A Frog, an Owl and a Raven …

Raven – Witch Apprentice
The Owl House + Amphibia Returns

🇩🇪 Die vergangene Woche verzeichnete aus meiner Sicht eine dreifache Rückkehr.

Sicherlich erinnert ihr euch an die Moodboard Challenge der School of Games aus dem letzten Jahr. Zu dieser hatte ich ein Bilder meiner Wüstengöttin Saharia eingereicht. Dieser Contest findet auch dieses Jahr wieder statt.

Wie ihr dem Link entnehmen könnt, geht es dieses Jahr darum, ein*n Magic Apprentice zu kreieren. Dies inspirierte mich zu Raven, der Diebin, die bei einer Hexe einbrach und daraufhin ein neues Leben begann (beginnen musste):

🇬🇧 The last week meant a trifold return for me.

Surely you remember the School of Games Moodboard Challenge from last year. I submitted a painting of my desert goddess Saharia. This contest takes place again this year.

As you can see from the link, this year is about creating a Magic Apprentice. This inspired me to create Raven, a thief who sneaked into a witch’s house and started (was forced to start) a new life:

Raven and the Chamber of Witchcraft

  • Digital painting, comic style: Raven (young woman, short white hair in sidecut, barefooted, simple golden brown dress, a necklace with a raven charme) sitting on a terracotta tiled floor in front of a storage rack with books, jars, scrolls and several magical items, looking on some magic lights coming from a magical staff and a puddle of red potion on the floor, additionally a text with her background story "Raven - Witch Apprentice; Originally a thief (not a good one, obviously) who made the mistake sneak into a witch's hut but got betrayed by her own clumsiness. To make up for the trouble, she henceforth either had to live the life of a small green hopping animal or to become the witch's apprentice (incl. all the chores coming with it)."; my Instagram nick in the background of the painting.
  • Digital painting, comic style: Raven, a young woman with short white hair in sidecut, barefooted, wearing a simple golden brown dress and a necklace with a raven charme, sitting on the floor (terracotta tiles); in front of her a tipped open jar, pouring a red puddle between her feet, next to it a tipped wooden magical staff, throwing light towards the puddle, creating several circles with magic symbols in the air; more jars and a broom are standing or lying on the floor as well as an open book (pages down); she is in front of a storage rack (left to right, top to bottom: 1st row a small chest with a frog ornament; a jar with something black and one single eye, several tilted scrolls; 2nd row books; 3rd row a wicker box with several magical accessoirs, tarot cards, keys, feathers; a kettle, several jars), the area between Raven's legs and her face is well lit, the background is dark but the details are visible; my Instagram nick in the background of the painting.

Jedoch, das war noch nicht das Ende der Inspirationenstange. Ausgehend von oben nachzulesender Hintergrundstory spann ich den Faden weiter. So weit, dass ich den Raven-Content inzwischen auf eine eigene Unterseite ausgelagert habe.

Und es schwirren noch immer Ideen in meinem Kopf herum, an denen ich derzeit arbeite – mehr dann (hoffentlich) nächsten Sonntag!

O. However, that was not yet the end of the inspiration lane. Starting from the background story above, I’m continuing the flow. So far that I moved the Raven content to a separate subpage now.

And there are still further ideas popping up in my brain which are work in process – hopefully, you will hear more of them next sunday.

  • Digital painting, comic style, light beige background: A small, thin light pink frog with several darker pink spots, staring unbelievingly towards the viewer, golden brown frog eyes, a semi-transparent light blue amphibian crest on the head, covering parts of the right eye; an amulet which doesn't fit around the neck anymore and light pink clouds around the frog; the frog is sitting inside an empty collapsed simple golden brown dress; text: "Raven Frogfeet; It wasn't actually a green hopping animal. This was the threat, though, and the witch gave Raven a taste of what it was like to be a frog. Still, since the witch wasn't the youngest anymore and never has been top witch in the best years of her life, the spell partly stuck even after turning Raven back into a human being. Therefore, every so often Raven (or body parts of her) still turns into a frog or parts of it - usually in the most inconvenient situations."
  • Digital painting, comic style, light beige background: A small, thin light pink frog with several darker pink spots, staring unbelievingly towards the viewer, golden brown frog eyes, a semi-transparent light blue amphibian crest on the head, covering parts of the right eye; an amulet which doesn't fit around the neck anymore and light pink clouds around the frog; the frog is sitting inside an empty collapsed simple golden brown dress.
  • Digital painting, comic style, light beige background: A small, thin light pink frog with several darker pink spots, staring unbelievingly towards the viewer, golden brown frog eyes, a semi-transparent light blue amphibian crest on the head, covering parts of the right eye; an amulet which doesn't fit around the neck anymore and light pink clouds around the frog.

