feyspeaker

Love and Deepspace- Rafayel "Sapphire Gaze"

hellooooooo!! man I do not paint enough water pieces!!!!!

A shiny, sparkly Rafayel to bring blessings upon you. Dude I absolutely thought that Sylus would win me over forever but this bratty man is hanging on. He's just so pretty, and we do NOT get enough mermen in anyTHING.

This is the mini print for the print club this month btw! Working on Sylus next week, sorry not sorry both of these lads ended up, uh, wet, but I can't help myself.

It's giving ⋆˙⟡summer pool party vibes ⋆˙⟡

Thank you all for your support. ♥

July Print theme vote

Hello everyone!!! I'm putting up a vote for July's theme- we are going with a couple of gaming hunks to pick from, lol. (Okay, 2 hunks and 1 goth babe) Please cast your votes! I'll have the runner up from last month (Sasuke from Naruto) and this month compete for August.

June print club sketch - LiDS Sylus

Hi guys!! I hope you are all doing well. :D

Here is the tentative sketch for this month's print club print! Some kind of steamy fancy giant bath type setting, with some sleek black and white tiles. I'm thinking either some greenery or columns in the back, or both, not sure yet. Just wanted to get Sylus and his feathered friend roughed out. Rafayel will be the mini, I'm thinking a close up portrait of him with his mermaid scales and pretty eyes glittering.

I'll be posting a poll here soon for July's character theme so please look out for it.

~Lily

Loviatar's Blessing (May mini print)

Abdirak and Astarion, as promised. :3

(maybe a little spicier than originally promised)
I admit, the idea of rose brambles being used to tie Astarion up took hold of me, forgive me lol.

This piece is going to be this month's mini print to go with the He Who Was print!
I've changed the crop a bit for the print to avoid weird composition issues, added some more head room above Abdirak just in case, but I'm still playing around with it. The mini prints are a bit more narrow than the canvas I used for this (whoops, my bad) I do need to cut the piece on the sides a bit, after testing it looks better that way just a warning. ;A;

I hope you all are doing well! Next month's theme for June is Love in Deepspace as the poll winner, just FYI!

I hope you all are doing well.

~Lily

WH40k: Rogue Trader Heinrix painting "Innocentia"

A test of patience, I've been diving into the 40K universe again and needed to paint the lovely Heinrix from Rogue Trader again. My second favorite game romance, nearly tied with Garrus from Mass Effect. Please play this game!

I've caught myself trying to rush through paintings a lot lately- I think I get so excited about an idea that I'm just wanting to get it on the canvas as quickly as possible. Sometimes I forget to languish in the details a bit, so I forced myself to really take my time with this one. I've been working on several projects I'm not allowed/able to share for the time being, so I'm sorry for that!

The Abdirak/Astarion piece is underway, and I am hoping to have it posted very soon. Print club prints are all printed!!

Some life nonsense below if you are interested, it's just been a bit of a rough time for me lately so I'm sorry if I haven't been as active as usual!

This month has been kind of a doozy for me for a variety of reasons, but what really took a lot out of me was that my husband and I went under contract on a house after nearly 4 years of searching, and this place seemed to be our dream home. Unfortunately, on my birthday of all days, I made a few calls to the city regarding zoning on the house were were buying, and it turns out that there was something irreparably misrepresented by the seller about the house's zoning, and we had to back out. We have been mourning the fact that the cost of living in our state is too high for us for ages, but this house really gave us hope that we had finally found something and could stay in Colorado. It was just such a huge bummer. It was a lot of work put in to go under contract and schedule all kinds of contractors to come and look at the place just to have it all fall through, and I was a bit depressed to say the least.

Anyways, I'm pretty much over it now and motivated to try and figure out where we will move to in the future, which is scary but I think opens up some exciting doors.

I hope you all are doing well, thank you as always. ♥

Clair Obscur- Gustave portrait

Inspired by Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's beautiful art/music direction, I wanted to do something a little experimental and try a quick portrait with a bunch of brushes I've never used before. I didn't let myself use any brushes that I've used- in particular I tried the mixer brushes in Photoshop for the first time. This was done almost entirely using Deharme's brush sets.

