Schlagwort: Samandra

Salamander³ + Titans = Happy Easter!

Digital painting, comic style: A scene on a forest clearing; in the center a big bonfire, dancing in front of it Raven (young woman, rosy skin, short white hair as sidecut, wearing a simple brown dress) and Samandra (young woman, brown skin, red, shoulder long hair, wearing a grey apron and brown leather trousers), they are holding hands, blue light runes (Raven) and yellow polar lights (Samandra) following the curves the bare feet are drawing on the ground; light runes resp. polar lights also are covering both, taking the forms of dresses, shoes and gloves; they also cover the connected hands and are flying through the air like fountains; in the background four other witches, a red haired riding a big floating battle axe, a tall purple dressed rolling eyes, a small chunky one looking towards the tall one, one white haired dancing with someone who is hidden by the fire; in the air in front ot the moon the pure black silhouette of another person spreading their arms; there are more silhouettes of people dancing or talking to each other in the further background and the tops of conifers; in the foreground shadows of three other people (two of them standing very close to each other) and blurred vegetation; blurred yellow blossoms flying through the foreground.

ZodiOCs:
Aries

Witchphibians:
Changing Tides

Witchphibians:
Enchanting Moonlight

Attack on Titan fanart:
The Only Regret

Happy Easter everyone! May you have some relaxing and calm holidays!

When starting writing the this month‘ PaintLog I thought it would turn out to be a end of March recap about only two art pieces. How wrong I was! I finished a third one and then, within one day, even a fourth one. The first three of them are Witchphibians Art.

Because we are in the next Zodiac season by now, Aries season, the first one is a new ZodiOC piece. The second one introduces a new character plus Samandra’s origin story and the third one depicts a scene I was working on for two weeks (and far longer in my mind).

And finally, there is my debut in Attack on Titan fanart.

ZodiOCs: Aries

So, Aries it is. Aries is the ram, the male sheep. With sheep I associate wool and with wool (or any other fabric) I associate Samandra Elvennewt from the Witchphibians series. Moreover, mythologically, Aries honours the ram that provided the Golden Fleece. So, it was an easy choice to show her bewitching threads of wool forming into aforesaid fleece (and again, there is a version that would be too risky for WordPress on you know where or how to get there) .

This time I drew her without the salamander’s tail and showing her from behind, looking over the right shoulder. I not only wanted to practice this particular pose but also to show the trousers mechanic.

As mentioned before, Sam or parts of her every so often turn back into salamander parts unintentionally – the tail being the most prominent one. Therefore, Sam tailored trousers which’s back part would flip open by the force of the growing tail without revealing her buttocks when it isn’t around.

In a previous painting you also could spot the threads at her hips heigth which she can pull to get this mechanism back in form once the tail is gone again.

Another detail in the background is the star constellation in form of a frog. Perhaps you remember that I already included a constellation in form of a salamander in the Sagittarius ZodiOC piece (featuring Samandra’s friend and main protagonist Raven). This should’ve been a hint in which direction their relationship is going to go.

It wasn’t intentionelly but when drawing the Aries piece, I noticed that this very salamander already had this „looking back over the shoulder pose“ just like Samandra now. So, my first attempt of drawing the frog constellation was to recreate Raven’s pose.

However, these attempts resulted in a way too fat and confused frog instead one who is looking forward to see her friend.

Witchphibians: Changing Tides

After drawing some of the younger witches and witch apprentices of the Witchphibians series, I wanted to show the older witches for a change, beginning with Mirro, Samandra’s master. It turned out to also show Sam’s origin story.

It took me a while to figure out how to manage this, on the one hand showing Mirro in full body size, on the other hand the transformation of Samandra into a human being. Both should’ve been recognizable but except for drawing them in side view it only could’ve been managed for one of them. Because we already know Samandra since I have drawn her several times, I chose to show Mirro full frontal and Samandra from behind.

I initially thought of a rather quiet scene at a small pond, but this may have gone being rather lame and boring. Then I got the idea to make it more dynamic. However, I didn’t abandon the peaceful pond scene completely. You still can see the plants on its shore and the one or other inrecognizable blurred dot through the roaring waters where one of the salamanders or tadpoles is swimming around.

The choice to do it the aforementioned way led to practice perspective. So far I am not very familiar with figures looming above other figures, of a POV way below the looming character. I had to look up references to get Mirro right but to enlarge her arms and hands to give the impression of depth (I’m still not 100 % satisfied with them but I think it’s okay for my first try).

