Shark merman
Click the image to see the attack and creator of this character on Artfight!
For this piece I recreated a project from a year before, since I was very unhappy with the result. I changed up the pose so it would show off the tail colors better, and tried to go for a more floaty pose this time, instead of active swimming.
I added more green to the water, and kept the background simple to keep the focus on the character. Then I added an overhead light source to experiment with light reflection on water surfaces, which I’d never done before.
I struggled a lot with the placement of the reflection, but eventually developed a pattern which I morphed over the character. As I progressed, I continued to experiment with shades of white until I finally achieved the desired look.
Character sheets
For these character sheets I made my own custom brush in procreate for the first time, adjusting settings until I had something I enjoyed working with and which made it easier to put my ideas on ‘paper’. I made sure to take my time playing around with each color scheme.
I definitely think I should’ve waited with making character sheets, since for three of them it was the first time I had drawn them, but it ended up alright. Now I know to wait with making the character sheets until I’ve drawn the character a couple of times and played around with the design already.
Looking back, I could’ve used one color for the eyes of the wolves, to make them look more wolf-like and less human.
For the elf I could’ve made his shape language more interesting, and removed the daggers to make the design less cluttered.
For the deerling all I’d want to change are his ears and horns to be more fluffy and pointy. He already has very round features, so I think it’d make him look more interesting.
Background
This project was a gift for a friend; a wallpaper background for on PC. It needed to have a forest background and a red panda. This piece is the first time I've really experimented with adding depth to the ground, paying more attention to details like grass patches, moss, and mud. I used leaf brushes for the first time, which greatly improved my speed but also made me realize that drawing those myself makes it feel more natural.
For the panda the shape and colors were easy to pick, but I struggled making the fur look real. It took me a while to realize that messier is better. I ended up giving the inside of the ears more fur so that you can easily see the texture at a glance.
The trees were also difficult because of the thick paint, and I had no clue how to make the grass yet, since I’ve never made a landscape this realistic. I made a couple mistakes blocking in the green; the color was too similar to the sky, and I was already so far with it I couldn’t turn back. I ended up making a second lighter color to layer around the edge, adding small pieces of grass for texture.
This painting was a class project to make a piece that showcases who you are. I therefore decided to paint, even though I hadn’t in years, and go back to my roots. The sketch was done really quick since I’ve made these sorts of paintings before. For the sky it took long to figure out how to get it to look natural, since the paint (acrylic) was so thick. I ended up mixing 6 different colors and blending them by using a small brush and layering the colors until it looked smooth.
Painting
Then, in the end, I put my two cats in the corner (you can pretty much only see their eyes). I also added some yellow flowers in the grass to add a splash of color.
The grass took incredibly long, because I made the mistake of making the first grass pieces too long. I ended up layering different colors for hours.
This short project was meant as a brainstorm for a pose on the first sketchbook page, but ended up as a small piece instead. I started with a quick pose sketch, then adapted that pose to have a more interesting shape. To create more of a visual pull I added wings, but then felt it got too crowded and opted for mountains instead. While I liked the idea and it looked good, I ended up skipping the first page altogether and making the small piece in the top right as the finished piece.
Sketchbook girl
Orange cat attack!
Disclaimer: none of these characters were designed/created by me. I will be adding links to their owners soon, since there are so many and it was an attack for artfight that I finished late, it will take some time to reach out to / link all of the owners in one place.
This project is the most intricate piece I’ve ever made, and took over 47 hours to complete. This was both the first time I made a perspective background, and the first time adding this many characters in one piece. I made a plan before I started, sketching out what rooms I wanted and where I wanted the furniture, windows etc. Even just getting the perspective right in these two rooms took me HOURS, and don’t even get me started on that couch.. I changed the perspective on it more than 3 times and used multiple reference pictures but it never looked right. Eventually I made some guidelines with a vanishing point, and after that it finally looked okay. Then I sketched out all the cats and put down the fur colors, adjusting them so they wouldn’t clash. Messing around with the colors was probably my favorite part of this. After that it was just line-art, coloring and detailing. The coloring definitely took me the longest, I went from cat to cat, and messing around with layer limit on procreate was awful. This piece was definitely one of the most challenging art projects I’ve ever finished, and I learnt so much from it. <3
Collage
This piece was made for a school project. The only requirement for the project was to use at least three different art formats. I decided to make a project about women, using paper cutouts, pencil, crayons and watercolor. First I picked out the the pictures I wanted, I used both masculine and feminine features to show both sides of being a woman. After that I cut out a part of the face to sketch, and added flowers around to signify beauty and softness. For the flowers I added bees and a moth, which I later regretted because I didn’t feel like they added anything. Then I added water below to showcase the feeling of drowning in public, since however women dress it always feels like someone is judging them. For this same reason I also added the eyes. Judgemental and even scary. I asked a few friends to draw some eyes as well, because I wanted to capture a sense of individuality in the ‘people’ behind the eyes.
This is the main character for my comic, Ezra. These are all of the designs/design ideas I’ve made of him. 1. He started as a girl with short hair, and as a human. 2. I didn’t really like this design, so I sketched out an idea for a different hairstyle, this is also where I decided to make him a boy. 3. I played around with the hairstyle a bit more, and decided to make him an elf. I put a sort of moon crescent shape in his hair, since I wanted his design to be moon-based.
Character design, flaws and changes
1
2
3
4
4. I tried out a few piercings, and then finally made a full drawing of him with background. 5. Very recently I revisited his design after not messing with it for over a year, and changed him to look more like how I’d imagined him in my head. I sketched out some ideas for the hair, adding braids and spikey back hair pieces as the base. I’m still not happy with the result but I do like the braids. 6. I gave his eyes more of a pinkish-purple hue instead of blue-purple, and lightened his hair and skin back to the first draft color. I changed his nose to look more downturned and soft, which went so much easier than the first draft since I studied faces more in the last year.
5
6
I ended up giving his lips a soft cupids bow. I deleted almost all of the piercings in his ears and kept only his lobes. I deleted the sort of ‘fangs’ I gave him in the earlier draft as well. I’m very happy with the color scheme now and can’t wait to play around with the design more.
Animation storyboards
For these two projects I wanted to make animations for my characters to post on YouTube and/or TikTok. These are just the storyboards since I never got around to finishing them. The first one I couldn’t continue because the character’s backstory and appearance changed a lot, and for the second one I scrapped the idea because of difficulties with the animation on Procreate.
Now that that’s out of the way, the first one is a storyboard showing the backstory of Lake, a character of mine. The background music was gonna be Ghost - Confetti. I made the storyboard to show her toxic relationship with her ex, and how she got into the main friend group she’s in now. I really loved laying everything out to lyrics and imagining the product that would come out of it, and I’d still love to re-make it one day with the updated designs and story.
As for the second one, it was a short animation that was popular on TikTok for a while, and I really loved the idea so I tried to make it myself, but again, tweening was just awful on Procreate. I still love the idea so I will be creating it in the new program I’m using; Clip Studio Paint.
All of these gifs are short animation (tests) I made. I played around with the amount of frames per second, trying to create realistic movement, etc. They’re definitely not perfect but they were great for studying timing and frame-by-frame animation in general.
Animations
These two small pieces are short watercolor tests I did, to see how the water color would merge with different colors and how adding other colors would affect the shade. Blue and yellow for the green, blue for the purple.
Watercolor
Sketches, W.I.P.’s
Finished pieces
Click image to see the character and creator on Toyhouse!
Click image to see the attack on Artfight, with the link to the creator of the character!