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POV: Your parents are disappointed after walking in on you practicing forbidden blood magic.

I’m working on revamping a bunch of stuff, so, uh, sit tight I guess?

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Here’s the crew. A drow blood hunter, a winged kobold sorcerer, a tabaxi blood hunter, and a halfling rogue.

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It’s my brother’s new character. A halfling rogue named Jern Werck. Yeah, this is happening. Along with my sister’s cockeyed kobold sorcerer. This campaign is going to be chaos. Good thing we have a lawful neutral drow to hold it together... right?

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Still open! Come check it out!

I’ve created a new Discord server for D&D stuff! With everything going on in the world, I figured it would be good to try to connect with people and maybe get some online games going! Anyone can join. Tell your friends, tell your friend’s friends! Come hang out, talk, and play some D&D

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I’ve created a new Discord server for D&D stuff! With everything going on in the world, I figured it would be good to try to connect with people and maybe get some online games going! Anyone can join. Tell your friends, tell your friend’s friends! Come hang out, talk, and play some D&D

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Here’s my character, Vendryk. He’s a drow, and an undying warlock. Hey, lanterns don’t normally glow blue, right? One of his party members might want to check on that.

This is my first attempt at painting lighting effects like that. I think it turned out pretty well for my first attempt.

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I painted this young white dragon mini last night, and I’m pretty happy with it!

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My drow bladesinger. Bladesinger is life.

If you want me to draw your character, head over to my Ko-fi page! My commissions are currently open.

ko-fi.com/jeffmartindraws

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Here’s a firbolg I’m working on in addition to the tiefling. He’s a nature domain cleric, and everybody calls him Rhubarb. He’s cool with it. He spent most of his life with a small tribe of other firbolgs secluded deep in a forest. He’s kind of oblivious to social things, so he thinks Rhubarb is a cool name, even though the person that originally gave it to him was clearly making fun of him. But hey, he’s not bothered.

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Working out some tiefling designs for my sister. All this pre campaign stuff is like half the fun. The other half is all the arts and crafts. And the last half are the sessions. Yeah, 150% because Dungeons & Dragons goes hard.

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It’s my oc, Valin. Val for short. 

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My Witcher oc, Sola aep Raelle, fighting a katakan.

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Here’s a preview for a little something. Everyone is making their Witcher OCs, so I figured I’d jump on board. But I had to take it one step further since I saw people getting mad about it. Well, two steps further actually.

“Girls can’t be Witchers!” People are screaming in some comments. And to that, I have but one thing to say: shuuuuuut up. It’s fantasy, for one. Two, people are making awesome characters and having fun and connecting. Stop trying to kill the mood. Also, I created my own Witcher school for this OC, and I encourage others to use it if they want too!

So here’s my Witcher lass. Not only is she a Witcher, she’s also an elf AND she’s from a different Witcher school. Hey, why not?

This is Sola aep Raelle from the School of the Sable. She lost her parents before she could really remember to non-human pogroms. She was saved by a couple of Witchers and some surviving elves and dwarves, along with some other children. As a symbol of gratitude, the Witchers were allowed to live in and around Dol Blathanna and the Blue Mountains. To repay the kindness, they would take jobs protecting traveling elves and dwarves or caravans passing through the areas from the creatures and monsters.

Eventually, some other surviving Witchers began to make their way to the valley, so they made their home in a long abandoned Aen Seidhe fortress. The surviving Witchers brought what remained of their respective schools’ knowledge and formed the School of the Sable. Sable School specializes in non-human mutagens and decoctions with the aid of Aen Seidhe magic to create primarily elven and dwarven Witchers to help protect the valley.

Among the first Witchers created by the Sable School were some of the children saved from the pogrom, including Sola.

Sola always loved the forests, and she feels right at home among the seemingly unending forests and fields of Dol Blathanna and the Blue Mountains. She has no fondness for humans after what they did to her, but she’ll help someone in need. She spends most of her days patrolling the forests and helping along weary travelers. Word spreads quickly, even in these lands, so the travelers know to keep an eye out for her red bandanna tied around a branch in order to find her camp. She has quite the reputation throughout the valley. She’s known for being selfless and kind, and sympathetic in battle. She understands the weight of taking a life, monster or otherwise. Because of this, she’ll say a druidic prayer over the slain foe, asking the earth to take her foe to rest peacefully, for they deserve dignity and respect in death.

