Above & Below

Digital painting, comic style: A fairy with pink hair and pink freckles but small wings standing on a leave like on a surfboard, two more leaves are attached to her arms which she spread wide open, she wears a leaflike skirt,d a bellyfree top made by crossing stripes of leaflike fabric and a belt with hooks at the hips; sky with clouds, birds and bright sun flares in the background, leaves and blossoms in the foreground, a radial motion blur effect laid over them, speedlines directing to Skatie.

Time for the January recap (January already is almost over! O.O). Tbh, I’m quite satisfied with my January work. As usual there were a lot of work to do in my bread and butter job, but at least I was able to paint one new painting per week. Additionally to the Capricorn piece (see last PaintLog), I mean.

In the course of January I also changed the title of my Witch Apprentices subpage.

I finally came up with a title for this series, so it’s now Witchphibians – A Tale of Frog and Salamander. I’m mentioning this because I actually did another piece following Raven’s and Samandra’s adventures.

But before this one, I painted another fairy and of course, it’s Aquarius season now, of course.

Therefore, we got a new ZodiOC.

Skatie Skysurfer

Clip Studio Paint, the company from which is the drawing software that I’m using, launched a drawing contest that ended in the first week of January. The topic of this contest was „Fairies“.

Although I don’t think I will win anything and although I wasn’t even sure if I would make it in time, I therefore created Skatie Skysurfer. I actually made it in time, the winners are announced on 2 February 2023, though, so I still have to wait.

Initially I thought of drawing one of my Bicker Fairies (see below) but then I got the idea of a fairy who isn’t able to fly – the usual way, to be precise. So she would have to built her own wings and even a surfboard to surf the skies.

Perhaps you remember this fairy from almost two years ago? I once draw her in the frame of a DTIYS, originally depicting a skateboard girl but altered to a fairy by me. I remembered her only after the concept was clear, or even after the painting process. Still, it’s a nice coincidence.

Digitalzeichnung, Comicstil: Nahaufnahme (bis halbe Oberschenkelhöhe) einer jungen, weibliche Feen mit goldbrownem Haar im Seitenschnitt. Sie trägt ein bauchfreies Top und darunter ein Netzshirt, dessen Ärmel ihre Arme entlangreichen, sowie eine hellviolette Zweidrittelhose. Auf der Hose sind Pfirsichflicken, sowie ein Pfirsichaufdruck auf dem Top. Sie hat den linken Arm zum Schutz vor der Sonne gehoben, mit dem rechten Arm hält sie ein großes, rotes Blatt, das an ein Skatebord erinnert, hinter hinter dem Rücken. Ihre Flügel sind leuchtend-violett und ebenso wie das Blatt schimmernd vor Feenstaub. In Netzshirt und Hose sind Löcher, sie hat einige Schürfwunden an den Beinen und ein Pflaster auf der rechten Wange. Der hintergrund sind verwaschene Grüntöne vor einem hellen Beige.

Digitalzeichnung, Comicstil: Eine junge, weibliche Fee mit goldbrownem Haar im Seitenschnitt. Sie trägt ein bauchfreies Top und darunter ein Netzshirt, dessen Ärmel ihre Arme entlangreichen, sowie eine hellviolette Zweidrittelhose. Auf der Hose sind Pfirsichflicken, sowie ein Pfirsichaufdruck auf dem Top. Sie hat den linken Arm zum Schutz vor der Sonne gehoben, mit dem rechten Arm hält sie ein großes, rotes Blatt, das an ein Skatebord erinnert, hinter hinter dem Rücken. Ihre Flügel sind leuchtend-violett und ebenso wie das Blatt schimmernd vor Feenstaub. In Netzshirt und Hose sind Löcker, sie hat einige Schürfwunden an den Beinen und ein Pflaster auf der rechten Wange. Der hintergrund sind verwaschene Grüntöne vor einem hellen Beige.

The goal with this painting was to practice perspective and pose as well as creating an impression of speed. At the same time I had to get the shadows right with the sun right in her back but under a light flooded sky amidst green tree leaves.

Additionally, the POV had to be tilted. With finally leaves all around this was a little bit hard to achieve. There is a landscape, a green field or something, with a horizon but I think the birds in the sky are giving it away a lot better.

ZodiOCs: Aquarius

With January came the next Zodiac sign and so came Aquarius.

To represent this sign, I chose my Arcryla City OC Crissy refilling her waterbearbot in which she keeps her favorite animals and loyal pets you already know from earlier paintings.

An obvious choice for The Water Bearer.

