warywind

[warywind]

Comm: Leonard

Here's a recent commission I had the delight of making, a pet portrait from photos of a very loved but now deceased ackie monitor named Leonard. I have done lots of cat and dog portraits, but it is not very often I get to do a different animal and it was a pleasure to go into detail on scale patterns instead of fur.

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Dergtober 3 Runes Finished

Finishing Day 3: Runes returns to my default more painterly style. Aries is very much a dragon that finds joy in the simple magic-ness of magic. Drawing runes and weaving them into spells has an awe that never gets old for him, never mind whether the runes are currently being used for anything.

And I've got another video, this time of more reasonable length. I had a more solid sketch from dergtober this time, plus I let myself go off camera while trying to resolve problem spots or rendering some final details.

[warywind]

Dergtober Day 1/26 Finished

Six months later and I'm finally starting to have finished versions of dergtober art to share. First up is Rhea from days 1: Flight and 26: Queen. This one is part of me continuing to test out a more stylized, hard-edged cell-shading style, which isn't really my default or entirely comfortable to draw in, but I would like to know how to.

And there's more! One of the reasons it has been so long since October is because I was trying to record the whole process post-dergtober and edit it into a timelapse video. I did a lot of fumbling around with the lineart on this one (an unhappy consequence of not fully planning the sketch), so it got quite long even at a high speed. I debated cutting out the 'less exciting' parts of me redrawing the same parts over and over again until something sticks, but I have learned a lot from watching other artists think through problems in process videos, so I decided that a video that cut nothing would be the kind I would want to watch.

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This year I joined dergtober's end of the year Secret Higgins exchange! I got Thewarywatcher13 #39058, whose dragons Pruino and Mani stood out to me as having a mysterious, but warm relationship. It felt just in theme with the cold climate I've had here in the American midwest. So I went for a picture day type illustration with them close to one another, sneaking a hug on morning stroll.

In my preparatory sketches I drew some gijinka busts I liked so I decided to throw some color on them, too.

Happy holidays everyone!!

[warywind]

Flight Rising Secret Higgins 2024

Secret Higgins time!

I had a great time doing my first fullbody Everlux of MikaDostoy's lovely Novikov. I really wanted to try a twisting-around pose from behind, and while the perspective for the left wing was a challenge to figure out, I think it worked out fairly well. This gift also came with a bonus rat portrait of the late Fedya.

[warywind]

Flight Rising Secret Santa 2024

It is past time I started putting up this year's Secret Santa (and now secret Higgins!) art.

My primary gift this year was for ThatFrogDude of Rusty Pickle, their player character in a browser-based game called Fallen London. I was not previously familiar with the game, but I was more than happy to do some, err, research, over the past month by playing it so I could make some Neath-themed scene for Rusty.

Additional gifts are Faceless for my previous year's Santa, thatwhatthing, and some sketches of Round Cat for Bananyan because I simply adore Round Cat. I had hoped to make a full painting of one, but ran out of time to do so, so here are the preliminary sketches while I was feeling out which photo to do.

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Dergtober 29-31

Day 29: Warrior, featuring Aella and Kuntur sparring, two of the dragons I used in Warrior's Way rp duels that happened for a few years, where one is conveniently a plague dragon. I wanted multiple panels choreographing different part of the fight, but most of my energy went into the first one in the upper left so I'm much happier with how that one's posed. I still like the idea of Aella teaching Kuntur how to use bladed weapons, though (it didn't occur to his harpy parents that dragons can learn swordsmanship), so I might return to those panels too after October.

Day 30: Mimic, featuring a young Darter discovering the creature that will become her namesake. She's part of the nocturne thief band mentioned days 4 and 20 (the members that haven't come up yet are Westra, Mapache, Flint, and Nicandra). They collectively hatched without any parents to be found, so they sort of raised themselves together and chose their own names based on plants, animals, etc. that they liked and wanted to emulate. Baby Darter decided she wanted to mimic an unassuming but dangerous little frog that matched her coloring.

Day 31: Rising, featuring Aural rising in life from a socially outcast hatchling to a beloved and self-confident leader. Flight is very important to him, so I wanted him to become gradually more upright with each stage. He's also followed by a little feather, the sort he would have blow around as a hatchling with somewhat above average magic, and a variation of which eventually became the clan symbol. Fellow dragons are ignoring and moving away from him in the first stage, and then are running with him and looking to him in the final one. The more prominent mirrors in the last stage are probably going to be Akantha and Minstrel? I want them to be clanmates that were around before he had a nest of his own since he was pretty settled in life before then.

And that's a wrap! I have nearly 30 drawings to finish at my leisure, but while I'll probably start chipping away at them soon, I probably won't go through them very quickly because I have so much other art to be doing, and some of my other projects came to a halt during dergtober. They will start appearing on here as I finish them.

[warywind]

Dergtober 25-28

Day 26: Queen, featuring a return of my very first drawing with clan leader Rhea. I liked the idea of that drawing but not how it was going, so I spent some time adjusting the angles and proportions and I like it much better now. Still not still on the tail position, but I can keep fiddling with that.

Day 27: Rot, featuring Nikodeme, one of my plague-iest dragons and about as close as they get to a monster. He's seen the worst the Wastelands have to offer and it molded him into a scared and distrustful creature. I had high ambitions for this one, and aside from the head and smaller fans I just couldn't get the posing to work within a reasonable amount of time. At this point I'd generally just drop the opacity on everything and redraw it from scratch, moving the old head back on if it still fits in.

Day 29: Game, featuring Serin, a master of sinister games and another semi-monstrous dragon. Serin is a powerful illusionist who traps dragons and other beings in maze-like mindscapes. His games don’t generally have casualties, but he can sure make someone think they’ve taken a life-threatening injury. He’s careful that his victims don’t see his real face, making it difficult to even figure out that a single dragon is behind the games. The Grotto would certainly hunt him down if he got on their radar, and with the combined skills of their more powerful mages they’d stand a decent chance of succeeding. What they’d do with him probably depends on why he’s doing this (something I haven’t decided myself), and I could see them managing an uneasy truce if circumstances are such that he ends up helping them with one of their more serious enemies. I had high ambitions for this one too, with very dim lighting and an illusory maze coming toward to viewer, but the hour I had for this wasn't quite enough to rough everything in.

[warywind]

Dergtober 19-24

I've fallen behind, oops.

Day 19, Lair, is the first day I missed the day of, and I guess I’m making up for it with something complicated. Instead of attempting a seriously complex landscape that would be the Grotto, I decided to make a (still very rough) comic strip of how the Grotto is hard to find thanks to an enchantment on it. Here Aella, Cadmus, and company are bringing a new friend home, to poor Caesura’s increasing confusion as the enchantment takes effect. They should be alright so long as they stick close to members that are sending good vibes their way, but if they tried this on their own they’d get pretty hopelessly lost.

The dialogue: 1. CAESURA - Are you sure this is the right way? I’m getting this strange feeling I should turn back. 2. AELLA - Oh, we’re fine. We’re getting pretty close now. 3. CAESURA - But I don’t… see anything. 4. AELLA - Don’t you know? The plateaus are full of rises and valleys and corners hidden away. It’s like poetry. 5. AELLA - You need to look carefully to see the full beauty of it. 6. AELLA - Just stick close to us and don’t try this on your own, yeah? That could go badly. 7. CAESURA - ???

Day 20: Weaver, featuring Aletheia because she's the only dragon so far with the weaver gene (I literally started brewing it on the 20th), and because it suits her thematically for spell-weaving and general shady, spidery vibes. She's involved in the black market and serves as a fence for the band of thieves the dragon featured in day 4, pirate, is in. She has being mysterious down to an art and loves to play minor tricks, but she's actually pretty nice in-person and doesn't involve herself in any violent crimes.

Day 21: Gloom, welp, I was teetering dangerously close to burnout (hence missing a day), and the sister in this drawing happens to be the only dragon in my lair with gloom the color, so I took the extra lazy route and added a few more lines to Day 14 along with a rough pass at her wing color. I split drawing 19 between the 20th and 21st, so there was still some new drawing going on, haha.

For Day 22: Craft, I gathered a bunch of crafdragons whose trades wouldn’t require them to stay by a forge or other equipment for an impromptu craft circle. We’ve got Gauge and his familiar Archlute (an imperial luthier who makes lutes and similar instruments for large breeds), Wisp (a tundra that makes lanterns and who I imagine started the whole idea since she isn't in the Grotto very often), Jasper (a pearlcatcher that works several trades, but primarily handmade beads), Pruino and his familiar (a tundra librarian, currently working on transcribing a book into a larger size, he’s shy enough that it would take someone like Wisp to get him to come out and hang), Deciduous and his familiar (a pearlcatcher of several trades, including woodworking and painting), and finally Deci’s mate Shiitake and her familiar Resin (a mirror that carves bones). There are enough craftsdragons around that there probably are little crafts circles all the time, but while these dragons are individually friendly, I don’t think they’re close enough to make one unless someone else (Wisp!) decides to drag them together.

Day 23: Mask, featuring Minstrel, who has the most iconic mask of my dragons. She made her feathered performer’s mask herself and hardly ever takes it off. This day officially marked my account turning 11 years old, which made me want to do something special, but at the same time I had little time and had decided this one had to be Minstrel since the start of the challenge. I‘m not fully happy with how the mask looks-- it's too short and rounded, the swirls look a little too much like an angry face, and the feathers should definitely be bigger, but there’s always time to adjust it after the challenge.

Day 24: Alchemist, featuring Amalbert teaching younger alchemist Altair a few tricks. Amalbert doesn’t have as much lore as he should for how long he’s been around; he’s what popped out of the egg I brewed when bogsneaks first released, and aside clearly being an alchemist and getting a name that teases him over how hard I found his colors to work with, he’s close to a blank slate. Very satisfying to draw, though! I haven't drawn a bogsneak in ages and I enjoy how different their shapes are from most FR dragons. Altair dabbles in a number of arcane arts, so he’s passable as an alchemist but hasn’t had the focused study that a full-time brewer would.

Day 25: Treasure brings the return of Archai and Jewel because the sliver of them in day 16 isn't enough love for them, and Archai is probably the dragon that would be most excited about finding traditional treasure. Some poor dragon with a traditional style hoard is going to wake up tomorrow and discover that some of his shiniest trinkets have disappeared without a trace. And of course Archai's hugging Jewel because she will always be his most precious treasure. I don't think I quite nailed the faces, but this drawing is a keeper and I look forward to cleaning it up after the challenge.

[warywind]

Dergtober 14-18

Day 14: Scry, featuring the twins. They’re one of two sets of siblings referred to as the twins, but dragons know which ones are being referred to by whether its said with a smile or a slight pause. Ignore the fact that I haven’t managed to name them yet >_<. These two are fairly traditional water dragons in that they’re practicing seers/oracles. They’re near inseparable and have a habit of acting in sync with each other, leading to dragons often treating them similar to the aberrations that have since emerged, like a single entity in plural. The sister is also nearly twice the size of the brother, and I love that for them. They’re at opposite extremes of mirror sizes!

Day 15: Nest gets a super quick thumb that I started at maybe 11 at night. I like the general composition idea, but the anatomy is going to need some work. XD Chroma and Junco are one of my oldest couples and had the first nest that was intentionally laid as opposed to adopting abandoned kids. I am getting into some really old lore here, their bios could use some refurbishing. In any case, their three kids are still around and are named Damasen, Euryale, and Euphrosyne.

Day 16: Bounty, features Kilauea, who I felt bad about passing over for Mani’s found family since their lore is intertwined, and Archai with his familiar Jewel. Kilauea is a sword for hire and the closest thing to a bounty hunter that could still be accepted to the Grotto. Archai, meanwhile, is a mute thief that is mostly harmless, not to mention a skilled escape artist. I imagine it makes Kilauea’s day a lot harder whenever the theft he’s investigating turns out to be this little magpie. Still, Archai is generally pretty willing to turn over shinies he’s stolen because he doesn’t value them beyond looking pretty, so Kilauea should be able to resolve things peacefully. Halfway through and I’m finally getting a little more serious about slipping short comic strips in! I didn’t really have time to figure out the somewhat ambitious perspective I had in mind, but hopefully the general idea still reads. In case my handwriting is unreadable, Kilauea’s dialogue in the last panel is: “Alright, Archai. Come on out, and... I'll take you and Jewel to the Grotto, or something. / Although, this will be a lot easier if you hand over anything shiny you've taken lately.”

Day 17: Lost, featuring a Wrathe that is lost in life. He’s a grumpy dragon that more or less gave up on everything after the combined blows of his charge dying and the Tidelord disappearing. He just wanders around looking for clues about his deity, or failing that, a new purpose in life. He's due for a lore update after the fathoms' return and a particular fathom deciding to glue himself to him. I like the idea of making and alt version with Phi sitting beside him.

Day 18: Island; featuring Chroma and her familiar in a very old bit of lore that probably needs reworking. She got stuck on an ice floe during her stubborn teenage years with a hoarfrost mauler (exactly how doesn't make sense to me anymore, as an ice guardian shouldn't have issues with frigid water even if her wings were somehow out of commission). The two fought fiercely at first and dealt each other substantial injuries, but eventually bonded as they were stuck trying to survive on their little island. The bear ended up becoming both familiar and charge, giving her something to look out for beyond herself.

[warywind]

Dergtober 9-13

Lots of loose black and white thumbnails coming up.