After the Peace of Cintra, Enid an Gleanna, queen of the valley, condemned Scoia’tael as outlaws. Sola disagrees with this and continues to help Scoia’tael commandos and units find their way home. Officially, Enid an Gleanna does not approve, but Sola aep Raelle continues to be in good standing with the queen of Dol Blathanna despite this very vocal, or even theatrical (some would say) disagreement.

So yeah, that’s my Witcher lass. Feel free to use the Sable School thing if you want to create non-human Witchers and you don’t want to use any of the existing schools! I’ll create a medallion for it too.

EDIT: Here’s a quick idea for the Sable School medallion

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It’s ya boy.

The Witcher is great, go watch it.

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A Decision Was Made

I finally bought one of those fancy gaming keypads.

So, a little backstory on this: I broke my left wrist when I was, geez, 6 I think? The way it healed and the way my body has changed since then has given me some mobility issues and pain in that wrist and hand. This wouldn’t be such a huge deal if I didn’t use that hand for shortcuts and hotkey functions. However, spending the amount of time I spend sitting down drawing, the constant motion starts to strain my wrist and my fingers on that side, so I started looking at solutions.

I saw the Clip Studio Tabmate ($54.00 or $57.68, 4.4/5 rating), but that only works with CSP and doesn’t have as many buttons as I want.

Next up, the Wacom Express Key Remote ($99.00, 3.7/5 rating). It has a couple of extra buttons that the Tabmate doesn’t have, but it doesn’t seem like a good ergonomic solution.

So I started looking at other options, and I ended up at Razer (I figured my mouse and keyboard are Razer products, so I might as well go with another).

Enter the Razer Tartarus V2. This bad boy has 32 programmable keys, including a thumb d-pad, and a nice ergonomic palm rest. Oh, and did I mention it’s cheaper than the Wacom remote? Sure it’s going to be plugged into my computer, so it’s not as portable, but do I really need it to move? Absolutely not.

I spent a good couple of hours programming shortcuts, hotkeys, and every pop-up palette and menu I use. These are my current settings on this profile (by the way, you can set multiple profiles with different settings)

I figured, at the very least, this would help with the strain on my wrist and allow me to work in a more comfortable way. It definitely does that for me, but it also does a couple of other things that I didn’t realize were INCREDIBLY useful.

Remember how I said I programmed my pop-up palettes and menus to it? I went into Clip Studio and added those shortcuts to the 5-8 keys (as well as ctrl+5-8). Do I need the navigator window? Press back on the D-pad. Need the brush size window? Press left on the D-pad. Do I want to access my custom color sets for my characters so I don’t have to guess at the right colors? Ctrl+up on the D-pad, baby.

“Jeff, that’s cool and all, but where are you going with this?” You ask, curiously.

By programming those shortcuts, I’ve completely uncluttered my CSP workspace. The consequence of that is that now I can focus a bit better because my eyes aren’t being constantly barraged by unnecessary information. I only get the information I need, when I need it, with the simple push of a button.

I went from this:

To this:

With only one device that’s takes up very little desk space.

Now here’s the thing I’ve been trying to avoid talking about: money. This bad boy cost me ~$76 after tax. I figured I deserved a Christmas present, so I decided to treat myself. I know $76 is nothing to some people, and nearly impossible for others. I understand that. So here’s some good news, you can do this with pretty much any keypad that has enough functions for YOUR specific preferences. Some people may only need a couple, others, like me, will utilize all 30+ functions and then some with key combinations. So the silver lining to that is that there are other options if you can’t afford this one, or if you just hate Razer products (hey, I’m not judging). I’ll list some below, and I’ll continue adding to the list whenever I find others that I think may be worth it. If you have any suggestions, let me know! With that in mind, I also made sure to link to the Tabmate and the Wacom remote. Even though the functionality was lacking for me, it may be perfect for someone else!

I’m listing these by current price, low to high (at the time of writing this, Dec. 19, 2019)

RedThunder One-Handed Gaming Keyboard - $39.99 $16.99 - Current rating 4.6/5

RGB One Handed Mechanical Gaming Keyboard - $23.90 - Current rating 4.5/5

SADES Portable Mini Gaming Keypad - $23.90 - Current rating 4.3/5

Redragon K585 DITI One-Handed RGB Mechanical Gaming Keyboard - $36.97 - Current rating 4.2/5

Razer Tartarus V2 Gaming Keypad - $79.99 $69.99 - Current rating 3.8/5

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Here’s one from the end of April 2019 when I got my new Wacom tablet and I was trying some new things. Who doesn’t love some Char?

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Here’s a sheet I did for my character, Valin. I like to call him Val for short.