Or so you would think. Truth is, I frist thought of Navarra, my Breath of the Wild Zora OC. Aquarius regularly is depicted as some merperson with trident, too (usually a man with beard but most of my OCs are female and so will be my ZodiOC). Therefore, initially she came to my mind.

But soon I remembered Crissy and her pets. I not only loved the pun, it was also an opportunity to include Crissy in the ZodiOCs. Most ZodiOCs are already settled (not drawn, though) and a ZodiOC series without my favorite OC Crissy? Never!

Before I started drawing, I searched the internet for poses typically related with Aquarius. You will find the one I used as reference – although changing it a little bit – here.

Again, I was practicing poses and anatomy, an additional challenge was the water pouring into the aquarium. Both of them are semi-transparent and some parts of them cover each other and others don’t. What now looks like being one piece actually is a cut out aquarium glass wall that is pasted under the water layer which itself is located under the aquarium glass layer.

Finally, I would like to add that in the first lineart Crissy’s skirt has been a tad too short. Therefore, I changed it for the sake of dignity.

Witchphibians: Secrets

A new painting of my Witchphibian series featuring my OCs Raven and Samandra. It’s set some time before the „Weaving Magic“ painting from March 2022. As it’s regularly he case, I had this one in my mind for some time.

I not only wanted to practice pose and anatomy, I also wanted to recreate a scene from the Netflix show Arcane (and changed it slightly). If you watched the show, you hopefully will recognize the scene (if not, see this screenshot on the internet). Additionally, I was influenced by some beautiful The Witcher fanart of Greenfinch.garden on Instagram.

As mentioned above, I practiced anatomy and poses. Especially Raven was really hard to draw because she isn’t simply lying on her side, she is lying (partly) on her belly. Additionally I did a small design change. I added freckles to her face and the shoulder region.

Sadly, you won’t see a lot of it (and a bunch of Samandra’s body spots) because I had to keep it SFW for sharing publicly and her dress covers a lot of her anatomy and the freckles. However, I there luckily is my Patreon account for anatomy studies and poses. You will find the link together with the WIPs for supporters on my Ko-fi account (yes, there is a full nu.dity version that doesn’t reveal much but enough to better be safe than sorry).

Since I elaborated the story a little bit more with this piece, I also had to edit the story accompanying the „Weaving Magic“ painting for the sake of coherent reading:

New Year’s Xmashup

Secret Santa: EunXMas

Digital painting, comic style: Merindiana Jane, a mermaid resembling Indiana Jones, light brown skin, a green gleaming tattoo of the Capricorn symbol as well as the sign's constellation on her right cheek, black long hair, brown fish tail with a golden tail fin, bellyfree tanktop, a belt across her hips with a light blue whip at her left hip; a ray as hat on her head; side view, holding an emerald green gleaming capricorn skull mask in the air; stars on the night sky in the background as well as the astronomic sign and the letters "Capricorn".

ZodiOCs: Capricorn

Although I wanted change to a monthly rhythm, it felt like I should publish this PaintLog quite early after Christmas and New Year’s eve.

I already mentioned that there are two more paintings in the queue last time. But they also still fit thematically to the year’s end holidays.

The first one is antoher Secret Santa. This time it’s one we did on the Arcryla City Discord server. Of course, there also is one I got from another artist of this community.

The second painting of the queue is another ZodiOC. We are in the middle of the Capricorn season, so Capricorn it is now.

Secret Santa:
EunXMas

ZodiOCs:
Capricorn

In December 2022 we held a Secret Santa event on the Arcryla City Discord server. I was chosen to draw a painting for catdotbun. We were allowed to announce up to three characters to be drawn*..

I decided to go for her Arcryly City OC Eun, former secretary of the council and aspiring children’s book author. Additionally, I included her other ones, Olive and Rochelle into the painting, as angel on top of the Christmas cactus and as drawing in the opened book and on the back of another one.

The cactus is a reference to a pet showcase we had in September 2021 on the server. Eun’s „pet“ has been a cactus. Therefore, I thought a Christmas Cactus would fit into this piece. There also are other Easter eggs in the painting, on some I hinted already.

This piece was another excercise in shading and lighting, I tried to archieve a warm, cosy Christmas feeling.

*Speaking of: The piece I got from my Secret Santa SketchyGirl perfectly matched my OCs Chrissie and Paula. The Mistletoe headband would be a thing Paula totally would do!

The new Years starts in the middle of the Capricorn season and I’m happy that I finished the referring ZodiOC piece in time..