Day 9: Exalt; featuring a scared and slightly divine tundra cub. I was inspired by what @/Petall did for this one to work with what exalt means outside of flight rising instead of the mechanic. There’s an old draft of Mani’s background in his bio, but in short, he has the misfortune of being involved in one of the darker threads of lore in my clan. His egg was the first to survive a series of experiments a secretive group was doing on ancient ice artifacts that irradiate dangerous levels of pure ice magic. This involved his egg being exposed to way more elemental magic than an egg ever should, resulting in a dragon that has way more magic than a dragon really should. Mani was revered by the group and certainly had been raised into power, but it was hardly a childhood he wanted. (Things do work out okay for him eventually! But he has to do his own rescuing for a while.)

Day 10: Crossroads; I had two ideas for this one, one cheery to make up for sad tundra baby and one less so. I decided to sketch both, and you can tell which one I got more invested in. XD Version 1 is one of my clan's trading caravans reaching a literal crossroads and starting to debate on which way to go, featuring Cadmus, Merlin, Euryale, Aella, and Sandía. Version 2 is for a metaphorical crossroads where a certain dragon has to decide whether to change his path in life. Alden sits in a sort of an awkward, unresolved space in my lore-- waay back when Sandía was in a roleplay onsite I got attached to a semi-villain NPC I was using, then somehow hatched a dragon that was a close match of the colors I pictured for said NPC, then had the roleplay fall out soon after. So, I was still invested in whatever would have happened between Alden and Sandía but didn’t want anything from the roleplay to be canon to avoid stepping on material that deeply involved someone else’s lore. I know their story involves Alden working for kidnappers and at some point making the difficult decision to change sides and free her, but have never gotten around to ironing out the details.

Day 11: Pile; featuring a quick doodle of a sleep pile of the little found family Mani eventually gets. On the right we've got Mani cuddling his partner Pruino, who's in turn getting piled on by Pruino's apprentice Marco, and above them an adolescent Siku, who is basically a child Mani just showed up with one day. Mani probably told Pruino what was up with Siku immediately (it's related to the group that experimented on him, now his sworn enemy), but it takes him a long time to warm up to Marco and let him into their circle of secrets. It occurred to me later that I totally excluded Kilauea, who should count as part of Mani's circle, but then again Kilauea is on tenser terms with most of them and wouldn't have been very comfortable in the sleep pile.

Day 12: Scroll;featuring Dauen. He doesn't really have lore so much as vibes, but I'm sure he'll end up with a story one day. I decided there should be a updraft early on and just sort of went with it.

Day 13: Serthis; featuring an as of yet unnamed Serthis and Cadogan's egg. This lone serthis has stumbled upon egg, size:large and they are debating what to do about it. The answer is adopt child, size:large, but they haven't gotten there in their pondering yet. Just now they're probably trying to decide how big the parents must have been. The drawing is still at sketch-phase, but I ended up playing with colors for a while so it'll be that much harder to clean up the sketch if I decide to finish this after dergtober.

[warywind]

Dergtober 4-8

Time to catch up on derbtober art! I meant to post these more regularly, oops.

Day 4: Pirate; featuring, err, she somehow doesn't have a name yet after 6 years. Current ideas are maybe Seaberry? Nebelung? We'll see. Anyway, she's one of the main combatants of a band of nocturne thieves. While most of the members prefer to stick to indirect combat and poisons should something go wrong with a mark, she's more than happy to start drawing her blades.

Day 5: Map; featuring Jasper. No, I did not draw all this that day, lol. I decided today's prompt was a good opportunity to make myself finish this drawing from March where I'd already drawn and colored everything except the map accent and a few other wing details. I just did not want to deal with that accent haha. The drawing originally was a style test to see how using exclusively hard-edged cell shading would look. It works alright for dramatically-lit irishim, but I don't think it's a style I would want to use for any length of time.

Day 6: Deity; featuring a real quick sketch of what it might look like for the Windsinger to pass by; keeping things loose and rough because if I went much further I'd have to start thinking composition thoughts and I didn't sign up for designing a whole landscape. XD The dragon far below is my random progenitor Aural. He's devoted to his deity and credits the Windsinger for having a better plan for him when childhood blindness made the plans his parents would have had impossible. His faith is a quiet one though, mostly shown through his dedication to individual freedom and making sure his clan is a place where everyone can thrive.

Day 7: Ancient; featuring, uhhh, also doesn't have a name. I guess I never decided how I want to handle Aberration name schemes. I hunted down which of my Ancients is the oldest by hatchdate. By lore, this pair is somewhat unusual among Aberrations in that their brains are linked, so its pretty loud in their heads as they are constantly aware of each other's thoughts. In theory this would allow them to coordinate pretty well, and they can when they are properly paying attention, but just as often they end up getting in each other's way. Such as here, where a noise behind them catches their attention and they end up bonking heads because they tried to move into the same space.

