stasisdelirium

Blur of green and gold.

"Zoom"

"What was that?"

"That was September, mate."

"Oh, that was quick, do I get another one?"

"Sorry mate, no."

"...Back to the land of dreams."

Honestly, that blurb from Fawlty Towers is fitting.  I remember distinctly asking where August had gone in what feels like only a few days ago.  But here we sit, on the cusp of October, the gold still raining from the trees, the branches looking like skeletal dark fingers reaching skyward.

I still...

It Begins - 300dpi progress shot

The version with more dots.

It Begins - First colour pass

Just a little progress shot of the first colour pass and very basic shadows.  I'm still a couple days behind but working at it as much as I can.

On the kitty front, it looks like she has pancreatitis now.  Treatable, but its likely to slowly get worse over the years.  She still has an ultrasound to get done so we can figure out what the mass on her side is.  Trying to stay hopeful.

-T.J.

Respite Rowe - Sketch

This is probably the last full rough sketch I'll be able to do this month.  I'm a little bit behind on the painting due to one of my cats needing a visit to the emergency vet clinic on Sunday.  So the last three days have kind of been chaos.

I'm not too sure what brought this picture on, other than pure escapism.  it's fairly rough, and there's a lot to unpack, but it might be more clear when I get around to inking it.

Stay safe, folks.

-T.J.

It Begins - Inks (300dpi)

More dots means more leafs.

-T.J.

It Begins - Inks

Finished the preliminary inks and clean-up for the painting process on this one.  Next will be figuring out the colour scheme and lighting, which takes a bit of time for sure.  Its been pretty nice fall weather here for the last few days, and leaves are falling more frequently.

I think I need to buy more Chai. :)

-T.J.

Sketch Days

Despite a pretty busy morning running around a supermarket pretending to be a ninja (Masked up, avoiding being witnessed by people and hiding on one of the shelves if they tried to pass me in the aisle), I managed to sketch a bunch.

I wanted to draw Chime again, this time presenting Cinders with a tea-bowl.  Birb bowls are best bowls.

I wanted to draw some environmental ideas too that I had bouncing around in my head.  I love drawing rough sketches of environments.

Eldr Yr - Patron Sketch

An inked image done for last month's patron sketch.  I was asked to sketch a she-wolf (Wolfmoonie!) in Norse attire.  I decided to put on the last Heilung album and rummage the rather huge library of Norse/Icelandic/Faroe images I had stocked away, and went slightly mad with the detail.  I couldn't help it though :).

I'm still working on inking in for the upcoming paintings as well.  With the leaves turning here its hard not to just let your mind wander.  While ...

August off to the moon.

I literally wonder where the month left.  I remember a blur of dismally hot days, dismally rainy days, joy at seeing the first hint of leaves on the ground, and appointments.

So very many appointments.

The post today is just kind of a 'bonus' thing for the end of the month.  A map (done in Inkarnate) of the large town of Crowsbury, that has a very 'Halloween' feel to it much of the time (along with Wicksham Cross, its neighbor to the south).

I'm working on a couple...

Before War, and re-worked 'It Begins' sketch

In working on the next batch of concepts for this month's Patron Sketch I also ended up going back to the last image I had posted here - The 'It Begins' image because there were parts of it that were really bothering me.

The biggest problem I had was the pose of the Lorrnath on the right of the image, sweeping.  It felt static and he seemed a bit too tall when compared to Cinders.  She's hard to include in multiple character pictures because she's quite short comparatively, an...

It Begins - (sketchwork)

I've been getting back into walking after realizing I've put on a good 10 pounds during this whole quarantine thing.  While out today I've realized that more and more little yellow leaves are appearing on the ground each day, and some trees and bushes are just starting their slow descent into the fire of autumn.

Naturally Cinders and the Lorrnath of Glaedhurst have likely been seeing the same leaves starting to appear along the still green grasses.  While normally she'd be ful...

Valshiira - Quick Paint

Just a quick update this time around.  I'm doing a bit of practice colour again after a while away from it.  I wanted to do a kind of 'sketchy' attempt at it akin to concept art and figured I'd do so with Valshiira, a Tribal Lorrnathi from the north-mountain region of their home.

Not  much  more complicated than that.  I might post some more of these quick colour sketches in the near future as well.

-T.J.

Draaaaanks! (sketch)

"Wha-hey-hey!  You lads see the status of these drinks?  'ere as big as my head!"

"I see she found the bar."

"Seems like."

"Hah, wanna bet a crown we find 'er in a tree later?"

"A tree?  Haha!  If yer lucky.  She been eyein' you since Laon Zhan.  Yer gettin' a gnomin' if'n ever I were bettin' on it"

"haha, yeah I.. Wait.  A what!?"

Its still hot here, so I figured a summer picture with Ellys, gnome explorer extraordinaire ...

Hearthbourne Respite (Patron Sketch, Nudity)

I was struck with a pretty severe creative block in the middle of sketching out last month's patron sketch.  It was bad enough that there was a delay of at least a couple weeks at least, and even personal projects (outside the mapping) were just not coming out looking even half-way decent at all.

I was shown a lot of patience with this one, for which I'm eternally grateful.  It took some re-working and basically literally re-learning some fundamentals of doing artwork again. &...

Bee Floaties (sketch)

The weather continues to be impressively hot and humid here.  I've started doing work in the early hours of the mornings now (3am), and while it's still fairly humid the heat goes down by a good ten degrees.

Inspired to sketch this between inking last month's patron sketch and another project.  Cinders would ensure that her very round bee-friends would have enough pool-floaties to drift around on.

Those early mornings bring out weird mental images.

The Dotty Bits

Now that I've been able to get at least a working map of one of the larger parts of the world created after about 25 years, I've been starting to plug my notes into the 'Matrix' in a manner of speaking.

I've been using an app called 'Legendkeeper' to slowly begin the monumental task of inputting the notes from those 25 years, setting markers and way-points of where everything noteworthy is so I can stop losing ideas and facts through the prodigious holes in my memory (Likely caused by w...

Valhaadrune (so far)

 "The clarion call of the heavens waged ruin upon the rotten host.

Their shrapnel lay verdant and sprawled across the landscape.

And the calming cadence of the mother's heartbeat thrummed throughout.

A lullaby, a song, a psalm to those weary children who had bore so much.

Until sleep overtook, and in the dark grew the green things we know.<...

2020-07-31 23:42:46 +0000 UTC View Post

Wiggle-baa (Nudity warning, sketch)

There's a certain serenity, watching Cinders dance-exercise her goat.

"Wiggle, and baa, wigglewiggle baa-baa, and swish an' baa, swish n' swish n' baa-baa"

I've been struggling with getting anything to look right lately.  I default to doing simple nudes and anatomical drawings as a way of trying to jump-start past whatever block it is that's keeping everything from just looking weird, or just not happening at all.

I'm still not past whatever this block is in my head. &n...

Wolves 300dpi

The 300dpi version of the wolves sketch.

-T.J.

Wolves

Admittedly a random picture with characters I don't know.  I don't think the image is really going anywhere, but it was good practice to keep linework loose.

Khavijas culture tends to see women being more forward, just as often being the ones to get chummy with their fellow hunters as the men are.

I've posted the greyscale contrasts as well as the linework.

Ellys Fenn Reference

Its been a rough start trying to stay creative.  The 'hide in the house' days are definitely starting to weigh more and more on the depression, and trying to do anything creative in that fog has been enormously difficult.

While this is the second try at this image, it was one of those 'don't overthink it' kind of images that I needed to try.  I tried to keep things loose and not overdo details.  I did rummage through about thirty refs on interesting outfits before opting ...

Valhaadrune (preview)

Just a small glimpse of a rather large map of the world I'm working on.  Normally I don't show 'sketchwork' of these kinds of things, but I figured I'd give a glimpse into what I had in mind for getting some world geography down.

None of the other continental maps will be as large as this, since Valhaadrune is the largest continent on the world (that and I'd probably lose my mind if I tried to make them all this large).  It is planned to have all of the major and known settlem...

Sales Tax Reminder and other ramblings.

Hey all,

A reminder that sales tax for your respective regions will be added from this point going forward, automatically added by Patreon.  As far as I can tell things on my end are set though I expect to take a bit of a hit.

That said, the next note has been sent out to the next person on the Patron Sketch list.  I've had to accept that I'm just a month behind at this point, which the 'production' part of my brain hates, but the 'practical' part of it just has to accep...

A New Frand - Patron Sketch (May)

'When your squirrel companion is a bit of a jerk, you tend to gain unexpected visitors'.

I was given the opportunity to try my hand at drawing an anthro-Deer in a fantasy/outdoor setting and had a lot of learning to do as to how deer antlers worked.  In the end I had to find front and side and even top-references to figure out the twists and turns of them.  They might look like the kind of poke out everywhere but there's a really nice rhythm to how those antlers work....

Trail - Sketch

The local's don't like strangers, it seems.

I went from weeks of not really being able to think or draw anything to bashing this out in a couple of days.  I finally was afforded a break in the immensely stressful family-health events that were going on and while the health front seems okay for now, there were other things that I was taking care of that could only be described as a wild-ride.

I try not to be specific about things when it comes to my father's health, and that o...

Tired - 300dpi version.

300dpi.

Tired - colours

I've been gutted the last few weeks with world events the way they are.  Sometimes it seeps over into the lives of those folks living in the cavernous depths of my skull.  Cinders just.. wants to go home, and hide, and read something.

I didn't want to turn this into a full painting, electing to just do a simple colour treatment instead.  I needed to try and work with colour again since I haven't done so in quite a while and it leads to getting really rusty.  I may do...

Tired (sketch)

Just a random, rough sketch of Cinders being tired.

We all are, Cinders.  We all are.

-T.J.

Sentinel of Wells inks - 300dpi

More pixels means gnomes and khettu are still smol.

The Sentinel of Wells - Inks

Inks of an earlier sketch featuring Ellys Fenn, gnome explorer, and her khettu companion Ruadhán at the Sentinel of Wells.  Much of the places and things they explore are on the deeper, darker, and very forgotten depths and vistas of the world.  Places featuring strange 'Lewis Carroll-esque' landmarks with an abstract edifice that gives hints to incredibly ancient societies, but often ends up posing more questions than answers to what, who, or if anyone had constructed the...