It wasn’t that easy to decide what OC will fit to represent thsi sign. A long time I thought of Orphelya, my gargoyle OC, but she lacks horns. There are OCs with antlers or rods that could resemble horns, like Cosmothra, one of the bicker fairies, or my mermaid OC Ceratia, even Merdusa’s snake may have met this purpose. I even thought of Nema wearing a coral crown or something (but refrained because she won’t hurt a coral reef deliberately). Long story short: They all didn’t really fit into the picture.

Only the day I actually started drawing this piece I came up with this idea. A mermaid seemed approbriate since Capricorn usually is depicted with a fish tail.

Then this picture of Merindiana finding an emerald capricorn skull mask on the bottom of the sea during one of her treasure hunts struck me.

Fight to the End

A Mayoral Fight

Sometimes, I’m allowed to take a little time off and to do other things apart from my job and my artist’s ambitions. Last weekend was this kind of weekend, so this PaintLog comes with delay – but with a healthy delay.

Plus, it isn’t as if there was nothing going on on the art’s level the past week. The fourth of the main challenges of the Arcryla City Summer Fantasy Festival has been created, submitted and shown. So, here it comes:

A Mayoral Fight

This time, the premise was that our OC that had been stranded in the Fantasy AU realm wished to talk to „Mayor Alexander“, he surely would be able to help you getting back to your steampunk world. But in this realm it is Mage Knight Alexander and our OC’s were dragged into an arena fight facing him, the most powerful knight in the whole kingdom.

This situation had to be put into a dynamic comic or manga („just 1-2 pages“) but without a conclusion of the fight since that is planned as topic for a 5th main challenge. So, sorry folks, it ends with a cliffhanger.

Initially, I actually planned to do „just 2 pages“ but soon I noticed that these won’t suffice. The cover page, for a start, indeed only worked as cover page – no distractions by other panels.

Secondly, the story I had in mind just needed the space. Crissy should learn how to fight the mayor by coincidence, yes, but then she should use what she’d learned by coincidence, so she actually succeeds by using her own brain and mechanic’s skills.

To show this, some extra panels were needed. And then, there is Paula of course (I’ll come back to her later), she too took some extra panels. So, in the end it boiled down to four pages.

However, I didn’t went for a full color four page comic. The cover page is the only fully rendered one. I just didn’t had the time (and the patience) and the black&white style with spare colored parts worked out nicely. Initially, the angled white bars made it easier for me to paint them (I hadn’t to bother with right angles) but this way they also added a nice dynamic to the comic.

As for the fight … Crissy is no fighter. In the fantasy AU realm she owns an arm-mounted crossbow but she is no use in direct confrontation. Therefore, I had to think of something to give her an unexpected advantage – enter the fireworks cannons.

I wasn’t sure about gunpowder in the fantasy realm, so I went for some magic stuff loaded in cannon-like contraptions at the edge of the arena to celebrate whoever (supposedly the mayor) wins the battle in the end. They of course are triggered by fire and so by the magic fireballs the Mayor throws at Crissy.

Crissy running around headless at the beginning of the comic was one of the first pictures that came to my mind. Paula commenting this while sitting in the audience and eating some nuts, was the result of some fun talk in the Arcryla City general chat. This also led to the idea that she comes to help in the end.

Topless Mayor is a recurring theme. Last year, it also came up as fun talk in the Arcryla City chats and my entry to the Mayor’s prompt only could hint at his abs. This time, now, I had the opportunity to go all in.

I gave him a „Mayic Amor“ (of course, you spotted the pun?) and with this a saiyajin-like appearance, inspired by the the calamity forms of the trio in the show Amphibia – those themselves inspired by animes like Dragonball, obviousy. Yes, I exaggerated – a lot! – but I don’t regret it, it is the whole point when creating a comic and it was the most fun.

Crissy shooting his tophat not only shows that his magic powers lay in this hat. I also wanted to make use of this crossbow I gave Crissy in the beginning of the festival but often didn’t even care to draw when depicting her.

Then, there is Vannie. She is one of the Arcryla City council members. In the storyline of the Fantasy Festival, she drags Crissy into the arena. Therefore, I dragged her in my comic as cameo appearance, keeping guard at the door. And if you look close you will spot several items from previous Fantasy Festival entries fixed to Sparrow’s saddle: bags with nuts, a wine bottle, a mangogo, a plush water bear. Don’t ask how she got them …

A last remark to the title „A Mayoral Fight“. This of course is a reminiscence of my last year’s Mayor entry „A Mayoral Wind“:

Digital painting, comic style, the background slightly blurred: The Mayor of Arcryla City wearing a light shirt, a belt, brown pants and gloves, standing in the middle of a wind gust which drives petal through the air, blows off his tophat and lifts his shirt so you can see the abs. He is trying to catch the hat, a violet and a green tent in the background, a light blue afternoon sky with clouds

Side Glances in the Garden

Digital painting, comic style: Crissy (young woman, short purple hair, big round glasses, bellyfree leather armor, braces, cape) and Paula (young woman, short turqoise hair, 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, golden neck band, pointed ears) in a wildly grown garden with an old well in the center and a sign "Wishing Well; 1 Coin)"; Paula is sitting on its edge, tossing a coin on a string over her shoulder, Crissy in the foreground, skeptically looking at a coin; blue day sky with birds and petals in the background.

