The Dragon Flower of Milk and Honey

It’s been a while since my last PaintLog. I just didn’t feel motivated enough in the last week and whenever I tried, other obligations kicked in and well – if something that is supposed to be fun feels like duty … take a break.

Tbh, there wasn’t a lot of art so far in October. Not that I was able to share, I mean. The past three weeks I was working on an entry to the Arcryla City Midnight Gala that takes place next Friday evening / Saturday morning. As usual, our entries are supposed to be revealed during the showcase. It’s going to be a Halloween event with costumes and all. So stay tuned!

What I was able to share were the second and third Inktober piece, keeping up adding prompts to the Heartbroken Goddess. As mentioned before, I was working on the Halloween piece and after finishing this, I just wanted to do some low-key just for fun piece. Therefore, I again went back to Eusthy.

However, I will not do an elaborated description and explanations into the drawing process of these pieces this time, but I’ll leave it with short thoughts and comments.

Heartbroken Goddess:
White Flower + Dragon Skull

The continuation of Kalisamiii’s Inktober challenge. As mentioned before, I added the next two prompts.

While the Flower actually was a new-drawn piece, I already prepared the Dragon Skull when creating the basic painting. Admittedly, I was a little bit lazy and it perhaps wasn’t the initial purpose of the prompt, but I still was tempted to try it this way.

Arrivals:
Milk & Honey

This Arrivals comic was actually one of the first I came up with. Originally, I intended to make it the second episode, but somehow, the other attempts to crawl onto land were fitting better into order.

Meet Silvie the silverfish-like apterygota (again). This time, she got a bigger role. Most fun, of course, was to think of the plot twist with the point in the end.

The Goddess Next Door

Digital painting made with an ink brush in dark blueish black and light colours: A young woman holding a heart with a darkened area inside in front of herself; she has white short hair, framing her face, the head is lowered, the eyes are closed, tears can be seen; no visible clothes but the heart and the hand covering her breast and shadows around her covering arms and lower body, tiny gleaming stars in the darkness and in the foreground.

Neighbours – Heartbroken Goddess: Love

October has arrived and with it several Inktober challenges. Ever since I started digital drawing seriously, I participated. Last year I did the Linktober challenge and I thought to take part again this year. However, I was without inspiration, I wasn’t in the mood and I probably won’t have the time to do daily drawings, so I skipped.

Instead I found inspiration in another (a weekly challenge) that I will present you below.

Before doing this, you also will find episode 2 of my primeval fish comic, this time dealing with its neighbours – and some old friends.

Neighbours

Last week I started the Arrivals comic series. Right from the beginning I had some comic ideas in my mind (and I still have). The initial ideas often sounded funnier in my head than the actual carrying out.

Not only that I had to find different words for „neighbours“, „friend“, „fellows“ etc., originally the comic lacked a real final punch line. There even wasn’t Lil’Scor raspberrying on the table in this point of time and Eusthy just would say something like „Perhaps I should crawl back into the sea“.

Then the picture of the extra panel popped up in my mind. Because Eusthy’s mood didn’t get damped until panel 4, I had to draw a panel different to the one originally intended to get him crawl back into the sea.

Enter Eusthwo:

If you look close, you also will see that I now added the names of my animal protagonists and as for the sea creatures … all but for the guy in the right bottom corner were in my mind right from the beginning. Initially I thought of some kind of big jellyfish, but I wanted to have something typical devonian.

Therefore, I roamed paintings of the devonian seas. Since I already draw a fish, I didn’t want to draw another one like an early shark, but finally, I found those … devonian sea things with those petal like arms and included it into the comic.

Heartbroken Goddess: Love

As explained above, this year I got inspired by a weekly Inktober challenge. This year it’s Kalisamiii’s Heartbroken Goddess prompt list.

So far I did the „basis“ painting with this week’s prompt „Love“. I plan to add the other prompts in the course of the next week, so the painting will change step by step.

As usual, I drew the inktober painting with „inky“ brushes and in inky colours. This time, I started with a blue tone. After „finishing“ the heart, I did the outlines of the hands but then switched to the body (body, head + hair) of the goddess herself.

Because I only had a vague image of her in my mind, I started with my usual non-inky brushes to get the lines right. Only when those seemed right, I started the inky brush on a new layer. Initially, I imagined her pose / the perspective a little bit different but the good thing with something this new, I can adjust it as I go along and this way I liked it even better.

I drew the heart with a hatching and as I now started „colouring“ the body and the head, I wanted to do likewise, but processing showed that the hatching would be too rough. However, I noticed two things. About the first one I will tell you in a few weeks (it has something to do with one of the other prompts), the second thing was the colour of the hair. Originally, I planned her to be dark haired but then I noticed how well the white hair suits her.

Finally, as I went to render her, I switched from the initial blue to a bluish black tone. Furthermore, I changed the center of the heart to black, indicating the broken and therefore darkened heart.

Before I could colour in the hands, I had to draw their lines anew. I resized them to better fit to the body and I mirrored the right hand before drawing the body to get be able to adjust it correctly. Now I had to fix this so they would look naturally.

Regarding the arms, I admittedly cheated a little bit. Since I planned to get them hidden in the shadows, I went lazy and didn’t do them at all. Apropos shadows, the stars in them were another last-minute idea and even more to put some of them into the foreground with a more intense blur than the ones in the rest of the shadows.

To go where no Eusthenopteron (V2.0) has gone before

First!

After the last weeks‘ fully colored and fully rendered paintings I wanted to do something simple. Luckily, just two weeks ago an idea popped up in my mind that I thought I could do in not time (of course it took me another week …).

Because it didn’t really fit into one of the other pages and because I plan to do more of them, I added another subpage to my website:

Arrivals

First!

I don’t know how I exactly came up with this idea, I think I saw an artwork with a fish and only a few days ago I read one of the comics going around on Instagram.

In my head this comic changed a few times before I did the final version. Furthermore, I wasn’t sure about if doing this comic first or another one (that presumably now will become the second).

Until panel 4, this comic initially was the same in every version. However, I originally just wanted to drop the „EUSTHENOPTERON!“ shout in the end of the comic in panel 4, not showing any other fish. I was struggling with showing it in an extra panel, though, asking „You called?“. I thought this would’ve been a rather lame joke, tought. Therefore I almost skipped it.

In this point of time I still had to look up the name of the fish that first crawled onto land but as I did so, I learned that the only fish with a suitable name and a suitable shape nowadays is considered to have lived strictly aquatic.

Therefore, I thought of Eusthwo answering Eusthy in panel for by adding „thingy“ to his claim being the first Eusthenopteron on land and Eusthy reoeating a resigned „thingy“, accompanyed by the explanatory text in the last panel.

Still, I noticed that this joke won’t work, if you don’t know about the things only explained in the last panel. But a joke that’s explained afterwards isn’t a joke anymore. Therefore, I deleted the „thingy“ thing but only dropping the „EUSTHENOPTERON!“ shout wouldn’t work either (although I initially thought otherwise).

So, I sortof combined both ideas, exchanging the „Your called?“ for a „Hey! What’s up?“ and rubbing Eusthy inte its nose that he technically isn’t even an Eusthenopteron able to walk on land. To be honest … Eusthwo initially said „Hi!“. Since Silvi, the silverfish in panel 3, already greeted with this word, I had to think of something else. This again took me some time because it should be quite collogial and quick to say.

I hope you’ll enjoy this comic as I enjoyed drawing it: