The Art of April

Time is flying by way too fast! Send help! Also that means another month is through and it's that time again. Here's the compilation of artwork for April!

Let's start out with the smaller stuff, as always! Here are a couple of badges I made for Ruffles185, going along with the same Transformers theme we had for their emotes! It was so hard to try and hint at different materials when the badge sizes are so small, but I think these came out kinda cute after all.

The second commission of the month was finished in April, but it has been in development since - wait for it - June 2018. There were a few communication issues along the way and I had declared it "dead" quite a few times, and even removed it from my queue at some point. It was put back in development sometime earlier this year and finally finished this month. The concept was a Tinkerbell-like mascot for a service of food delivery and as simple as that may sound, just take a look how many times the design was changed!

I know that might not be impressive for people who are used to character design; Usually the outfit tests and multiple instances are just a part of the process. But for anyone who's not familiar with this method (well, myself included) I guess this would be out of the ordinary. :P
The next piece is one I had honestly forgotten I done until this very moment in which I'm supposed to talk about it!

Whoa, what are these normal humans doing here?

This was a quick commission for my BF's sister-in-law, who's a graphic designer. She had been designing a wedding invitation and needed someone to draw the couple in a watercolor-like style.
Simple realism is not something that I do often, but the deadline was tight and she really needed someone, so I took up the challenge in my hands.
Getting people's faces right is one of the biggest challenges when it comes to realism or semi-realism and I hope to be able to talk about this subject a little more extensively when the time comes, maybe next month. For now, I'm just gonna say I'm glad I've been studying realistic face proportions and it's really helped me get this right. And the customers loved it!

Next commission was a BLAST. I got paid to draw an eevee gijinka character, and I did, and it was lovely.

Something about this outfit made me really happy. The overlapping of fabrics and different opacities was a nice result, I think. I also think the anatomy and proportions are pretty solid. This piece of artwork did, however, make it very obvious to me that I need to change the way I create hair, and I gotta do it soon. I find my current hair technique very... lacking. I wish it could look more organic, maybe more realistic. I think that's something I'm gonna try and work on in the upcoming months.

Next commission was another fun one! I got to design a piece for the wonderful Mojo, who had a fun and intriguing design in mind. This is a Hufflepuff badger placed on top of a star in the style of the popular Hamilton musical poster.
The best part, this was gonna be printed and gifted to a friend of Mojo's. It always makes me SO happy to think people think my art is worthy of being gifted. SO HAPPY!

The next batch of commissions is a group of portraits for a D&D party. I had a lovely time drawing these, specially the blue-eyed lizardborn. I'm not entirely sure why, but the shading on that one came out really soft and well done. I tried to replicate it for the two other party members but didn't quite get there.
Still, I think the three of them stand very well next to one another. I'd love to draw more D&D portraits like these in the future.

Speaking of D&D, that takes me to the last commission of April. Meet Armenos, a Tiefling Great Old One Warlock.

This commission is a tricky one to talk about. At first I had it planned to be a rather simple thing, so I sent out a simple sketch to be approved. But the further we went into development, I started realizing I wasn't quite okay with keeping things simple anymore.
Usually D&D artwork in general holds a certain "standard". Since I've started watching Critical Role again this month, I was very vividly reminded of that standard, and realized maybe I didn't want my D&D artwork to be so simple anymore. So, despite having had agreed to a lower price in advance, I let myself go and work on the details for this, for as long as I wanted to.
The result is a piece of art with a very different feel. At the same time as I perceive and understand a few ways in which this is superior to my average art style, some things I don't like that much either.
All in all, I feel this is a transition piece, and as such, it doesn't really know its place that well.

I think from here on, the tendency is for me to distance myself even more from the anime/manga look when it comes to my own style. It's a motion that has started many years ago, but I'm the most conscious about it right now. I still think it's an adorable style, but there's a richness of detail, of volume, of anatomy, that realism provides in a much more efficient way, and I feel that's what I want to pursue.
It is, however, really hard to distance myself from the very style that I used to draw during the past 10 to 15 years. There's so many habits that I've created along that time, and it's so hard to undo them and keep them in check when drawing in other styles. On top of that, I'm very certain that, along the way, several steps between this transition will be filled with artwork that I may appreciate, but are "not quite what I was going for". And I believe Armenos is a good representation of that.
Overall, I'm excited to see where this path takes me. I hope you'll tag along this journey as well.