Secrets in the Garden

Another … well, I don’t want to introduce my PaintLog with „Another week went by“ but I think, you catch the tone. I’m really looking forward to my vacation planned for mid to end of August.

Last week I mentioned another of the Arcryla City Summer Fantasy Festival general prompts that almost was finished. In the beginning of the past week, I finally was able to share it.

Side Glances

However, before I’ll start with that one, I’d like to draw your attention towards the entries to my Moonlight Magic DTIYS challenge.

There already have been some beautiful art pieces. Please go to Instagram to the hasthtag #Kritz200 and give them some love!

Digital painting, comic style: Samandra (left) and Raven (right) in sideview (hip height) back to back in front of a bright full moon; Samandra being a young woman with brown skin and gleaming yellow frackles and spots, neck long red hair, wearing a grey apron-like dress held by some ropes as straps, needles tucked into the of front part; Raven being a young woman with light rosy skin, short white hair in sidecut, combed to her right half of the face, wearing a golden brown dress, tied with a rope in the middle and a necklace with an amulet, the left hand is the hand of a pink frog; there are magical threads coming from Sam's hand, weaving a pattern in the air and gleaming blue circles and runes hovering above Raven's right hand; both are ecompassed by a shiny yellow light; added to the background are flying yellow blossoms; text: "Draw This In Your Style; #Kritz200; Celebrating 200 followers (thank you all so much!); Details see next slides + captions".

Secrets in the Garden

As soon as the general prompts and the setting of the Arcryla Citiy Summer Fantasy Festvial were announced, this image came to my mind with the wishing well and Crissy and Paula approaching it in their respective very own style.

Paula tossing the coin on a string of course is inspired by all those cartoons depicting characters exactly doing this with all kinds of machines, may it be vending machines, gaming machines or just the mechanism of the entry lock to a public bath room.

Althought I don’t know, if this ever worked with any of these machines, I’m sure, it can’t fail when tossing a coin down a well shaft. – Leaving aside the if a wish actually will become true when pulling the coin back on a string afterwards.

Crissy, not believing in superstition or anything supernatural, is sceptical, if a coin actually can fulfill wishes. Of course, she knows that they are in a fantasy realm and she has experienced magic. So, her critical mind is exploring the possibility that it may work. But she is overthinking, whereas Paula doesn’t bother at all, she just goes for it.

The easiest part of this painting at the same time was the one that took the most time. There are enought references to paint Crissy and Paula. I actually took the one from the second main challenge prompt (that itself was taken from the Phone Call painting earlier this year) to paint Crissy and the fantasy version character sheet to draw Paula.

But, you know, the more details the longer the shading process. Therefore, it took several days to render Crissy. Plus: Half way through the lineart process, I noticed that I draw Crissy’s right hand the wrong way around.

Background and foreground were a one to two days work but most of them were last-minute decisions and a lot of experimention. I didn’t have to think about the grass on the floor right from the beginning, it already was in the initial image in my mind. The grass in the foreground also came quite intuitionally, blurred of course.

Still, as I started the rest of the background for a short moment I was lost. Should it take place on the festival ground? As another showplace of the festival? Then I (re-)discovered that I’ve got some nice tree brushes, oh, and brushes for leaves (for bushes), too.

In my first attempt, the trees stood that narrow to the well that it was hard to spot that Crissy is holding a coin in her hand. Trees and bushes already has been blurred but luckily, I was able to shift the ones in the left part of the painting further left without doing any harm.

Next issue was that, now that the place evolved to be „a hidden garden“, I had to get a shadow over Crissy. Normally, I would have done a clipping layer above the Crissy folder and filled it with black with an opacitiy of perhaps 5-10 %.

However, by coincidence I realised that the multiply effect creates an even more shadowy, err, shadow. After noticing this, I experimented with a leaves brush in the same manner to get a nice leaves pattern. Initially, it didn’t work the way I thought (by erasing part of the shadows) but in the end I was quite proud of the result.

