Aurumek

New Artwork "Charm Research Center"

Hi everyone!

This one was finished really fast, I hope you like it. Charm Research Centers are usually placed a bit outside of towns for reason's twofold: firstly, some of the charms are rather powerful and secret, and their creators (at least most of them) want to keep rather to themselves. The second is a magic disturbance which happened some decades ago, which unfortunately burned down some nearby houses in the city where the research center stood. Newer ones have all been built outs...

New Sketch

Hi everyone! Found a new idea that somehow came up when I combined some sketches from my idea list - sometimes things like this can't really be solely developed in our minds only, but one has to "go into the water", so sketch around and try to get a feel for what is working and what isn't.

The building on the cliff that I first imagined as a Roman round temple turned into a tower all of a sudden, only to land at some sort of research station. I really like the idea of it being a post o...

New Artwork "Coastal Village"

Hi all!

Finally back and finished up this piece, I should have a bit more time on my hands now and the amount of it should be growing steadily now. The salon is almost done, only a few more tweaks and everything will be great for a start.

It is interesting that the more turbulent my every day life gets, the calmer and more whimsical my artworks become.

It has been some time since y last U-shaped composition, they are definitely a powerful tool to direct the viewers gaze. T...

Update on "Coastal Village"

Hi everyone!

Coming to you with an update of the newest piece. My time is still rather limited for the next 2 weeks, but I paint any free minute that I get, which I why there is still some progress. Painting grass is waaay too much fun, it's insane how one can put so many colors in there, and if their values are kind of alike, you can almost get away with anything!

Anyways, the piece feels really relaxing in it's creation. As I've had pretty much only 13-14 hours workdays this wee...

New Lineart and Update

Hi everyone!

Just checking in with you to tell you that I am still alive and drawing. There has never been a "I will post x times a week" on here, but it feels wrong to just leave you hanging without new content.

So while I am way slower with finishing pieces due to my girlfriend opening up her own salon which takes up a lot of time besides my dayjob, I want to show you the lineart for the next piece. 

The setting and details are something that I'm proud of, yet the thi...

New Sketch

Hi everyone!
A new sketch arrives! The plan is to make it mid day sun with largely blue sky, yet our whole foreground will be in shadow, just like we just walked into a hidden valley and the rocks behind us are laying their shadow on the path before us, before the sun reaches the houses and plants again. Maybe it will also be a speckled light as if from a huge tree, we'll see. I particularly like the U-shaped composition of this one, as it feels a bit like we're actually getting drawn into...

New Artwork "Morning Call"

Hi everyone!
So the last piece got me a bit into an island fever. Now that I think back, I've always loved pictures or scenes of islands, no matter if it was in video games, books or movies. There lies some escapism in dreaming of islands itself, being away from almost everything, living your own life with mainly the island to tend to.

Argenta has thousands of smaller island everywhere around the bigger ones, often with just a few people living on them, which leads to a lot of people...

New Sketch of an Island

Hi everyone! Could not make it by Sunday, yet here we have a new sketch. This was actually mostly built in a night, with several versions first, as the zoom in might change later down the line. The lighting is planned to be an early morning when the sun rises over the horizon, bathing the top side of the island into warm sunlight, and having a blueish tone below on the chalk cliffs and beach. Of course, such a scene would not be complete without our small wizard and a few sheep, so they have ...

New Artwork "Island Home"

Hello everyone! Love the vibrancy of this piece! Some artists tell others to not overdo it with saturation, or else the eye can't decide where to look, but I have nothing to say against a bit of eye candy :D

It is true though that you'll have to watch the viewers eye, which is why I decided to leave out all the other landmasses that I originally sketched out safe for the cliffs in the far distance. Combined with the wizards red robe, this gives our eyes a few points to look at, and not ...

New Sketch

Hi everyone! Another tower emerges, this time, on a tiny island. As our little wizard has a lot of friends all over Argenta, he tends to visit them often. There is always time to chat, eat, and most times there is also something that he can mend again with his magic for them.

Not so sure about the clouds yet, but I'd like to get more painterly with this again, painting the water in a really strong blue tone. The rocks will most likely be of a dark brown like they're volcanic, and the to...

