katoo

WYVERN - Chapter 1 - Page 6

Page 6... anyone who recognises the building this is based off gets a cookie

WYVERN - Chapter 1 - Page 5

Page 5! yep i'm gonna need to go back and draw that watch in the last page.

textless version of the third panel because i think it came out nicely, considering setting up scenes in perspective like this is mad difficult for my brain

WYVERN - Chapter 1 - Page 4

Page 4! More Exposition-Via-Television, or maybe I just want an excuse to draw little CRTs :)

ISA - pronounced "eye-sa" - the International Space Administration. Founded in 2010 after the Schwarzschild Engine was officially approved for extrasolar space travel. Like the UN for space. In its current form, ISA comprises of separate scientific and military bodies, but over the past few decades its priorities have shifted further towards militarisation.

Some quick updates + questions

Hi guys! So just to get this out of the way, you may have heard that Patreon is forcing everyone to switch to subscription style payments instead of first of the month payments. This is because Apple said so if they want to keep the Patreon app in the App Store. Anything for our billionaire tech overlords, I guess.

The change automatically comes into effect this November (I think). This shouldn’t affect current members and you’ll continue to be charged at the start of each month as usual.

However, I strongly advise against pledging via the Patreon iOS app as you will be paying significantly extra to cover Apple’s 30% in-app purchase fee! So check your payment settings! You can read more about this greedy and annoying change at https://news.patreon.com/articles/understanding-apple-requirements-for-patreon

Secondly, I’m now crossposting my art on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/lead-castle.bsky.social

And thirdly, I’m considering reintroducing my $10 tier. In the past I offered monthly sketch requests to everyone in that tier, but I couldn’t keep up with the amount of work it created. Instead I’m considering a raffle system where one or two tier members are randomly selected for a monthly sketch request.

Let me know if you have any feedback or suggestions. I’d also love to hear what other $10 rewards ppl might be interested in. Shoutouts or credits? Files with layers? Custom brushes? The floor is yours.

- Adrian

Open for sketch commissions

I want to do some simple digital comms in this style with a quick turnaround :) Patreon members get first dibs and a discount as usual.

Early offer price is $90 USD for a fullbody, $60 USD for a bust (before discount)

If interested, please email aschweinsberg.art@gmail.com and include:

• Your Patreon username and tier
• Reference art
• Desired pose/vibe/outfit etc.
• Your PayPal email address for invoicing

Terms of Service: https://bit.ly/2UwMtjJ

Thank you!

Spacesuit 2024

An updated design to Sonny’s spacesuit! although there wasn’t much to change besides adding some extra details like pockets and a quick-release latch for the helmet. It’s nearly identical to the standard utility spacesuits used by the rest of the ISA Peacekeeping Corps - fairly flexible and lightweight as far as spacesuits go, but you wouldn’t want to be walking around in it under gravity for long.

WYVERN - Cover painting WIP

Finally giving myself the time to tackle the cover art for Wyvern vol.1! I think I’ve been refining this concept since 2022, so it feels good to have it coming together at last. This WIP is probably 90% finished.

I spent a looooot of time trying to wrap my head around the gravitational lensing effect. In the end I know it isn’t fully accurate, but as long as it’s somewhat recognisable as a black hole then I’m happy. Bc I have spent far too long staring at it!

And now the next challenge is the logo…

My Fursona v The State Of California

“Furry courtroom sketches” is a concept I’ve had for some time… so I decided to make a custom oil pastel brush in procreate and finally bring this idea to life.

What did he do? Use your imagination!

That’s not the proper way to title a case? I don’t care!

Based off this iconic sketch:

Baldurs gate 3 but make it furries

Cowlach and.. uh…. Asableion ?? thumbnails a made a few months back for a painting series based on the character portraits in Baldurs Gate 3. the rest of the gang will be coming at some point. And yeah, I loved the game to bits. BG1 was one of very few video games I played as a kid and it’s still a fav.

Two’s company

Professor Centri and Plus Or Minus Two, the android!

Wanted to try making a fineliner brush in procreate, and decided to experiment with some colour as well.

Procreate sketches II

More stuff from my digital sketchbook. Ok a couple of these weren’t done in procreate, but whatever!

Alpine Spring

A digital painting commission for Archer, thanks again! Made in CSP. Crop below!

Side note: I’ve managed to really build up a backlog of non-comic art lately, so there are a bunch of posts queued up for the next while - some crossposts, some new stuff, some old. I’m also trying to promote Wyvern and the rest of my work more online. But social media management… is not my thing 😩😅 so thank you to everyone for sticking around, bc I have a lot of art on the way!

Procreate sketches I

Miscellaneous sketches from the past couple months, mostly just figuring out how to use procreate.

WYVERN - Chapter 1 - Page 3

Page 3! In which we meet Dani, Sonny's mum, who works as a fantasy illustrator. I made a thumbnail for her painting and it turned out so cool that I need to find a way to show the whole thing somewhere...