Sidenote: The role of mirrors in the world of magic is heavily inspired by Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Novel „Witches Abroad“. (In general, I highly recommend to read the Discworld Witches series for a better understanding of the Witchphibians universe).

Witchphibians: Enchanting Moonlight

This piece felt like it had taken me way too long. It was two weeks of work with several edits to get the composition right.

The initial idea of the moonlight rite already originated in my last year’s 200 followers celebration DTIYS. It basically shows the same scenario, although in the meantime I underwent Raven and Sam some small design changes.

  • Digital painting, comic style: A scene on a forest clearing; in the center a big bonfire, dancing in front of it Raven (young woman, rosy skin, short white hair as sidecut, wearing a simple brown dress) and Samandra (young woman, brown skin, red, shoulder long hair, wearing a grey apron and brown leather trousers), they are holding hands, blue light runes (Raven) and yellow polar lights (Samandra) following the curves the bare feet are drawing on the ground; light runes resp. polar lights also are covering both, taking the forms of dresses, shoes and gloves; they also cover the connected hands and are flying through the air like fountains; in the background four other witches, a red haired riding a big floating battle axe, a tall purple dressed rolling eyes, a small chunky one looking towards the tall one, one white haired dancing with someone who is hidden by the fire; in the air in front ot the moon the pure black silhouette of another person spreading their arms; there are more silhouettes of people dancing or talking to each other in the further background and the tops of conifers; in the foreground shadows of three other people (two of them standing very close to each other) and blurred vegetation; blurred yellow blossoms flying through the foreground.
  • Text sheet (blurred and faded version of the painting) with an explanatory text: Enchanting Moonlight; Every once in a Blue Moon, the Enchanting Moonlight fiest was held. Witches and moon have a strong connection, full moons and new moons in particular. But the greatest power came from a moon that shouldn't be there by definition, and yet it was. An additional moon in a month was able to evoke powers that still slumbered within a witch. Not a few witch apprentices discovered their special magic knack during their first Enchanting Moonlight ritual and those who already had discovered them learned to better understand to control them better to make the utmost of them. Every witch apprentice was looking forward to their first Blue Moon in excitement. It was initiation rite and treshold to a new stage on their witches path. All kind of witches of all shapes and ages were there. As it was a night of tradition and celebrating it also was a night to party and for bonding in one way or the other. And, of course, there was the dance.
  • Digital painting, comic style, cut out of the DTIYS announcing painting, focussing on the main characters: 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.

The dance is new, though. I wanted to show Raven dancing with Samandra like Luz Noceda and Amity Blight did in the Disney show „The Owl House“ in the amazing Grom dance scene (especially the drawing circles part). I didn’t even had to think about this happening during the moonlight right and even the title is a reference to the related episode „Enchanting Grom Fright“.

I even gave them similar „clothing“. Their magic forming festive clothes was another new idea I got when thinking about this piece. However, I swapped them, added gloves for Raven and gave her another kind of „shoes“. Like the witches in the background (you may recognize some of them) they still are in their „standard“ dresses because even behold the importance of the fiest, witches usually aren’t rich, they stick to what they have until it falls apart.

Only Kimeira showed up without parts of her armour and weaponry (aka I was too lazy to draw this too). However, if you look close, you will spot green lights in the background. This is her gear patrouilling the dancing ground to make sure nothing unintended will disturb the fiest.

It is no coincidence that I drew Mirro before I drew this art piece. When drawing Mirro I already had the idea to this one, but I wanted to introduce at least her before starting „the big one“.

All the other characters in the background who are not mere silhouettes are characters who already are living in my mind rentfree, though. Some of the m already for quite a while (the one floating in front of the moon since aforementioned DTIYS, for example). They will be introduced to a later point in time.

Speaking in technically terms of drawing, there were two, well, three challenges:

1. I had to get the pose of the dancers right. Interacting characters are a challenge as such, not only the touch of body parts like hands and fingers but also the directions of their eyes etc. But you also have to get the pose right, the anatomy. The lineart toll me several days before every leg, every feet, every knee felt right.

2. The size of the background characters and their composition. The farther away, the smaller in size a character appears. Kimeira should be more in the foreground than the two older witches and the white haired dancing witch behind the fire further in the background. Mirro is a tall woman, her companion a small and crouched one. It wasn’t that easy to avoid Kimeira looking like a giant in comparision.

3. Color scheme, lighting and shading. The night has a blue overall scheme and of course it has shadows, it is one big shadow. And yet, there is moonlight and there is the bonfire, of course. I added several gradient layers (most on multiply), added dark blue, yellow and dark green or erased parts of it to get all these right.