It's always a little clunky and odd trying different brushes, but a fun little exercise. I'm not sure how to feel about mixer brushes- I keep hearing that people use them to do wonderful things but I can't get over the fact that they just feel like the smudge tool...

I have to admit that sometimes trying out new brushes doesn't quite go as planned, sometimes it feels like fingerpainting lol. I'm not displeased with this piece but I did feel limited as a lot of textured brushes are, in my opinion, either wayyyyy too soft or too harsh. Finding the right brush is definitely a Goldilocks situation.

I definitely felt like I was fighting the program the entire time for this piece, a lot of the brushes I used required a lot more pen pressure than I like, and then the mixer brushes seem to be almost devoid of pressure sensitivity. Overall I do think it's a good thing to try something out of your comfort zone every once in a while.

Anyways, I really want to paint Lune too, but I had to start with Definitely Not Robert Pattinson Gustave.

June Print Club Vote

This may be one of the more difficult polls I've put up lol, please vote for the theme of June's prints. Pitting Love in Deepspace up against a couple of my beloved anime/manga series.

If these all get split pretty evenly, I will set up a vote again next month for July, and either pit the remaining two against each other, or the next runner up and a new contender. Listed from least to most edgy for your convenience.

1. Love in Deepspace: Sylus main print, mermaidy Rafayel mini

2. Naruto Shippuden: My childhood crush emo king Sasuke Uchiha main print, Gaara mini

3. Tokyo Ghoul: Kaneki Ken in his mask and best latex getup, Uta the maskmaker goth piercing king for the mini

I'll announce the winner when I have this month's Abdirak+Astarion piece complete!

He Who Was (May Print Club Exclusive)

Hello everyone!!

He's here! He Who Was! Very cool to see a Shadar-kai in BG3- I think they are tragically underrepresented. I'd love to see a Forgotten Realms game tackle the setting of the Shadowfell in the future. Honestly I just really hope we get more Neverwinter Nights and Baldur's Gate, I'm still not over the fact that we're not getting another Larian game in the setting. I love He Who Was's solemn demeanor, and seeing him among the spooky red leafed foliage in Moonrise of course made me think of roses.

I'll be finishing up the Astarion and Abdirak piece as the mini print for this month. I really hope to get to do a Kar'niss portrait here soon, but I'm also REALLY wanting to paint some of the characters from Clair Obscur: Expedition 33...

Hope you all are doing well, thank you so much for the birthday wishes and love and support. You all are wonderful. ;A;

~Lily

30% off storewide shop sale today thru 5/19!

Hi guys! I'm running a sale in my shop to celebrate my birth month. Thought I'd let you guys know! I still have some blankets left which are a part of the sale as well. ♥♥

https://www.feyspeakerprints.com/

Aaaaand a little BG3 cast doodle as an extra gift of gratitude to all of your for your support. (maybe one day will leave the WIP pile lol)
Much love to you all and other words that can't properly convey how thankful I am for all of you...

~Lily

Please choose which sketch I should complete for this month's mini print!

Hey guys, I am conflicted on which of these to do for the mini print (He Who Was will be the featured character in the main print), so it's up to you!! I'll consult the results either tomorrow or the next day and get painting.

Option 1: Astarion and Kar'niss in the rain, surrounded by black roses and dewdrop laden spiderwebs

Option 2: Astarion and Abdirak surrounded by red roses, wrought iron, and thorny brambles

Solstice Vows (commission)

Oh I am so excited to be able to share this piece. As this month's "theme" is moonlit gardens in the Forgotten Realms, I am so happy to have been given permission to share this piece here. This was a special commission I did for the lovely Patrick Grandinetti here on Patreon a little while back, who has let me share this piece here before he gifts it to the intended recipient for her wedding.

This piece is perhaps one of my favorite pieces I have done to date, and I am so happy to be able to share it here. Here is a little look into the process below! I like to render in 3D (I did do a second pass with the color textures matching later on, but they can be distracting the in the drafting phase) and overlay a sketch that guides me through the painting. I paint underneath the sketch, then merge them together and paint on 2 layers, one for the characters one for the background. I do some photo compositing for paint over on elements like the wolf's legs/face and other little things, but my goal is always to keep it as transformative as possible in order to not let it show through to the final.

