Jenny Dolfen

Starry-swooshy!

I obviously need to get to know my papers again. On Etival, it all just looked blotchy, I then started again on "cloudy" Nuageux paper - much better! 

Lineart!

I've managed to keep the MattSmithiness in there! 

And look - Brit sent me her old camera, and it takes photos. Really nice photos. <3

“All of time and space; everywhere and anywhere; every star that ever was. Where do you want to start?”

Well, Adele, I'm finally on it! I've been feeling so uninspired until last week that I just wasn't up to the commissions and prompts - now I'm so incredibly happy with how he's coming along! 

I didn't trust myself to freehand him, so the sketch is lightboxed. As is the TARDIS. I can't draw a straight line on the graphics table to save my life, haha! This'll hopefully look more natural when I've taken it to pencil. 

It felt weird saving this simply as "doctor" - wonder if that f...

Luna Lovegood for Mela

Finally, here's the commission for Mela, of Luna Lovegood! The raffle winnings should be arriving shortly, too. 

I love Luna. She's such a wonderful character. I always saw her as an amalgam of myself plus two derpy friends of mine that I had when I was 11-15 (I always attracted the other derps around me). Here, she looks a lot like one of those friends, who had the great misfortune to be dubbed Brie until well into her twenties.

There hasn't been a lot of art at all this spring - I...

Framed print sale! 20% for Patrons <3

Neighbours' cat not included. He bites, too. XD

Some of you already heard that my last weekend was about as crappy as they come - I'd spent weeks preparing Tolkien Tag convention, only to arrive and find someone else had occupied my space and tables in the hall. They didn't turn up, and short of taking their stuff, dumping it on the floor and putting my own on it (all of this while the show was already open to the public), there was nothing I could do.

So I packed up my stuff again and ...

Commission: The Battle of Hastings

The last commission of the latest batch that all but paralysed me. I'm so, SO glad to have that stuff from off my table. Both these commissions were all right and the subject matter was nice in both cases, and so were the clients, so I really can't say why both of these killed me so, but anyway - I'm done! 

Next up will be Adele's Doctor, and Mela's Luna Lovegood - and then another Newt commission for Sandra. <3

The Knight of Flowers

Colours!! 

Still need to practice a bit with acrylic gouache, but for a first (and a half) attempt, I think it's pretty nifty. 

Pose comes from a photoshoot I did at Burg Satzvey, at their annual tournament. I took about six hundred photos that day - they come in really handy!

Acryla gouache and oh the possibilities!

Magic!!!

I've experimented with very thin acrylics before (Paul's Laerminuial, and a few pieces in Cannae), but haven't really pursued that in years, mainly because I didn't like the shiny finish. Now look at that! With acrylic gouache, you can detail, shade and render the entire thing in monochromatic colours - and then you can just add colour. So much control! And it dries totally matte and looks like watercolour - but is waterproof. 

And a tiny little spot of paint lasted me for ...

Another go at this

Last night, I felt this was going in far too garish a direction, and started anew. 

As if I hadn't been experimenting enough this year, this is yet another medium: Arylic gouache. It comes in tubes, is water-soluble (like watercolour), and dries to a matte finish (like gouache, unlike acrylic) but dries waterproof (like acrylic, unlike gouache) so it doesn't need fixating (unlike gouache) and can be painted on in layers (like watercolours, unlike gouache). In German, we call such a thing ...

Chivalry - in progress

Finally, some art underway. I don't know what is the matter with May. Even when I'm not involved in the school exams (Abitur), I still seem to be hit by total art paralysis. 

On another sad note, I won't be at this weekend's RPC con in Cologne. It's all been another terrible hassle with the organisation, and what killed it then was that I can't be away from the kids/family for an entire weekend. :( It may well be that this hassle had a huge part in the month's lack of art.

I hope to...

Test illu - Knight of Highgarden

I'm so sorry for the long hiatus! It was the absolutely rotten combination of a head-cold (another one) and working on two commissions that took ages to get off the ground. Remind me never to work with a publisher again if I haven't heard of them before. Gah! They insisted on communicating only with the author (a scholar writing about chivalry in Westeros), and not with me - "so I could concentrate solely on the artwork". Thing is, their communication - or lack thereof - meant I didn't even have...

Freebies May 2017

Here's a whole load of tablet wallpapers, desktop wallpapers, linearts, and avatars! :)

Raffle draw May 2017

I'm sorry about the delay - I've come down with another head cold. *Shakes fist at the weather*

Here's the winners for this month's raffle! 

Five goodie bags go to:
Bronwen MacDonald, Mai-Lee, Deidre Bongaerts, J, and Amanda Read! Please make sure your addresses are up to date! 2017-05-04 13:19:58 +0000 UTC View Post

More dapper, more puffskeins

I'd ask for Theseus' number, but I doubt they have a telephone.
And Newt in knickerbockers and stockings is just too cute. 

