More Art Stuff
Another week and another blog! Yep, this one is also centered around art. Is anyone really surprised? Let’s not waste time with a preamble and just hop straight in!
The Midnight Espurr
I’m really working on improving my art however I can, and the reason why I’ve started turning out so many pieces is because I finally learned how to not go massive! Doing smaller pieces lets me experiment with new ideas at a much faster pace, which in turn means that I’m learning this process WAY faster than I was before. The difference between where I am now and a few months ago is night and day compared to back in February where you could hardly tell a difference between where I began and where I was at the time. I think my most recent piece illustrates this perfectly, so behold, the Midnight Espurr!
This piece was just one of those weird moment of inspiration things that led to a lot of new technique experimentation. Espurr is one of those pokemon that I’m fond of, but I can’t ignore the fact that it looks like it has seen some SERIOUS SHIT. Look at those eyes! What has it seen? What hurt its soul? WHAT’S COMING TO KILL US?
Anywho, a city landscape fit espurr well because it feels like a city pokemon to me, and an espurr at night is just too perfect to ignore! Framing it with the moon only enhancing the thousand-yard stare it has, and adding in clouds and a flock of murkrow only enhances the image as a whole! This is where some of the new techniques come into play!
The first technique I’m still evolving is my line art. I’m really liking the idea of making all of the lines a darker shade of the primary color they frame, and it seems to be working well! All of my pieces using this feel a lot more vibrant and advanced, at least to my eye, so I’m going to keep going with this! Another thing is that I’m not using lines for structures and environment. There are still some cases where it’s going to be warranted, but this is my first step towards starting the process of moving away from lines as much as I can. Will they still be there for the environment? Sometimes for the near future, but there will probably be a day where I move away from them completely.
Something that missed the mark in this piece are the distant windows. The near windows look great and the blur I tried on them was very nice, but the far ones used a method I’ve seen in art videos which involves using a texture tool to cut out pieces randomly to make them look more dynamic. This… didn’t work for me. I believe this is because my windows were WAY too close, so I should have stuck with the harder edges of the close ones. Lesson learned!
What did work well was the moon! I took a circle, cut out a piece, but the piece that really sold it was the texturing! Using darker splotches really helped accentuate the differences we see in our own moon, and a lighter, thorny texture on top sold the crevices and ravines! Putting a glow around it was the final touch, and having that glow permeate the clouds and the rest of the painting really helped make it vibrant!
Overall, this piece took me probably around 4-5 hours to complete, which is insanely fast for me. It proves that I am getting more efficient, and it makes me want to go back to previous pieces to see what I can do different with my new knowledge!
Azumarill’s coffee
This was the first paint I’ve done on stream in a long, long time. For this piece, my goal was speed. I took a sketch I had already made, and then traced over it before filling it in. Then I did a couple of new techniques for the background, which involved a new brush for quick grass, some texturing to make a fuzzy background, and that was it! A little bit of shading and lighting, and it was done in only an hour! Not bad!
Future Pieces
New pieces are being worked on already. There is a Charizard that was requested on stream that will fall in the same vein as the Azumarill, and a litwick is being worked on that will be similarity to the Espurr in terms of environment.
But Fennec! Isn’t this a Sapphire Verdict website? When is that coming back?!
To quote my favorite gif: “Thoon”
The Sapphire Verdict was doing nothing on social media, for obvious reasons, and I can’t do much without a follower count. That being said, I do have ideas for some new pieces that I think will be quite stunning. It’s not something I want to work on soon, but once we get a little bit more social media presence so my art can actually do decent numbers, we’ll be looking at pieces that should be far better than what I was creating before! I hope…
The Sapphire Verdict
And with that, it’s time to talk about the big stuff! Tearna’s Journal has taken the spotlight for long enough. With the Journal nearing it’s end, it’s time to start talking about the Sapphire Verdict! Future blogposts will begin discussing the big characters from the Sapphire verdict and explore them a little more indepth. There might be sketches or small pieces for them to go along with these posts, and we’re really going to start dissecting the universe as a whole! There’s a lot of story to cover, and we need to start covering it!
To that point, where am I at with the book now? Well, I’m glad you asked! I’ve recently hit the sub 200k milestone! There’s only a little bit more to go, and then things can finally start happening! I hope! Expect some more about this in the coming month, especially once Tearna’s Journal gets under control.
Conclusion
I think that’s enough for one week! Next week, we will be venturing into the windswept plains for the penultimate chapter in Tearna’s Journal and it’s climax! We’ll probably have additional art to post as well, and we’ll see if anything else sneaks it’s way in. For now, that’s all I have, so, with that being said… CHEERS!
The Flying Fennec