The next problem was that the sky looked so empty (sounds familiar, huh?). I didn’t want to dig out the petals in the air again, at least not as only „air filler“ but I rememered a painting that got added some birds in the sky to make look it better. So, I searched for some bird brushes and I found some. I had to choose between flocks of birds and only a few ones. I chose the letter ones since together with the petals, they are not only dividing the sky in handsome bits, they are also leading the eye from Crissy to Paula in the background.

And as last problem, I had to answer the question „Overall blur or no overall blur?“.

I did an overall blur over the painting, but in comparison, the non-blur looked better. Since the foreground already has been blurred and so has the trees and bushed in thebackground, there was no further need for even more blur.

Secrets in the Garden

After entering a hidden garden, they discovered an old wishing well. While Crissy – a strong believer solely in physics and stuff – still being skeptical about whishing wells at all, Paula had her very own approach to it.*

*Artist’s note: For some moments I also considered to put the text into the painting (party to also fill the sky), but after adding the birds and petals, it just didn’t fit anymore and it wasn’t necessary, too.

Moon Dancers

Moonlight Magic (II) | A Familiar Face
(DTIYS Kritz‘ 200) | (Main challenge prompt 3)

Another week went by, another weekend is almost over. On the every day’s life front there is nothing new, I’m just looking forward to my vacation in three weeks.

At least I could host my DTYS by now, finish the third main challenge prompt and I’m almost done with another of the general prompts.

Moonlight Magic (II) – The Background

As promised last week, today I want to take a closer look at the background of the Moonlight Magic DTIYS painting.

The full moon you already know from the „Weaving Magic“ painting should be background again, even bigger, even shinier. I got several full moon brushes but they all are looking like I cut the full moon out of a photo or something alike, whereas I wanted to be painted in my style again.

So, the full moon brush just served as reference layer for a clipping layer on which I followed the colors and shadows to create „my“ moon. To distuingish my OCs better from the bright moon, I added another yellow glow.

Well, the painting was big enough to add the announcement text of the DTIYS, too. However, this led to the problem that without the text there is definitely too much space in the upper half. I tried to fix this a little bit by adding the flying petals.

Although this worked in some way, it’s still a lot of space that isn’t filled and draws the attention from the two protagonists of the painting. Therefore I also did a cut version of the painting.

I like this a lot more and somebody said, it looks like a scene right out of a movie. Tbh, I can’t disagree.

Leaving the background behind, I also added tome text sheets to the DTIYS. The first one describing the terms of the challenge, the other two giving information about Raven and Samandra.

You by now get to know what Sam actually did with Raven’s amulet in the „Weaving magic“ painting. Following this, I also had to update the character descriptions on the subpages and (som e of) the paintings showing Raven in frog form.

A Familiar Face

Yesterday, the third main challenge of the Arcryla Citiy Summer Fantasy Festvial took place. This time we had to do a collab challenge, randomly picked by the admins. I did a collabd together with _ghostbam00zled_, featuring his OC Raven (painted by me) and my OC Crissy (painted by him).

He also did the background whereas I added the people in the foreground since I found a handy brush to do this. Additionally, I laid a blur over the background and added some glitter.

It was nice to be forced to draw an OC I wasn’t familiar with. There were enough refernence pictures around but I struggled a little bit with the colors of the clothes. Plus, I first didn’t really know what to make of this white vesty thing around the taille since the reference pics only show Raven’s upper body. Same applied to the trousers.

Another challenge was to adjust the style so the two OCs don’t look too different. Therefore I had to do the lineart in black, not in the darker tone of the base color as usual.

I also had to shorten the narrative POV text regarding Crissy so both POV text’s lenghts are more or less even. The long version (in comparision to the one you’ll find below) is this one:

„After the encounter with the mangogoes (and after she took the water bear shaped one with her), Crissy arrived at some kind of dancing area. Before she could retreat – and despite her lack of dancing abilities – she felt dragged into the crowd. Suddenly, she realised that the guy she was dancing with was Raven. She’d seen him one time or the other back in Arcryla City and had been fascinated by the mechanism of his mechanical wings. She didn’t dare to tell Paula, though, fearing she’d wanted to try them out by herself. The wings didn’t seem to be around today, instead there was another threat: She had to dance in public!„

A Familiar Face

After the encounter with the mangogoes, Crissy arrives at some kind of dancing area and before she can retreat she feels dragged into the crowd. Suddenly, she realises that the guy she is dancing with is Raven, the merchant with those mechanical wings which Paula surely would love to try out by herself. The wings doesn’t seem to be around today, instead there is another threat: She has to dance in public!

From dealing with customers all day Raven heads out and ends up with a crowd dancing! He is pulled to the center realizing Crissy is right next to him feeling a bit embarrassed. To lighten the mood raven dances and encourages Chrissy to join along!