A Mango, an Elf and a Wyvern Rider go into a Bar

Digital painting, comic style: Paula (front, young woman, young woman, short turqoise hair in sidecut, short turqoise hair, toe nails painted in rainbow colour, finger nails in lesbian Pride flag colour; she's wearing some kind of green leaf-like loincloth that only covers breasts, lap and butt, green braces, turqoise wrist bands, a pink shell band at her left ankle, as green leaf band at her right, golden neck band, pointed ears) sitting in front of Crissy (young woman, short purple hair, big round glasses, bellyfree leather armor, braces, striped trousers, cape) on in the saddle of her giant bird mount Sparrow, front view, seen from slightly above; Paula is trying to catch a flask with a purple, foaming substance, Crissy is looking backwards towards a giant mangogo (mangoes with sticklike legs, arms and noses) raising from the woods and following them, the eyes of the mangogo gleaming purple; pink blossoms in the foregrpund and scaried birds in the background in the air.

Digital painting, comic style: A tavern scene, a bar counter and a blurry, dimly lit background; the people only depicted to belly level; to the right side Crissy (young woman, big round glasses, short purple har, brown breast armor and brown braces) and Paula (young woman, short turqoise hair in sidecut, green neckholder bellyfree loin dress, green braces), to the left side Archie (huge man, moustache, black hair, pony tail, goggles on his head, brown leather armor, a turquoise shirt with the emblem of the Wyvern Riders Guild, light blue scarf around the neck); Crissy is leaning at Paula's shoulder, eyes closed, dozing off, Paulas' left hand holding her; Archie is drinking from a cup, laughing and is doing finger guns with the free hand, Paula is returning this gesture and has nicked one of the wine bottles that are standing around on the counter; there are more cups too, one is tilted and had spilled wine over the counter, a water bear shaped mangogo (mangoes with leg, nose and ears like sticks) is lying with its nose in the puddle.

Rise of the Mamangogo – Rider’s Talk

Two weeks of vacation are coming to their end. On Monday I will be back at work again. Therefore, it’s time to show the so far last two of my Arcryla City Summer Fantasy Festival entries.

I still have plans for more, I even already created an aftermath that I’ll show you next week, but since there are also other projects and ideas around for now, here they are.

Rise of the Mamangogo
(The Mother of all Mangogoes)

Some weeks ago, Crissy discovered in one of the festival stalls some weird fruits called „Mangogoes„. After sharing this painting, I joked around with my best friend via Whatsapp about scary mangoes and „Mama Mango“.

Digital painting, comic style: Crissy in her fantasy design in the foreground (young woman, short purple hair, big round glasses, bellyfree leather top, blue cape, braces, fingerfree gloves, girdle, bags, knife and pocket watch attached to it), holding a pastry in the right hand and some kind of mango in the left hand, long, thin natural grown sticks attached to it, one resembling a nose, dark spots giving the impression of two eyes, the tip of the "nose" is cut, a drop of yellow juice dropping from it, Crissy is looking at this "mangogo" with disbelief; two more of them in different shapes (some kind of devil and some kind of water brear) standing in front of her on a customer's board of a stall, to her left a whole basket with them, to her right one labelled "TomaToes", containing big tomatoes with tiny red toes; in the background several stalls (1. bakery, 2. "Joe's Wineyard", 3. pottery, 4. "Catch the Frog" game stall, 5. "Hex'R'us") with 1. cake, bread, 2. wine barrels, bottles 3. pottery ware 4. prices 5. magical items; Paula and Sparrow sitting in front ofr "Joe's Wineyard", Paula pointing to the salesman, hiding to bottles behind her back; in front of the game stall two young woman, one brown-red hair, one white hair, the brown haired one catching a wooden frog with a fishing-rod, splashing water; several girlands and pennants on poles and lines above the stalls.

This led to the idea of Paula and Crissy fleeing from a giant mamangogo.

Here the potions prompt of the general prompt list came in handy and for the general scene I remembered an approach that came to my mind when I planned the Lanterns prompt but that I abandoned back then.

Now it seemed to be perfect to my purpose. At the same time, the intended perspective was an excercise in its own right. Furthermore, Crisssy should be looking scaryfied backwards. This meant there had to be an unfamiliar pose, too.

The hardest part was to get her legs right, though. While Paula’s ones were directed forward, representing her wild ride attitude, Crissy’s should be clinged to the mount, representing her need for security. But this meant to draw them seen from front and above – you easily can get this wrong.

The attempt for lineart saw Paula looking straight forward, concentrated on the flight. However, at one point in time I thought it would be a good idea to also visualize the magic potion that brought us the Mamangogo in the first place. Enter a second unfamiliar pose, the upper body turned back, the arm stretched out to the flying potion flask.

To get all those things right took 2-3 days just for the lineart and even more problems occured during the coloring process. Sparrow’s saddle has a pommel and a hook up front. But since I colored the saddle red, initially the colored pommel and the colored saddle looked like something you got to see only in movies for adults above 18 years old. Therefore, I had to change the lineart to keep it SFW.

Also, I didn’t plan to draw Paula’s bow but the space in front of the saddle appeared to be quite empty and, well, although I always painted this hook, even in the one painting he came to its purpose, it wasn’t this visible that the hook is there to hold the bow.

