illustrations of the Edda edition I inherited from my grandmother. Too Germanic? Some of the stuff in that book seems like some rather uncomfortable foreshadowing of Nazi aesthetics, but I suppose that was how they rolled in 1919... 

Arien, Tilion and Eärendil will...