 Also trialling a new typeface for dialogue, let me know if you have any feedback :) thanks for looking!

WYVERN - Chapter 1 - Page 2

Page 2, also the chapter title. Sonny lives with his mum in this little terrace house in the western Sydney sprawl. Bc so little of the story takes place on Earth, I haven’t actually put a lot of thought into what a futuristic Sydney would look like lol… It would probably be more realistic if they lived in med/high density housing, but I wanted a very homely feel to this chapter before we go to space.

Wyvern - Ditching screentones for ink wash + process notes

If you've seen my post for Page 1, I mentioned that I decided to stop using screentones in favour of a digital ink wash method for toning the comic. I went back and tested this on a page from the prologue and was immediately won over. I feel like i'm able to pull so much more life and drama out of the art for a fraction of the effort, honestly! I will miss the look of screentones but it's a lot of hassle for something that displays so poorly on screens.

Inspo began with Yas's Gundam Origin manga, which is inked entirely with a brush, and Yas often uses subtle ink wash to soften out blacks in backgrounds. His watercolour pages also go without saying...

Takahashi Tsutomu is another manga artist with a highly gestural style who uses traditional ink wash that's scanned and converted to screentones. There's a Manben episode about him here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-dSowCzAbU

Another thing these artists have in common is they both work solo and are both extremely efficient workers, with minimal sketching and fast, fluid inking. As much as I'm influenced by manga, I have to remind myself that many works are produced with teams of assistants... something I don't have!! So in these early days I'm focusing a lot on efficiency - learning what I don't have to draw, essentially. What gets hidden in shadow, what disappears in bright light, what can be suggested in as few strokes as possible. It's letting the viewer fill in the gaps and do some of the heavy lifting for you. I've also been reading Dai Dark by Q Hayashida, the queen of drawing loose and expressive manga, which I'd recommend if you enjoyed Dorohedoro.

Studying painting and doing lots of traditional ink sketches has also been really helpful in improving my comic art. It feels good to be able to bring your whole skillset to the drawing board. Hopefully you'll be able to see some of this in future pages :)

Thanks for looking!

WYVERN - Chapter 1 - Page 1

Here we go! Here we fucking go!!! Sonny makes his entrance!!

Very, very excited to be able to finally share this story I've been working on for (checks notes) 10 years.... 💪😭 oof!

You might notice that I've ditched screentones in favour of a digital ink wash. Hopefully this decision doesn't bite me in the ass, but I honestly find it a lot easier and more enjoyable to paint in the greys this way. Plus it displays on the web a LOT better as there's no inescapable moire to deal with. I also tested out this method on a page from the prologue which I'll upload in a separate post.

I'll be uploading the comic to Patreon page by page as they're completed, then the whole chapter will be released publicly. If you want to revisit the prologue, you can download it here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/wyvern-prologue-73363126
or read a threaded version here: https://x.com/Lead__Castle/status/1609822575064145925

And cus why not, the raw inks:

Thanks for looking, thanks for sticking around all these years, and I hope you enjoy <3

Wyvern - Chapter 1 pencils completed!

Time for a big update! Here are the pencils for pages 17-27, concluding the first chapter of Wyvern. You can see me gradually figuring out Procreate and starting to shake off the dust. This is a very dense chapter so I’ve still got a bit of refining to do, but I’m eager to start inking ASAP. While the iPad has been awesome for sketching, I much prefer my desktop tablet for everything else.

Still can’t believe I’m really getting to do this… I’ve been drawing for myself nearly every day for the past few weeks. I am, as they say, living the dream.

Lettering experiments + process

I’ve always enjoyed typography but more in the sense of graffiti, in that it’s fun to break rules and draw shapes. Most of my inspiration comes from Roger Dean, David Rudnick, and industrial safety iconography/incidental design. In particular I wanted to replicate that 80’s airbrushed mirror chrome style in the first pic (still a WIP). For the last couple sketches I looked at metal band logos for inspiration. I really like to see how far I can push the legibility!

A quick process breakdown:

I like to work off an existing typeface and then gradually cut+paste+distort until I find an interesting motif or movement I want to work with. I think this started out as optima black.

From there I sketch and noodle over the top and start to chisel out the shapes I discover. It’s all about creating interesting negative space.

Then I start to nail down some of the line weights, spacing and alignment. The final still needs tweaking but I’m coming back to it later.

Thanks for reading!

Pelican (WIP)

More work in procreate, based off the manuscript illustration below. As described by Isidore of Seville:

The Pelican is a bird that lives in Egypt by itself on the river Nile… It is said (if that may be true) that she kills her own offspring, and mourns them for three days; then she wounds herself and revives her children by the sprinkling of her blood.