Digital painting, comic style: 1) Crissy and 2) Paula (fantasy versions) in the saddle of sparrow, a big brown-orange bird with a sharp beak; 1) young woman, short purple hair, big round glasses, bellyfree leather top, leather skirt, purse and quiver with arrows on her girdle, orange-brown striped trousers, toefree boots, blue cape, 2) young woman, short turqoise hair; toe nails painted in rainbow colour, finger nails in lesbian Pride flag colour; she's wearing some kind of green leaf-like loincloth that only covers breasts, lap and butt, green braces, a knife in a sheath of leaf optic, a bag also in leaf optic, turqoise wrist bands, a pink shell band at her left ankle and a golden neck band; Sparrow is nosediving fast into a school of sky lanterns, fending them off with her wings and the beak; 2) is holding her reins with the left hand, raising the right arm into the air, her braces a illuminated green, creating a green shield-like light in front of her wrist, bashing a sky lantern into pieces; 1) is sitting behind her, holding fast on her belly, eyes closed, screaming; more sky lanterns and blossoms in foreground and background, washy in their movements, a likewise washy night sky with stars in the background.

So, I finally got an opportunity to make it clear. Luckily, I happily could skip many of the other details due to the perspective. Still, I again had a hard time to achieve an impression of movement but motion blur saved the day (again).

The last struggle I had was to get the painting in suitable proportions. I actually wanted to focus more on Crissy and Paula, to have them bigger in size but I already made the Mamangogo too big, so I stayed with the one you can see below in the end.

Rise of the Mamangogo
(The Mother of all Mangogoes)

– General prompt No. 1: Potions –

To tend her carnivorous plants back home more effectively, Paula bought a growth potion at one of the stalls of the ongoing Summer Festival (she would’ve nicked one, but … well … never mess with someone who creates potions). She didn’t waste time and tried it out with one of the Mangogoes that she has nicked from „Wyrd’s Fruits and Vegetables“ stall.

It actually worked.

Well, she must have remembered the dose wrong, but it worked …

Rider’s Talk

As the end of the festival came near, the main challenge for the last showcase emphasized again that we can draw other artist’s OCs and/or Sir Alexander and/or Lynette into our paintings. Therefore, I asked vitranas_art (Instagram) if I could take her Archie for a painting corresponding to one she was working on.

She depicted a scene showing Archie with my OCs Crissy and Paula in a tavern that inspired me to the painting below.

There were only a few days left and I managed just in time – except that I didn’t bother with a detailed background. Still, I like the lights giving this dim tavern atmosphere. To be perfect I perhaps shpuld’ve added some tavern sign (the tavern is called „The Golden Hoof“), but I think it’s good as it is.

Paula by default is an extroverted and Archie also always curious and eager to get to know new people while Crissy is an introverted and her social batteries will come to an end quick. Plus, Archie is a Wyvern Rider and Paula got to love her giant bird mount Sparrow. So they naturally had a common topic.

This automatically led to the following scene: Paula and Archie still talking while Crissy slumbering away. However, I wanted to show that Paula cares about her girlfried. Therefore, she is holding her in her arm, the arm lying around her shoulders with a hint of leaving with her any moment now.

I also wanted to include one of the mangogoes (the waterbear shaped) to indeed appearing to have gotten drunk. Originally, I draw a toppled wine bottle to this purpose but since it would’ve been somewhat in front of Crissy too this would’ve looked as if Crissy had too much wine and got drunk. Well, she had too much, but it was only the wine in her actual cup (she doesn’t tolerate that much alcohol before getting tipsy).

Therefore, instead of a toppled wine bottle I just drew an additional toppled cup. To fill up the space and to indicate that there also were other guests around at some point in time and it is not one of Crissy’s cup toppled on the counter, I also draw a second cup in front of Archie.

Perhaps you also see the difference of the volume of wine already consumed in the two opened bottles. Here I wanted to show that Paula could drink (and tolerate) a good amount of alcohol. Apropos wine bottles – you also can spot that Paula nicked one again.

And perhaps you can see that I changed her hairstyle, too. Well, not really changed, I finally managed to paint it the way I always wanted to. I’ll elaborate this further in my future drawings (in the one I already did I, well, I already did).

Regarding Archie, I fear I drew him a little bit too bulky. I think he was supposed (and is depicted by others) to be more slender. This way he reminds me a tiny bit too much of Mario (Mario Brothers). The ponytail is too shot, too. But may it as it be, they indeed have a good time.

If you look close, you perhaps will spot the two details I took kind of a shortcut. The waterbear shaped mangogo is taken from the first mangogo painting, I just added the „X X“ as eyes and the red nose. The second one is the counter. It’s the same counter like in the above-mentioned piece, more shadows added and a little bit of structure in the front side.

Last but not least, I wasn’t that unlucky that because of the setting I didn’t have to draw too many of the details of Crissy’s (and Archie’s and Paula’s) clothes. Because they were inside, I even could skip Crissy’s cape.

Rider’s Talk

– General Prompt No. 10: Tavern –

After an exhausting day at the Summer Festival in this weird fantasy realm, Paula found a tavern and talked Crissy into stopping by to finish the day. They both got something to drink and they met Archibald Featherstone, a Wyvern Rider of the Kingdom’s Wyvern Riders Guild. Paula asked a lot about Fortuna and in turn was eager to talk about Sparrow. However, as the evening continued, Crissy slowly dozed off.