I hope you all are doing well, I know times can be trying. Please know that I am eternally grateful for your support, and I hope you are able to take some time for yourself to do what you love. ♥

-Lily

May Print Club theme/characters AND request for June

Hi everyone!! Dropping in to announce that the BG3 moonlit garden theme won the poll for this month's print club!

I will be painting some silver-haired faves for May- the prints will feature Astarion, He Who Was, and Kar'niss. I also want to paint Abdirak finally, hopefully I'll have time to squeeze him in but he'll likely be a separate dealio. Not sure exactly who will go where but I want to go full gothic garden for my birthday month. :D

June is going to be either Love in Deepspace themed or a favorite older anime theme. PLEASE let me know in the comments below if you have a beloved anime/manga, I will pick one or two of the more popular ones. Some of my favorites are Vampire Knight, Dorohedoro, and Tokyo Ghoul, though I was a turbo-nerd Naruto fan as well. I got sent to the principal's office for wearing a Sand Village headband to the 6th grade... There's a humiliating fun fact about me if you made it to the end here. ;P

Sanctuary- April Dark Brotherhood mini print

Hey guys! Holy moly April flew by- I ended up with a little more on my plate than intended, so I am very sorry to be getting this piece posted on the first of May...

This is the mini print for the April print club, printing right now! I will be spending the rest of the day packing and should have print club out tomorrow on schedule. However, I know I updated this one WAY too late, so please DM me if you missed the April print club and would like to be added!

I was originally going to just do a stained glass piece but somehow I ended up doing a full environment again this month lol... I think the Night Mother deserved a more fitting spot for her coffin in Skyrim- I blame Astrid for the blasphemy!

Anyone else playing Oblivion Remastered? I haven't started the Dark Brotherhood questline yet but I hope to soon, as soon as I can uh, find a murder victim without bringing an entire city worth of guards down on me.

This month we are returning to BG3 for the print club theme!

Hope you all are doing well,

Lily

Bound by Thrones for author Mel Braxton (some process+behind the scenes)

This is a piece I worked on this month for the author Mel Braxton and her series Bound by Thrones!

As you guys know, my workflow incorporates a lot of 3D and 2D elements, so I decided to go with almost purely 3D thumbnails this time for ease of tweaking.

I did a couple of thumbnails for this piece, and originally we were going to go with the second one pictured:

This was the sketch I came up with from there:

I worked on the painting over the next week but I was really feeling like I could push the intimacy of the piece BETTER if I just started from scratch, which I am SO glad I did.

I talked to Mel (who is an angel btw) about reworking the piece, and she was happy for me to re-do the sketch. This is the sketch I sent in for approval which ultimately became the final piece!

I think that as artists you can get into the sunk cost fallacy REALLY quickly as you can end up too dedicated to something that isn't working. I guarantee a piece almost always turns out better if you just know when to start over. It's not always practical, but I find I save more time in the long run starting over than I do trying to push through a project.

I hope you all are doing well, and you find this stuff interesting!

-Lily

Lucanis- Reckoning (commission)

Sharing a portrait of Lucanis I got to do, commissioned by my lovely patron, Sarah!
I didn't end up playing Veilguard, but I do have to admit that Lucanis is so darn gorgeous.

I had a bit of a veterinary emergency with one of my pets this past weekend. (Seems to be all good now) That plus my husband's birthday being this weekend I've had a bit more than expected on my plate so apologies for not having the print club mini done yet!! I will have it done soon. I swear, my schedule always ends up getting squashed together at the end of each month no matter what I do!!

If you submitted a commission form request when I had it open, I WILL be getting back with you after I've gotten things sorted a bit. I do plan on taking each one. Thank you all!!!

~Lily

Cover illustration + Cardboard cutout for "A Darkness so Sweet" by Emma Hamm

I finally get to share this cover I worked on quite a while back for the author Emma Hamm!! It was really cool to work with her again, as I actually designed some stickers for her like 8 years ago or something outrageous like that. She's wonderful.

I have some process things to show a bit of 'behind the scenes' of working on this!

First, we decided to do a little concept art of the male lead. We went for a buffer/beefier version and a more toned/slender look to see which she liked best. Obviously the beefy lad won hearts, lol!