Day 7: Portal; featuring an extra quick sketch of Oneiri and a confused message recipient. Aural's son is close to flightless due to his tiny wing size, but makes up for it with dreameater abilities he gained from bonding with an ancient Baku. Jumping into the ethereal plane is a very effective way to travel! Oneiri's plane jumping is something I've wanted to draw for a while and I hope to make a more serious attempt at it sometime. The clan generally tries not to advertise his abilities because drawing attention is usually more hassle than it's worth, but pranking new clanmates that don't know is still fair game and I couldn't resist adding a startled onlooker in the corner. XD

[warywind]

Dergtober Days 1-3

I decided a while ago that I wouldn't be doing Inktober this year because I have two creative projects going already and there is no way I'd have the time or stamina, but evidently I have missed drawing FR dragons enough that an FR themed inktober is too tempting to ignore. I've been doing time-limited sketches without the pressure to finish anything day-of.

Day One: Flight; featuring my custom progenitor Rhea. I had less than an hour set aside for this, which was�� definitely not enough time to attempt a fullbody.

Day 2: Merchant; featuring Rhoawen, Merlin, Gauge, Nephrite, and Kyanite. It's been a staple in my lore since 2013 that the clan sends out traveling caravans to trade various goods their members make, with exact dragons managing the caravans constantly changing. This is the first time I've tried drawing what that looks like, and I'm not quite feeling this design for their set up... hmmm.

Day Three: Runes, featuring Aries. Somehow I don't have a single dragon with the runes gene (something I should fix!), so instead I've got my dear enthusiast for arcane runes and spellcraft. This the first sketch I genuinely want to clean up some more and paint once I have more time for fun art.

[warywind]

Artfight 2024 cont.

The second half of Artfight, one high effort attack and three revenges. I received as many attacks this year as the previous three years combined, which was such a delight to see. I would think I was about done for this year, only to see another attack notification pop up and throw myself into a quick revenge before the month ended. I'm grateful for every attack I get, as I realize my account is still pretty close to unknown on Artfight.

I continued using the new dual brush I made and I'm definitely liking to feel of it over the brushes I combined to make it. I love using dip pens for precise lines when working traditionally, so I've been assuming that something that behaves like one would be good for inking comics and general lineart use, but I'm realizing that something that is a touch more textured and pencil-like matches the what I want better. With the inker I used, it was challenging to conceal multiple strokes being used to make a curved line. It was so sharp that every mark kinda screamed its existence. With this one, it's easy to keep lines smooth and unobtrusive. I don't know that I'll switch over for comic pages yet, in part for consistency's sake and in part because I'm still experimenting with settings, but this brush is definitely here to stay.

S.T.A.G. belongs to Annoyed_Dragon, Telstar to RevlisFox, Ember to sm06sm, and Nyx to HalfDragonDraws.

Artwork © myself

[warywind]

Artfight 2024

Here I am catching up on posting the first half of this year's Artfight around, one attack and two revenges.

As usual, I'm using artfight to experiment with stuff I don't usually do-- tinting lineart, heavier use of ambient/reflected light, and with the last two, trying out a new brush I made by combining the brushes I usually use for rough drawing and lineart. I've been trying to find a brush that feels right when doing lineart since switching to primarily using Photoshop. I finally got the idea to try dual brushing two that are fairly close to what I want-- I'm not fully satisfied yet, but I think it's a step in the right direction.

Evuras belongs to LemonyBeast, Sunflower to xxTRASHCATxx, and The Beast Witch to TwilightSandwiches.

Artwork © myself

[warywind]

I finished off some new art of my shapeshifting spirit ocs in anticipation of ArtFight coming up.

Bygul here to satisfy the reoccurring urge to draw cats. A couple species I've drawn him as before, a couple new. I'm not sure why I haven't done a tiger By before, floof and stripes suit him very well.

All of them were sketched from photo reference, then without reference for final lines and color.

I wanted a front-facing Ami and ended up working on it on and off for months because I wasn't fully happy with it. I made myself do most of the color with textured brushes I'm unfamiliar with, which should have felt similar to painting with paint but ended up being disorienting. I guess I'll need more time to figure out what a more painterly style should look like.

Both of these characters belong to me. Please do not copy the character or design, trace the artwork, post the artwork elsewhere, or use the artwork as a reference image for roleplaying.

[warywind]

Comm: Sōrin

Here's a recent headshot commision over on FR!

Sōrin belongs to Kishibe on Flight Rising

Artwork © myself