Ebenfalls zurückgekehrt sind die Disney-Serien The Owl House und Amphibia.

Auch wenn ich seit dem letzten Mal keine neue Fanart gezeichnet habe, so habe ich je ein kurzes Review zu den beiden heute erschienen The Owl House und Amphibia Episoden geschrieben. Mehr noch, um hierfür mehr Platz zu haben, habe ich die Amphibia-Inhalte von der Fanart-Seite abgetrennt.

Amphibia-Kenner werden es weiter oben bereits erkannt haben: Im Chamber-of-Witchcraft-Bild gibt es eine kleine Amphibia-Referenz:

Also back are the Disney shows The Owl House and Amphibia.

Although I didn’t draw any new fanart since last time, I wrote a short review of each of the The Owl House and Amphibia episodes released today. Even more, to get more space to do this, I separated the Amphibia content from the fanart page.

Amphibia connoisseurs will have already recognized it: There is a small Amphibia reference in the Chamber of Witchcraft painting:

First Things First

Digital painting, comic style: Crissy Faith (young woman, big round glasses, purple hair) in the centre of the painting, standing on a step stool, her right arm raised, wearing a black bellyfree leather suite with golden zippers and long leather gloves; next to her Potato (young woman, ginger neck long hair, two long bangs falling down the side, boots, kneelong skirt, brown leather corset, shoulder free blouse) in sideview, tailoring Crissy's suit; in the right edge of the painting Paula (young woman, short light turqoise hair, wearing plaided toefree boots, a plaided skirt and a bellyfree purple leather shirt) in sideview leaning with her butt against a shelf, amused facial expression, holding the fist in front of her mouth, grinning; in the left edge Conway's head (white hair, ponytail consisting of several streaks), impatient facial expression; Text: Conway "You still not ready?!", Potato, Crissy and Paula: "No!"; small oblong text box with an arrow towards Conway saying "Waiting for hours", decorated by Crissy's pocket watch.

Fist Things First

🇩🇪 Wir starten in die dritte Woche von Putins Angriffskrieg auf die Ukraine. All die düsteren Nachrichten mag ich hier nicht wiederholen, die findet ihr auch selber.

Die Liste mit den Links und Beiträgen zu Organisationen, die speziell Künstler*innen und LGBTQIA*-Personen aus der Ukraine unterstützen, die ich in meinem PaintLog vor zwei Wochen begonnen habe, ist in der Zwischenzeit wieder ein wenig gewachsen. Deshalb habe ich sie als eigene Seite als „List of Support“ ganz mit nach vorne ins Linkmenü gestellt.

Es ist nicht ganz einfach, von hieraus nun eine geschickte Überleitung zum zweiten Thema einzufädeln, doch habe ich auch in der letzten Woche an einem weiteren Beitrag für das Arcryla City Valentins-Event gearbeitet.

Nachdem meine bereits bekannte Kooperationspartnerin, Potato, kürzlich ein Bild mit Crissy, Paula, Potato und Conway gezeichnet hatte (siehe letzte Woche), hatte ich ebenso eine Idee zum Prompt Nr. 3 „Outfit„, die alle vier involvierte. (Nebenbei, Potato hatte vorgestern Geburtstag, also noch einmal Herzlichen Glückwunsch und alles Liebe von hier aus an dieser Stelle!).

🇬🇧 We are heading into the third week of Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine. I don’t want to repeat all the gloomy news here, you will find them yourself.