I’m still debating what medium I want to finish this in, but I might end up doing a few versions. If I decide on a digital piece I want to try something very smooth, geometrical and flat. If I go traditional I’m thinking lino print or acrylic on board. It might be a good candidate for a risograph print as well. Decisions!

I’ve also been working again on pencils for Wyvern chapter 1, so you should be seeing some of that soon ;)

Thanks for looking!

Source: https://foundinantiquity.com/2013/07/05/bird-feeds-chicks-her-own-blood/

Lieutenant Phoetor's Birthday

Forgot to crosspost this one! I've been working very intensively in colour this year but I keep feeling myself gravitating towards greyscale. I think a big part of my recent development as a painter was coming to understand the importance of grey and the subtlety you can squeeze out of a narrow value range, as well as how to effectively group values.

Colour alt below ⬇️ I’ve also been very interested in green/violet palettes lately, specifically this very greyish blue violet.

Thanks for looking!

Wolf Collar - Timelapse (cw flashing)

The procreate timelapse for this drawing! I’ll probably be uploading all my timelapse videos here for Ace members. Watch me mucking around as I get used to the new workflow and experiment with different pencil grips. I also don’t know why it exported a flipped version, but oh well!

Wolf Collar (& update)

Hi! A couple pieces of good news if you don’t know already -

I’ve been gifted an iPad! I’ve spent the past couple weeks getting myself familiar with procreate, which I used for this drawing. My intitial sketch was made using an overhand grip on the Apple Pencil - my preferred grip when sketching gesturally with traditional media, and impossible to do on my regular tablet!! So I’m pleased with how comfortable and natural loose sketching feels on the ipad.

Secondly, I quit my day job and now I’m a full time independent artist. So I’m in an extremely fortunate and exciting position rn. As a result I plan to be updating Patreon a lot more frequently, also bc I’ll be a lot more reliant on the income I make here.

The plans are:

• Begin regular work on WYVERN
• Take commissions
• Table at local conventions (and maybe… overseas….…?)
• Create videos on art education/tutorials/creative process
• Complete and publish side projects such as Mutagenesis
• Update and complete my portfolio website
• Start an online shop for prints and stickers
• Explore more traditional mediums

And so forth… get ready to see a lot more of me. Thanks everyone for sticking around all this time 🧡

Hourly Comics Day 2024

Completely forgot to post these here!!! hourly comics from back in Feb. It was a bit of a downer this year bc I was sick, overworked and generally having a horrible un-airconditioned summer. But at least one funny thing happened!

Some furry character designs (slight NSFW)

CW for nudity in third pic! Miscellaneous OC and fursona design sketches from the past couple months, plus a con badge that I have yet to actually use as a con badge...

Emudad in particular is a character I'd been hankering to make for a while. When it comes to my OCs I'm only able to stay interested in them if they have some kind of greater purpose in a story/project, so when I have to pick a subject for a painting I usually default to the same few OCs over and over. Hence Emudad's purpose is to exist "in-universe" as an interesting new model for me to paint, in theory. I also love designing unusual furry species :)

Still playing catch-up with social media. Free time... soon.....? Thanks for looking!

PS. I got to pat TWO whole emus earlier this year and it was the best. Meet Curly and his son Thunderbolt:

Fashion Furs Vol.3 Illustrations

Works originally produced in 2019 for The FF Collective artbook! Still some of my favourite stuff. I'll be selling a verrry limited amount of physical copies at Aurawra this month, otherwise you can order a copy at https://theffcollective.bigcartel.com/

Red films

Hi Patreon, sorry things have been slow. I've been busy with commission work and convention prep for like 7 months straight :') Just doing catch-up with social media in the mean time.

Here are some studies from Mandy and Inherent Vice, painted in CSP.

I'll be tabling at my second Aurawra in a couple weeks time, so come say hi if you're wandering the dealer's den!

Comic commission works

Hi everyone, sorry things have been quiet lately. Over the past couple months I've tabled at FurDU, moved house, and then had to immediately enter crunch mode for a major commission project. I can't share too much about this, but it will be a 9-page full colour comic released in a printed anthology. It's also probably some of my strongest work to date ;)

Once this project is completed I'll be focusing on remaining painting commissions and con prep for Aurawra in July. Then maybe I'll take a break... maybe......

Open for painting commissions

Hey everyone, I’m looking to take on some new painting projects and I’d like to give patrons first dibs. In particular I want to do more digital watercolour works in the style above. My prices start at $400 USD for portraits, tier discounts apply. Completion will be in the second half of the year.

Email me with any interest or enquiries at aschweinsberg.art@gmail.com

TOS: https://t.co/iwubVy8TE1

Thanks for looking!

Royal Siblings

A rare bit of fanart to make prints for FurDU and Aurawra this year! I've been really enjoying working in this watercolour style lately. I've done a fair amount of traditional watercolour painting in the past so it feels good to return to it in a way.