New Artwork "Wizard's Travels: Shopping"

Hi everyone!
So here it finally is! I have no idea when the last time was since I drew more than one character, and from such a short distance to us as viewers. As for the lineart, it felt almost meditative - there was a certain "letting go", not caring about straight lines or if this line looks clean or not, which was so freeing in a way. Another interesting thing is that all of this was painted on one layer beneath the lineart, which is something that I've never done safe for tiny scenes...

New Sketch of a Street Scene

Hi everyone!

This will be a street in one of the cities of Argenta. I'm not sure yet what kind of small shop this will be, but it seems fun to draw such a scene in a city, and I'll definitely add some characters in there, at least the shopkeeper, and probably also our wizard who is buying from him. Two things I can't decide on yet - first of all the lighting. I'll probably aim for a rather golden light again, which would make the shadows long and blueish, but I don't know yet where the ...

New Artwork "Mage Guild Castle"

Done! In my opinion, this is one of my strongest pieces to date, but we'll see how other people like it. Painting the sunlight was a lot of fun, I will definitely be revisiting golden hour settings more in the future. I also really like the light that the wizard has on him coming from the ground, and not the sky. It seems counterintuitive, but looks really cool, which is something I first saw in Moebius' work. He made lots of these character in bright deserts of course where the ground actual...

New Lineart

Hi everyone, I hope you're doing well this weekend!
Since I am neck deep in commissions and still want to play some video games from time to time, my output for personal art is just not the same right now, which is why I wanted to show you the lineart first. It was really cool to draw this, just loosely drawing and making some squiggles here and there instead of trying to be precise. The roof tiles posed a challenge like always, they seem to be my dragon to slay ^^ I think it looks good no...

New Sketch and a polished old artwork

Hi everyone!
The new sketch is a lot of fun! The thought of having loosely placed building that are connected through hallways, bridges, walls and small gardens sounds amazing, so I wanted to create something like a tiny village with this. I'll probably have all of the buildings painted rather bright with chalk that comes from the many cliffs of the Argentian Islands, maybe a warm white or other warm tones.

By the way, the other two pieces are something that you might recognize. As I...

New Artwork "Celestial Gift"

Hi everyone! This one was done really fast, it only took about 5 hours to finish it! I don't think that takes away from its look, but it was just way less complex than the usual stuff. Hitting the right colors with such dark values is extremely hard though, 1% shift in darkness feels like 5% - sometimes I felt like the iPad can't even pick up the ever so slight movement on the color picker that I'd like to do :D

This image pretty much "jumped" into my imagination when I read the followi...

New Sketch - "Celestial Gift"

Hi everyone! A new sketch arrives!
As you can see, in the first draft the thought shows a close-up of our wizard in a second panel, making this kind of the shortest comic ever to be written :D

It then felt really strange to do that while sketching it, and after a night of sleep I decided to throw that idea into the trash. As I like the general idea of a star falling and being a gift, I'll move forward with this one without the close-up. The plan is to make everything glow in a soft m...

New Artwork "Mage School"

Here we go! Hi everyone, this was actually finished, I almost can't believe that it was done so quick with everything that is going on right now. It took me a bit more than 12 hours to complete. As for the linework, it is not as playful as I'd ideally like, but it works pretty fine I think. After testing out different methods for the clouds, I went for the trusty comic art clouds again - they just feel like they belong and don't "break" the style.

Some of you will spot our small wizard ...

New Lineart "Mage School"

Hi everyone!

Another showplace of Argenta takes our "protagonist" to a Mage School in the Western hills of one of the Islands of Argenta. Maybe you can spot him (I almost forgot that I even drew him :D), it's pretty hard to see him without his red robes.

I'll try actually painting the clouds again with this one, and as you can see, the linework got a lot more playful. While writing this, I actually got into drawing the details on the school itself, and it is so hard not to fall in...

New Artwork "Summer Breeze"

Hi everyone! Here is the last piece from 2023. By the way - happy new year! Thank you so much for staying on this journey with me and being interested in my art and world! I promise (as I promised that myself as well) that I'll get better and better with each passing month!

This piece encompasses that mentality well in my opinion, and I feel proud to have closed 2023 with such a piece. As in the last one, its looseness is what I like the most about it, both with its lineart as well as ...