The list of links and postings about organizations that specifically support artists and LGBTQIA* folks from Ukraine, which I started in my PaintLog two weeks ago, has grown again a in the meantime. That’s why I put it as a separate subpage as „List of Support“ quite in the beginning of the link menu.

It’s not easy to thread a clever lead-in to the second theme from here now. Still, I’ve also been working on another post for the Arcryla City Valentine’s Event.

After my wellknown cooperation partner, Potato, recently shared a painting with Crissy, Paula, Potato and Conway (see last week), I had as well an idea for the prompt No. 3 „Outfit„, which involved all four of them. (By the way, Potato’s birthday was the day before yesterday, so Happy Birthday again and all the love you deserve!).

First Things First

„The day Potato and Paula persuaded Crissy to try out new outfits – and Conway waiting to cook the dinner.“

Potato wasn’t only Crissy’s best friend, she also was a talented tailor. So, she and Paula talked Crissy into trying out something new but since it takes time to do something well, in the meantime Conway was starving.

.

Digital painting, comic style: Crissy Faith (young woman, big round glasses, purple hair) in the centre of the painting, standing on a step stool, her right arm raised, wearing a black bellyfree leather suite with golden zippers and long leather gloves; next to her Potato (young woman, ginger neck long hair, two long bangs falling down the side, boots, kneelong skirt, brown leather corset, shoulder free blouse) in sideview, tailoring Crissy's suit; in the right edge of the painting Paula (young woman, short light turqoise hair, wearing plaided toefree boots, a plaided skirt and a bellyfree purple leather shirt) in sideview leaning with her butt against a shelf, amused facial expression, holding the fist in front of her mouth, grinning; in the left edge Conway's head (white hair, ponytail consisting of several streaks), impatient facial expression; Text: Conway "You still not ready?!", Potato, Crissy and Paula: "No!"; small oblong text box with an arrow towards Conway saying "Waiting for hours", decorated by Crissy's pocket watch.

Erneut habe ich mich mit einem einfachen Hintergrund begnügt und, da es ohnehin sehr comicartig ist, auf eine komplexe Raumausstattung verzichtet. Dass ich eine solche kurz angedacht hatte, sieht man daran, dass ich dennoch nicht umhin konnte, zwei Texturen zu nutzen, die ich extra hierfür heruntergeladen hatte. Es wäre ja zu schade drum gewesen, sie dann überhaupt nicht zu nutzen.

Auch Crissy ist im Prinzip aus dem Photograph-Prompt übernommen und Paula liegt liegt jene zu Grunde, die bereits beim Zeppelinflug Anwendung fand, gepaart mit jener aus dem Fairyfloss-Bild. Nur Potato musste ich komplett neu zeichnen. Hier geriet mir allerdings ihr eigenes allererstes Bild von dieser zur Vorlage, an der ich mich orientieren konnte. An einen ähnlichen Hintergrund wie dort hatte ich hier ebenfalls gedacht, aber … siehe oben.

Conway wollte ich ebenfalls unbedingt noch ins Bild bekommen, am besten in einer amüsanten Situation. Hier hatte ich eine Weile hin und her überlegt, in welche Situation ich die vier bringen könnte und bin dann schließlich bei der obigen angelangt. Ebenso war mein erster Gedanke, Conway im Ganzen zu zeichnen, aber das hätte dann doch irgendwie zu gezwungen gewirkt, weshalb ich es bei dem Kopf gelassen hatte.

Once again, I was content with a simple background and, since it’s very comic-like anyway, did without a complex room decor. That I briefly thought of such a thing can be seen from the fact that I still couldn’t avoid using two textures that I had downloaded especially for this purpose. It would have been too bad not to use them at all.

Likewise, Crissy is basically taken from the Photograph prompt and Paula is based on the one already used for the Zeppelin Night Ride, paired with the one from the Fairy Floss painting. I only had to draw Potato completely new. Here, however, I used her very first painting of her as a model to orientate myself. I also thought of a similar background as there, but … see above.