Afterwards, she graciously let me go wild on figuring out what to do for the cover, as the book is set in an Underdark-esque setting inhabited by very handsome trolls.

Notes for the sketch were mainly focused on the female lead, Emma thought that she looked a little juvenile with the pose+ shorter dress and I agreed. I also thought I could add a little more interest to the far right by tweaking his pose a bit and adding some more mushrooms. And that's how we settled on the final!!

This year, Emma reached out to be again to see if I could paint a piece of her male lead for her to have made into a cardboard cutout for her booth at the author convention ApollyCon. This was ridiculously fun to work on.

I did a few 3D posed mockups using the model I'd tweaked/sculpted (I usually only sculpt faces, I have a pretty well kitted out library for streamlining creation of body types and simple props) earlier in the year. I've started doing this some for commercial work especially as it's a lot easier to make tweaks/multiple options with less headache.

Emma chose option B, and this is what I came up with for her! I wish I could have seen the cutout IRL, but I believe he ended up about 7 feet tall and I've seen the shenanigans people were up to with him at the convention on Instagram posts lmao!

Anyways, I have so many commercial projects that I can't share with you guys, so it's SO nice to be able to share one as I always put so much into them!! ;A; I hope this was interesting!!

I hope you are all doing well. ♥♥

~Lily

Vai'dryn (commission)

A portrait commission of Dren_xo's gorgeous Szarkai Drow, Vai'dryn.

I hadn't ever painted one before, so I'm glad my first was this lovely lad!!
I'm working through the list of commission form submissions, I expect that I will get to each one, so please look out for an email from me if you submitted. <3 <3

May Print Club theme vote!

Hey everyone! As promised, here is a vote for the theme of next month's print club. It will be BG3, and I wanted to do something springy! Hoping to incorporate multiple characters, possibly multiple in one piece.

Option 1: A visit to the Feywild, with little pixies, glittering lights, and magic galore!

Option 2: A moody moonlit garden theme, with night blooming flowers winding around wrought iron.

Oh, and update, the winner of this month's portrait giveaway has been determined to be Estellisa! Congratulations! :D

A cheeky Astarion piece :3

hadn't drawn princess in a while, had to do it.

Cicero- Fool of Hearts (April Print of the Month)

"I took a stroll, and spied a maid, but Matron's duty stayed my blade. So busy now, I miss the thrill, if only I had time to kill."

Behold, Cicero- Fool of hearts! I think I can say that upon a replay of Skyrim, Cicero is my favorite NPC. (I love you too, Serana) Here is my take on him, I really feel he is lacking face paint in vanilla Skyrim. I was going to splatter him with blood but it would go against canon so I stayed my greedy hands. :(
This is the 8"x10" print for this month's print club!!

I do have one WIP snapshot of while I was working on this piece below. Typically face is most important, then I block out details. I did a quick Zbrush sculpt for his face based on a few of my favorite replacer mods for him (sorry default Cicero, I tried to leave a ghost of you in there somewhere, but the male NPC's faces are potatoes at best in Skyrim) I usually use some very simple assets on the model for a base (his hat was a black beanie at first, lol) but I don't like to linger too long in the 3D phase. Here is a look at how I block out clothing before I get down to details. This piece was done almost exclusively with one brush, my favorite slightly textured soft round. Only a few touches on the background and clothing with some concept art texture brushes.

Oh, and as you can see I had the piece tilted quite significantly at the start. I realized that I was having to keep the canvas perpetually rotated to wok on it, and when I put it right I kept tilting my head to the side automatically. I wanted kind of a warped/unpleasant angle but one must sacrifice such things for comfort of viewing.

Anyways, I hope you all are doing well!! I'm not sure yet what I'm going to go with for the mini print, I'm considering doing a faux stained glass similar to the one in the Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary:

Or I might paint the Night Mother's coffin with the stained glass behind it

We shall see!!! Let me know what you guys think. Are we excited for the Oblivion remaster or what? Love you all, and I hope from the bottom of my heart that you are able to do what makes you happy. Thank you so much for your support. ♥

~Lily

1 portrait commission slot open! **EDIT CLOSED

**Editing to say I've received quite a few responses so I decided to close up! Thank you all!!!

Hey guys, looking to fill a commission slot this morning to test out my looser style! Apologies for the short notice, but I want to see how feasible it would be to offer these and get a gauge on how long they would take me.