Useless knowledge time: In researching at what age boys exchanged the knickerbockers for long trousers (and it seems to have been 13/14), I found out that, between 1550 and about the late 19th century, boys wore dresses until they were about seven. Frilly, silky, pink, lacy dresses. Made it easier for them when nature called apparently. O_o

I have i...

The war hero and the weirdo

Okay, I have decidedly too many sketches lying around... we'll see which one will be taken further!

This started out last weekend at my MagicCon booth, when a visitor asked whether I'd drawn any pictures with Newt and his brother Theseus Scamander. I said I hadn't, but the idea took hold. On Friday night, we rewatched the movie on BluRay and I fell in love with it all over again - and felt I wanted to do a Victorian portrait with the two of them. I went on Pottermore to see what we knew about ...

Framed and ready for sale!

Glorfindel is now available! 

http://www.etsy.com/listing/526924469/glorfindel-original-framed-painting

Incidentally, all of you can, at any time, tell me if you'd like to purchase something I'm currently working on. Several of you have done this in the past, and so many pieces were sold straight off the easel and never went up on Etsy. I always make special prices for m...

Glorfindel finished

Gouache ROCKS. If someone could tell me how to avoid candy colours, that's up next. XD  Right now, this looks like straight out of a fairy tale book (which I'd buy at once.)

Gouache on Etival cold-pressed paper, 18x24 cm. 

The fact that I managed to paint all of this at my booth today says a lot about my convention day.  -_- It was soooo slooooow. I had a table in the most remote corner of the hall - the only chance to find me is to know I'm there and go actively looking f...

Gouache to go

Made myself another little mini palette so I can paint at MagicCon this weekend. Gouache works really well like that, too! 

Glorfindel lineart

The compression here is awful - I kept the lineart extremely light, and upped to contrast for the upload. Hope the first colour wip shots will look better. 

Trying for a feathery gouache painting again, like I did with Sam. 

And another sketch...

I spent all day printing,  framing, matting, and gilding for MagicCon this weekend - and feel slightly daunted by the sauna piece, so I decided to do a quiiiick portrait of Glorfindel that somehow turned into something bigger too, but I can see this in fuzzy gouache again very well. 

Might be a piece I'll take to the con with me, to paint at my table. 

I used a photo of a Roman reenactor I took at Xanten last year. So dead useful, those! And no, he didn't look a tenth as h...

Elves in the mixed sauna

Okay, I'd better explain this one. XD

Someone on Facebook remarked that she wanted to see the wood-elves feasting, and this felt like something I really wanted to do. I went to my new fave posing site and did some quick gesture sketches of sitting/reclining figures. I really, really like the setup here. Though they don't look quite inebriated enough for wood-elves, haha. 

I'm thinking of inebriating them a little more - raised glasses, singing; I'll hand one of them a harp - or mayb...

Morrigan

A piece I've been thinking about and planning in my head for quite a while now, and of course there would be TWO Morrigan paintings out this week by artists in my Facebook feed. 

I might move her to the back of my mental queue then... I also have Eówyn, Melian and Feanor in mind; let's see who'll take the place! 

Ride of the Valkyries

You may remember a piece of mine I kept hinting at and shared bits of (and one or two of you may have received it in postcard format). I'm allowed to share it now, though the occasion is a little sad. 

It was meant to be for a book that was put together by about a hundred  women professionals, all illustrating females in Fantasy. The project got too big and unmanageable, and officially ended this month. The book won't happen, unfortunately, but fortunately, I can now show this! ...

And with gold

Not the best capture; with a bit of luck, I'll be catching some daylight at some point this week so I can try a better shot. 

I used FineTec Gold paint again - the lines are thinner than it looks, but they glare in the camera and look broader. 

Happy Easter! Though the temperatures feel more like Christmas *_*

Warrior Thranduil finished

Yay! This is a way to use gouache that I'll definitely do more with. 

Gouache fun

Going to post it tonight! :) Still need to scan it before I put on gold touches. 

Next attempt

This time, I'm doing the good stuff in watercolour and will probably go in with gouache for the fringes. The bottom already is some gouache. MUCH more detail possible, at least until I have more practice with gouache. 

That stage...

With any opaque medium, I find there's a horrible ugly duckling stage, when everything just looks muddy and murky and gaaaaah. I suppose the only way to overcome that feeling is to paint enough paintings through that stage to develop a sort of confidence that it'll pass. 

Thranduil colour wip

This gouache thing is still slightly scary. For seven years, transparent layers have been my topmost concern, so something inside me keeps screaming. "It's opaque! Get it off! Get it off! Destroy it! Kill it with fire!"

The blue feathery sky in the Sam piece was easier, but this way I'll learn. I'm still working as transparent as gouache can get. I'm breaking myself in slowly. XD

Warrior Thranduil lineart

Ooooh, this'll be fun!