I also wanted to get Conway into the painting, preferably in an funny situation. I thought for a while back and forth, in which situation I could bring the four and then finally arrived at the above one. Also, my first thought was to draw Conway as whole body painting, but somehow that occured to me to be too forced, so I just went for the head.

Love

Love NotePhotographThe Way to a Woman’s Heart

🇩🇪 Diese momentan in der Welt zu sehen fällt zugegenermaßen schwer. Entsprechend bleibt mein Eintrag der letzten Woche noch eine Weile oben im PaintLog angeheftet.

Dennoch gibt es genug Ablenkung und tatsächlich Liebe zu entdecken, wenn man sich vom Doomscrollen nicht allzu sehr fertigmachen lässt. Für mich stellt das Zeichnen ebenfalls eine mögliche Art, den Belastungen durch die Weltlage zu entkommen.

Wie ihr euch sicher erinnert, fand im Februar in Arcryla City das Valentins-Event statt. Ein erstes Bild hatte ich euch hier vor zwei Wochen bereits präsentiert, inzwischen sind noch drei weitere hinzugekommen, sodass ich den Arcryla-City-Bereich meiner Webseite nunmehr um das Valentins-Event erweitert habe.

Beginnen möchte ich jedoch nicht mit meinen eigenen Bildern, da nämlich auch meine Kollaborationspartnerin aus dem Sleepover– und dem Zeppelin-Night-Ride-Bild an diesem Event teilgenommen und für Prompt Nr. 2 „Best Friend“ ein Bild bzw. derer zwei gezeichnet hat, auf dem sowohl Crissy, wie auch Paula, Potato und Conway zu sehen sind! Ich finde, sie hat alle ausgezeichnet getroffen!

Mein erstes Bild indessen, Prompt Nr. 1, hätte hier eigentlich letzte Woche bereits erscheinen sollen, musste aus bekannten Gründen aber auf diese Woche verschoben werden. Ein ähnliches Bild, allerdings aus anderer Perspektive, hatte ich schon länger im Kopf, nun bot es sich an, es auf diese Weise umzusetzen. Inspiration war ein Amphibia Fanpic auf Instagram. Dennoch war es eine recht knackige Übung in Anatomie, speziell Kopf und der sichtbare Teile des Gesichts mit Nasen- und Mundpartie:

🇬🇧 At the moment to see this in the world is difficult. Accordingly, my entry from last week will remain pinned to the top of this PaintLog for a while.

Still, there’s enough distraction and actually love to be discovered if you don’t let the doomscrolling get you down too much. For me, drawing is also a possible way to escape the horrors of the world.

As you surely remember, the Valentine’s event took place in Arcryla City in February. I had already presented you a first painting two weeks ago, in the meantime three more have been created, so that I have now expanded the Arcryla City section of this website to include the Valentins-Event.

But I don’t want to start with my own pictures, because my collaboration partner from the Sleepover and the Zeppelin Night Ride painting also participated in this event and did a drawing (actually two) for Prompt No. 2 „Best Friend“, in which Crissy, as well as Paula, Potato and Conway can be seen! I think she did an excellent job of capturing all of them!

My first painting, Prompt No. 1, should have been shared here last week, but had to be postponed to this week for well-known reasons. A similar painting, but from a different perspective, I had in mind for some time, now it offered itself to implement it in this way. Inspiration was an Amphibia fanpic on Instagram. Nevertheless, it was quite an exercise in anatomy, especially head and the visible parts of the face with nose and mouth area:

Love Note

The day Paula had to leave early – but left a note.

Digital painting, comic style: View from above; Crissy (young woman, short purple hair) is lying in her bed on her belly, eyes closed, ruffled hair, ruffled bellyfree pajama, the right hand is holding a hald band (choker), the head is resting on her left arm; to her left a plush water bear clothed like a mechanic, to her right a small letter with indistinct handwriting, the signature "Paula" and a purple lipstick print; there are two pillows (a small one under a big one), the blanket covers only a part of Crissy's butt, it's right side is pulled back; the left side of the painting is covered by faint but warm yellow light, hinting to a pattern of a window's frame.