I will leave this form open for a little while, if I get several responses I may close it early as I don't want people's hopes up if I get a few more than I can manage. I just never know how this will go!

https://forms.gle/m1QkNY4QDGDvN1qz9

Below is the style I'm offering! It would be $300-350 USD depending on complexity, and I would be happy to throw in an 8"x10" signed archival print of the commission for the cost of shipping if you are interested!

Jaheira doodle

dropping in for a little Jaheiraposting

I've had this idea for Jaheira wearing a stoat as a living scarf for ages, and finally got around to it. :3

Hope you are having a good week so far!!

Nerevar Moon-and-Star

Hellloooo everyone!

I've been working my way through a Morrowind playthrough and immersing myself in its lovely lore, and I've found myself quite captivated by the history of poor sweet Nerevar. :(

I had a few private projects I needed to finish up these past few weeks, so apologies for the silence! Our Elder Scrolls month is officially beginning! (Praying for that Oblivion remake rumor to be true!! I'd love to get to play it this month. ;A;)

I'm playing through the Dark Brotherhood questline in Skyrim again to refresh myself, I am SO excited to paint Cicero and I hope you guys like what I have in store for him. I kind of want to paint Shadowmere for the mini print, but we'll see if I'm feeling confident enough lol.

I hope you all are doing well!!

~Lily

March Print Club (And the next few month's themes)

Hi guys! Only a few more days to join/upgrade for this month's print club. <3

♥ April's theme will be The Dark Brotherhood (Skyrim/Elder Scrolls) with a Cicero print.

♥ May's theme will be nature/spring themed BG3 with an Astarion print and Halsin mini!

I hope you all have been doing well!! I am really looking forward to the next couple of months!!!

Thank you so much for all of your support!!

~Lily

Eilistraee's Grotto (March mini print)

Hello everyone, I hope you are doing well.

I present to you my latest piece; an imagining of a shrine to Eilistraee tucked deep into the Underdark, away from the dangers of Menzoberranzan and Lolth's evil clutches. Sweet music whispers through the cavern, a stark contrast to the howls of terror most Drow have grown accustomed to. A refuge where the moon may be but a legend under the claustrophobia of endless cave systems, but a symbol of hope nonetheless. A sanctuary where her followers may gather under the safety of her watchful eye, so that they may one day make it to the surface to glimpse the sky for themselves.

This piece was quite the undertaking, but I learned a lot working through it. In my preliminary sketches/concept phase I wanted this to be a painting of a little wall niche, lol.

 This piece will be the mini print this month to accompany the larger Vhaeraun piece as the main print. ♥

Thank you all, as always!!

~Lily

Updates for March, and the next few month's print club themes!

Hey guys!! Some updates for you all, apologies for being less active for the month, it's been kind of a rough month overall. Started with mega artblock, have/had some projects, and ended with a serious family emergency that I have been helping deal with. Thank you all for your love and patience. To the updates/news!

-Winners have been announced for this month's print giveaway! Congratulations to Xiren, Emily W, and Maritza! You have been sent messages, I will await your responses!♥♥

-The mini print piece for this month's Drow Gods theme will be complete very soon! It's a little different than my usual fare, I hope you guys like it. Eilistraee is the focus for the piece. March print club will ship Next week!

a little snippet/sneak peek (this is perhaps a ridiculously ambitious piece!!):

-The print club theme for the month of April is SKYRIM (Dark Brotherhood) 

-The print club theme for the month of May will be BG3 Astarion for the main print, Halsin for the mini with a NATURE THEME! I'll have a vote for specifics mid April. ♥

As always, thank you for your support. I really appreciate it.

~Lily

Creating Vhaeraun and slaying artblock

Hi guys! With this post today, I thought it would be fun to do a little write-up in my process for this month's print club print. Since the theme this month is Drow gods, specifically Vhaeraun for the main print (Eilistraee piece is in the WIP stages for the mini) I had to do a little more conceptual work than I normally do.

Particularly for Vhaeraun, official depictions of him are rather sparse. I find this kind of curious as I've always considered him to be kind of a part of a "big 3" with Lolth and Eilistraee.