New Sketch "Summer Days"

Well, what can I say - I liked the last piece so much that I decided to do a close-up piece with more details. and some minor changes. Somehow, scenes that are mostly sky and we as viewers just see the top of roofs and chimneys are so awesome - I've been wanting to do that for a long time. The wizard will not be around this time, but the cat that I used to draw into a lot of pieces years ago has returned, laying on the window board, enjoying the summer breeze.

Have a nice weekend!
2023-12-30 13:25:57 +0000 UTC View Post

New Artwork "Sea Mage Castle"

Hi everyone! 

The Sea Mages are known for building their towers, houses and castles at the seaside or even on small islands to be near their chosen (or maybe it has chosen them) element.

This one was a LOT of fun to illustrate for several reasons - the lineart was done really loose by my standards, focusing on just "doing it" and going with whatever works instead of planning everything beforehand, which you can also see in the process pictures. A lot of things were added duri...

New Artwork "Windmage Guildship"

Hi everyone! A next piece is finished, this time, it is a guildship of the windmages. The process is recorded in rather many steps (no idea if I've ever done as many, but I wanted to compensate the lack of it with the last ones), I hope you like it.

Originally, I started thinking about doing this as a pure lineart piece as well, but it would look really dark in my opinion with all the shadow, and there would be no chance for that "warm vs cold" contrast that I love so much, which is why...

New Artwork "Stargazer's Sanctuary"

Well, uhm, this was done so fast that I forgot the process steps - I'm sorry. It first started out with a sketch for a building that was far away, and then got bigger and bigger, adding more buildings as I feel in some kind of mania. The whole piece was pretty much done in a single day. 

To be clear, this is a finished artwork - I loved to only draw this time! After everything was finished, I tried painting in colors beneath the lineart just to try it out, but quickly realized that...

New Artwork "City of Salmingen"

Hi everyone! As I said, this was finished really fast! I got a bit daring with the perspective, but it worked out nicely I think. 

This is the city of Salmingen, a small city at one of the smaller rivers. It is known for it's first class copper that the guilds mainly trade by way of the river to the bigger cities.

The sketch for the next piece is actually almost finished, so I'll be able to show it to you soon!

Have a nice week!
Simon

New Lineart/Sketch of a City Entrance

Hi everyone! This one is going so fast, I almost forgot to take progress pictures for you. As you can see, the first thought was to have a huge tree on the left side, but it felt a bit like the piece needed to be able to "breathe", so I decided to "close" the composition with that small forest, which I feel like is working pretty well for the piece.

 Now I'm starting with the colors - recently, I have been thinking a lot about doing only black and white lineart. There are some abso...

New Artwork "Starspire Sanctuary"

Hi everyone!
This piece was done rather quick while doing commissions at the same time - I really love the clouds in this one! Using a complementary color somehow enhances the interest that this area sparks, which is why I also used it in the grass. One can probably overdo it though - if everything looks interesting, nothing does.

Only two more days of work until the Christmas holidays for me, I'm looking forward to having more free time, seeing my family and spending time doing what...

New Sketch

Hi everyone! Coming back to you with a new sketch! Commissions are a little slower now, or at least there isn't too much pressure as the clients take around 2-3 days to answer, which luckily gives me some time to do personal work. It has been some time since an artwork of mine has "breathed", showing a vast landscape of large scale, and it somehow seemed to be the right thing. Making the floating star above the tower visually stand out against the clouds will be interesting, as the clouds beh...

New Artwork - Wizard's Travels: Visiting an old friend

Hi everyone! So between all these commissions (I have decided not to take on any more commissions unless they pay REALLY well, which would be around 800$ in my case) I sat down today, and finally worked on my own thing again. It felt absolutely great and calming, somehow a bit as if you're really thirsty and get something to drink. Needless to say the colors were done rather fast, it only took a few hours.

There is something soothing about our wizard visiting an old friend who is a shep...

New Lineart of a shepherds home

Hi everyone! I've been trying to get more clear with the lines yet more quirky and playful, and I think it worked out quite well. There is this idea in my head to redraw the whole drawing as a winter scene deep in snow at some point, but this one needs to be finished first before already jumping ahead.

Right now, I'm thinking of adding a tree on the right side close to the viewer, its branches hanging into the picture, but we'll see. Too many points of interest overstimulate in a way - ...