Das zweite Bild, Prompt Nr. 6, spielt in der Nacht, in der Crissy, Paula, Potato und Conway zusammen auf die Zeppelinfahrt gegangen sind.

In diesem Fall habe ich auf denselben Hintergrund zurückgegriffen und das Bild dann noch einmal separat gespeichert, um es in Sepia umzufärben und dieses dann als Basis für das Foto einzufügen.Kurz hatte ich überlegt, das Foto von vornherein in Sepia zu zeichnen, zunächs die richtigen Farben und Schattierungen zu nutzen, erschien mir jedoch akkurater und wenn man schon ein Programm hat, dass in Sepia umfärben kann, wieso soll man das dann nicht auch nutzen?

Kleines Detail am Rande: Endlich ist im Hintergrund auch Potatos Handtasche zu erkennen, im Zeppelin Ride Bild war diese noch von Potato verdeckt.

The second painting, prompt No. 6, takes place the night Crissy, Paula, Potato, and Conway went on the Zeppelin Night Ride together.

In this case, I reverted to the same background and then saved the image again separately to recolor it in sepia and then to paste it as the base for the photo. Briefly, I considered drawing the photo in sepia from the start. Still, first using the right colors and shades seemed more accurate and if you have a program that can recolor in sepia, why not use it?

A small detail: Finally you can see Potato’s handbag in the background, in the Zeppelin Night Ride painting it was covered by her.

Photograph

The Night they went on the Zeppelin Ride – and Paula nicked the bottle.

On the Zeppelin Night Ride there was a photographer around. After their dance, Paula and Crissy posed but the photographer had bad timing …

Digital painting, comic style: A photograph in sepia colours slightly askrew showing a ballroom inside of a Zeppelin with Paula and Crissy in it; Crissy: young woman, short purple hair, big round glasses, skirt, bellyfree top, toefree kneeboots; Paula: young woman, light green hair, a big bang combed to the left side, knee long dress, parted at the front, many frills, bellyfree shirt, plateau kneeboots, holding a bottle of wine to hide it behind her back; they are standing close together, Crissy looking blushing to Paula, Paula looking to the wine bottle out of the corners of her eyes; chairs, a table and a window showing a star filled night sky in the background; the photo is laid centrally over the (coloured) version of the Zeppelin's ballroom.

Und zuletzt Prompt Nr. 7, „Baking“. Bei diesem Bild wollte ich einfach nur eine kleine, kurze Episode aus dem Leben des frisch zusammengekommenen Paares darstellen. Hier was ich zugegebenermaßen faul, für Crissy habe ich das Template wiederverwendet, das ich von ihr für das Haustier-Prompt der September-Challenge gezeichnet hatte und auch keinen richtigen Hintergrund verwendet:

And lastly, prompt No 7, „Baking“. For this painting, I just wanted to depict a small, short episode from the lives of the newly made out couple. Here I was admittedly lazy, for Crissy I reused the template I had drawn of her for the September Challenge pet prompt and I didn’t use a proper background, too:

The Way to a Woman’s Heart

The day Crissy decided to build the Steamomix 2000 to bake Paula a cake.

Crissy has zero baking skills, so she chose to solve this problem in her own way – she just had to fix some minor adjustments on the prototype.

Digital painting, comic style: Crissy (young woman, purple hair, big round glasses, wearing yellow and black striped trousers and a short-legged dark violet mechanic's coat, a pocket watch dangling out of the back pocket) in side view, sitting in the squat watching a robot labelled "Steamomix 2000", a roughly egg form on three wheels with several hoses, cogwheels and cylinders, on top a funnel with a red arrow facing downwards, there also is a small open oven's door and a conveyor band with a black burnt cake on it, covered in black smoke; a thick black cloud of smoke is emerging from a small exhaust pipe, hitting Crissy straight in the face.
Digital painting, comic style, light background: Crissy Faith, a young woman with short purple hair and big round glasses in a pajama embroidered with bears with eight legs, she is seen from the side hunkering down with a box of algae next to a mechanical bear with eight legs, the core of che mechanical bear is an aquarium, a projector throws a picture on the wall showing a water bear approaching towards some green algae, on the ground a pocket watch