If you aren't familiar with him, he is the son of Lolth and Corellon Larethian (the high elf Big Cheese god). Many Drow males worship him as one of his main "tenets" is that he wants to have equality between genders amongst the matriarchal Drow society. He lurks in the shadows and his followers work toward the goal of all elves overtaking the surface. Typically Evil leaning overall, and interestingly made himself enemy #1 of the other Drow gods for wildly varying reasons.

When it comes to painting characters that don't really "exist" visually, it takes a lot more work concepting/planning/getting to know the character. Astarion has just about every buttcheek pore documented somewhere on the internet, so the process of creating a painting of him is a lot simpler for me. Vhaeraun, on the other hand, was jumping into nearly uncharted waters.

I recorded little bits and pieces of my exploration process to show you guys a little how I work, especially working through artblock. I find that messing around with a lot of different mediums can help spark some ideas.

Originally, I was going for a more playful air. You can see that in my early exploration. I was going for a bit more of a "Loki" vibe. However, Vhaeraun really is quite a serious character, and I think this original path I was taking was a bit off. His entire essence revolves around uniting the elven races through underhanded means. This guy is BFFs with Shar- I will go into why I took such a turn later.

First of all, I wanted to try some doodling, more stylized kind of stuff to get an idea of how I wanted Vhaeraun's face and mask to look. I worked on this piece here, built a really rough 3D mockup for it then sketched/lined over it in Realistic Paint Studio. I like the program for sketching (highly recommend it) though in my opinion it's not robust enough for any serious pieces. The fun added effect is that it has built-in recording so that's nice.

DOODLE VIDEO LINK

I ported these lines over into Rebelle 7 because I wanted to try out their airbrush and pigment mixing features. Once again a fun program to play around in but I really don't see a lot of use in it (for me) for a full painting process. It's great for adding finishing texture, or creating unique textures to use elsewhere. This was definitely a "let's just goof around and see what happens" stage.

I did some thumbnails in photoshop and then went over to Rebelle.

As you can see, I was really going wild with colors on this. I know a lot of my pieces are pretty colorful, but for myself I tend to work really saturated and then regret it after the piece is complete. For this project for the month I'm REALLY trying to let subtle color speak and worry more about my values, so in the final piece/s you can see I went in a wildly different direction color-wise.

I think that I prefer to paint art that is very saturated, but I prefer to look at art that is more muted/earthy. I'm trying to meet myself in the middle and tone it down a bit.

At this point, I realized I wanted to take this in a totally different direction. My favorite Dungeons and Dragons depictions are from BG1&2, Neverwinter Nights, and the older Forgotten Realms novels/sourcebooks. There is a lot more grit to the settings when it comes to the art direction, not to mention more muted tones. I also wanted to borrow from the depiction of Shar in BG3, since she is such a good representation of this "faction" of deities she and Vhaeraun both come from.

I looked through some sourcebooks and decided what I wanted to do for the final pieces. Then, it was time to get sculpting. I kept my sort of Loki-ish trickster look in mind for Vhaeraun, and thought I'd let the colors push my vision a bit more. I used the above piece as a guide/"concept art" for my sculpt. In this video you will see my process sculpting his face, painting texture, then sculpting his mask from a cutout of his face.

The cool thing about sculpting character's unique faces is that I can paint them repeatedly with excellent continuity. Every character I paint I have a model of that I use in this way. (I do have some more "generic" ones that I can tweak in smaller ways for characters I know I won't be painting more than once.)

As far as the mask, I wanted to keep it as close to the original artwork (in the DnD sourcebook) of it as possible- it's got this almost beak-like nose and the kind of Batman-esque shape to it. I really wanted to make it look like it could belong amongst the same world that BG3's Shar inhabits, and less "goofy" than the original.

SCULPTING VID LINK

What is really interesting about prepping 3D to be completely painted over, is that there are a lot of things I do that a regular 3D character artist would probably shudder at, lol. Basically "good enough" is what I chant over and over. The renders I create are hideous most of the time. They are essentially the sketch I completely paint over. Daz Studio is great for posing and doing rough renders- I don't think it has a lot of merit in the professional 3D space, but it does suit me just fine for how I use it. I don't really want the 3D underneath visible at all, so I spend a lot of time tweaking the colors and painting over.

