More character sketches!?

Happy Saturday!

So I actually did draw two of my three male characters. I took care to get them as close to how I picture them in Save the Queen as possible. Then, I actually used Paint to place the characters together for the first time!

First, I did Andyrsn, the Junior-Grade Lieutenant whom Ghuli meets. He lives on Viveno Island, popular for  its baobab trees (really cool looking trees that are actually from Africa) & fruit. He's a really nice guy, so whenever I draw him, I make him wave. 

Then, I took on Cyan, Ghuli's surrogate brother and 1st Lt. watchman. His face constantly changes in my head, and I think this is as close as I'll get to how I would like him to look. The tattoo along his arm and neck is from a Trollic Marking ritual after a Trollic watchman suffers his first injury protecting his watch.

When I say Trollic, I speak of a race of giants in my WIP. Cyan is from the shorter breed, hulktrolls. That being said...

...he's 7'5, and he was Ghuli's full-grown height (5'3) probably around 8 years old. I decided to see what they would look like standing beside each other, and I keep looking at it in awe. This is the first time I've had a chance to draw them in dimensions that I could actually manipulate to do this.

Okay, let me stop staring at it. After putting these two together, I decided to stand Andyrsn (5'11-1/2) beside Brodie (5'9). They're my gunslingers and grew up together. I didn't mean for them both to wear plaid, but that's my story speaking to me: it's the local in-style.

So now, I have two characters and one sheet of this work paper left, so we'll see how that pans out.

Friday Freeday: More sketches

So I actually did TWO people yesterday, and I'm surprised. I guess I'm in the mood to draw this season.

This is Princess Ghuli the Crystal Bearer, my MC, standing in front of a weeping willow. She's more ornery than she looks, but she means well. This is what she's wearing (and where she is actually, the Willow Forest on the Island Continent, which is more wintry than its name (like Greenland)) when the story opens, undyed wool and boots to keep her feet warm when she doesn't take them off to swing on the willow switches. Her hands are also wrapped with linen to hide the crystals in her hands.

This is 1st Lt. Brodie (not the second person we see in the story, but the easiest to draw, so...), the Scholar. Ghuli learns she needs to find her through a dream, and they're more connected than she knows initially. She's a hot-head and really smart, which is sometimes a bad combination, but she and Ghuli become close friends. I have to make a choice as to who I will draw next. I tend to have trouble drawing boys, and the last girl is going to be tricky, so it might take another week.

Why I'm Glad Computers Became Accessible to Mere Mortals

Drawing for 2 hours really flares up the carpel tunnel. Or is it tarsal tunnel when it's your knuckles? Or just arthritis? =\

Anyway, I was one of those kids who did nothing by type the moment a computer entered my house in like 1996, so the giant pillowy callus I developed on my ring finger from the weird way I hold my pencil diminished greatly once I was able to save stories onto a computer.

Yesterday, if you follow me on Twitter, you saw that somewhere around 2pm, I decided to sketch (yes, I do that sometimes lol) some of the essential characters in my fantasy WIP Save the Queen, this time the beasts of the Contagion, the metal army hunting my MC. I finished a little before work got out, so here they are. Each machine has a trait modeled after Boccioni's "Unique Forms of Continuity in Space", a piece I fell in love with my Freshman year of college. Also, the loops on each around the arms and back are tubes. They are magic-infused and water-powered machines.

The Helichimera, who I knew as I drew it that I described them as having 4 heads in my story, but I realized I didn't know what a 4th head would do, so I nixed it thanks to brainstorming this sketch. This is also the first time I took on drawing a ram and a lion. I'm almost sure I've drawn snakes before but can't remember.

The first one I set out to draw and the first seen in my story, the Iron Giant with an armless profile to show the back detail. It's cuter than I meant it to be, but in all-black cast iron and at 12 feet high, I imagine it would be scarier in person. I eliminated the description of the faceless shield somewhere between drafts, but the giants have no hands.

And the one that took 2 takes, lol, the Mythril Eagle. It kind of looks more like a hawk, but I don't draw birds. They're 3x bigger than vultures, and the wings pretend to flap. All of the machines run on jet engines. The detail on the talons are also plates so the talons can bend for grabbing people.

If I take on drawing the actual people again (I did years ago), it will be a slow, slow process. Like 1 a month. lol