Here is a side-by-side of the mask piece, the render on the left, the final painting on the right.

And here is a side-by-side of the portrait as well. I slapped a generic hair on his model so I could get the colors in the lighting right. Sometimes I leave the hair out completely but when it comes to weirder lighting it can help to have the color reference underneath. I also put a simple turtleneck on him to use as a base to paint over for the outfit. A lot of the 3D process for me is getting the colors in the right general location so I can do less guesswork as I paint.

Trying to step-by-step record this process slowed me down to an absolute SNAIL'S pace, so I don't suspect I will do this often, but I wanted to show a peek into how I actually put a painting together. I guess I wanted to show my process to illustrate that there are so many ways to project your ideas into art that don't involve using morally dubious generative processes.

I personally struggle horribly with sketching, and I always have. 3D has really changed my life with the ability to see every moving piece before me and iterate as many "sketches" as I want before I commit. I started learning the basics of 3D several years ago. I've mentioned before that I have a lot of scrapped pieces in my painting graveyard. The devastation of working on hand painting something for hours to realize it isn't working just took its toll on me SO hard. The usage of 3D makes it so much easier to be like "this isn't working" and scrap it with little heartache, or fix it without it being a huge chore.

Overall, I hope this kind of "blog post" is at least a little interesting! Eilistraee piece incoming for the mini print (hopefully) soon!

Reminder that next month's print club is going to be Skyrim/Elder Scrolls themed, friends! 

I hope you all are doing well, and thank you so much as always for your support.

~Lily

The Masked Lord (March Exclusive Print)

A portrait of the devious Vhaeraun in all his glory! I absolutely love the Drow and all of their lore, and the Dark Seldarine pantheon are just marvelous. The contrast between his evil self and his good twin Eilistraee is so tantalizing to me, lol. Both of my main Forgotten Realms OCs, my BG3 character and my Neverwinter Nights character are both "canon" cousins who worship Vhaeraun.

There is one bit of his lore, maybe a rumor, that Lolth scarred his face and is why he wears the mask. I've kind of put my own twist on it where I've imagined they are a bit more like blackened burns perhaps from her spitting spider venom in his eyes after his disrespect of her. And his eyes weep blackened ichor , seeping like tears out of the eyeholes of his mask. This is all my own headcanon, of course, in attempt to Gothify everything I can.

I thought perhaps like how Lolth creates the Driders as a punishment for being disrespectful males, Lolth would similarly permanently disfigure her son in some way.

I know that his hair changes color based on his emotions, and I think I'd like to attempt that in further paintings (heck yes) but the red is so traditional for him I didn't want to do anything too crazy for what I'd like to consider a "default" portrait/depiction of him in my own style.

I am working on an Eilistraee piece for the mini print to go with this one, I hope I can pull it off as I really love her as well.

Do you have a favorite DnD deity? I'll admit I have loved Mystra forEVER but I really didn't like how they did her in BG3 lol.

Symbol of the Masked Lord

Vhaeraun, the god of thieves and the advancement of Drow... A controversial god and one of my absolute favorites in the DnD Forgotten Realms. Tragically underrepresented.

A little preview piece in which I explored his mask/symbol in detail. I will be posting a huge process blog at the end of the week to show just how many hoops I had to jump through in order to feel like I've adequately depicted this duplicitous son of Lolth.

A portrait I've painted of him will be coming tomorrow, which will be the print of the month. This piece here is NOT a part of the print club just to clarify!

March Print Giveaway (and April + May print club theme announcements)

Hello everyone!! I've decided to do a print giveaway again this month since I have ended up with a little less time than usual. Sad Elf Support Group (*$7 Tier) members and up are able to enter!

There will be 3 winners, each get to choose 2 11x14 prints from my shop. People from all countries as welcome to enter, but please know that there may be customs/duties if you are located outside of the US.

LINK

Winners will be chosen on the 25th!

NOTICE: April print club theme will be SKYRIM, I'm thinking Dark Brotherhood. (The sexy Cicero no one knew to ask for? Who knows.) May will be BG3 themed, I will have a vote mid April for that one! ♥