Attack om Titan fanart: The Only Regret

There are few shows that are as intense and thrilling as the anime Attack on Titan with an amount of loss of characters you are relating to that I never saw before.

It was time to do fanart about it.

Because I hate to get spoiled on social media and the Attack on Titan fandom is notoriously spoilering all the time (yes, Karon, I know you read the Manga, you don’t have to give away the death of a beloved character, though!), I tried to be careful to not doing this. Therefore, I did two versions. The first one only contains mild spoilers, things that have been quite obvious right from the beginning. The second version, however, gives away season 2 character developments and fates.

Therefore, please only read further if you are prepared for this.

Perhaps, there also should be a content warning: Grief, Loss, a romance without happy ending.

Ymir is somewhat like one of my secret favorite characters. She and Historia are no main characters and their subplot is only a small one among others. Still, their story, their characters, their relationship intriguited me, intriguited the part inside of me that responses to romance, to romantic tragedy, to drama.

It was hard for me to understand why Ymir made the decision she made. Then I realized, she perhaps figured that in the life in which Historia is going to be who she really is, there simply won’t be a place for her at her side. (Disclaimer: This doesn’t mean that she would’ve been right with this conclusion, but it may have been enough to let her act the way she did.)

I know, the Ymir we know wouldn’t show tears in public, but I wanted to show that she (supposedly) has a softer side, though, I wanted her to show emotions, grief, well, this The Only Regret.

Surprisingly, this piece only took me one afternoon and the evening, I learned that I am very much able to draw something in less than two days. I also think I met her design quite well in my style. And again it was a welcome exercise in lighting and shading.

At first I though of showing her in her final scene, her words to Historia from earlier episodes and her final words of the letter hovering in the background. Then I thought it would’ve been more impressive and more tragic to show whole passages of the letter and then to show the whole letter.

Another decision I had to make was if to show or not to show a writing utensil – and what kind of writing utensil. On trial I added a quill in some point of the drawing process. When searching for the look of the letter’s paper (which format, how many times folded etc.), I stumbled over a screenshot of Ymir writing this very letter. There was no quill, there only was a pen. So I changed it to a pen.

My initial idea didn’t contain any writing utensils. So I tried out to switch it off. But in this case it may have looked as if the letter was addressed to her. Fans of the show would’ve known (but perhaps they could’ve been confused), people unfamiliar with it would get the wrong impression. Therefore, I switched it on again and kept it this way.

(K)Nights and Days on the Beach

Witchphibians:
Kimeira Wartribe

DTIYS:
Cactus Knight

Witchphibians:
The Witches Almanac

Arcryla City:
Kiss on the Beach

It’s only two weeks since the February recap, but I already got four new art pieces, so let’s do a mid-March recap!

First of all, Witchphibians series got a new character, Kimeira Wartribe. I actually created here already in February but saved her for the March’s PaintLog.

Creating this character and the accompanying text sheet also made it necessary (or to it felt) to write down all the Witchphibians lore I came up so far in one single work.

At the same time I changed the subpage’s web address from „Raven-Frogfeet“ to „Witchphibians„. The old page still is available, so older links won’t lead into nothingness, but now you will get directly on a page that bears the series name.

Before doing this I also participated in another DTIYS and afterwards I wanted to draw a new Crissy&Paula piece so badly. It turned out not to be done that fast as hoped for (as usual), but I’m quite proud of it (and there again is a not so safe for work version on my special Patreon account*).

*If you are new here:You will get access via a tip in my jar on Ko-fi.

Witchphibians: Kimeira Wartribe

It took me almost a whole year to add another character to the Witchphibians series.

I had this idea of a battle witch riding an axe instead of a broom some time ago. Doing so, I could have stopped by drawing her on an empty canvas, but as usual I got carried away and thought „What if she is some kind of guardian of Witchwood?*“.

I also was struggling a little bit with here name. Initially, I thought of something like „Chimeira“, but this would’ve been shortened to „Chi“ and this name already is taken by another character (in a completely different context) who is really dear to me.

So I got to the „K“ and this way I was able to shorten her name to „Kim“. I also wasn’t sure if she is going to be spelled „Kimeira“ or „Kimera“ but in the end, I kept the „ei“. Additionally, I wanted to call her „Yasha ‚Kimeira‘ Wartribe“.

At the point of time I was drawing her, I read a book about Star Trek: The Next Generation. So, „Yasha“ would’ve been a blending of the name of the security officer „Tasha Yar“. Plus, it resembled the name „Sasha Waybright“ from Disney’s Amphibia series. It wasn’t intended but she even got a scar in her face.

Still, I abandoned „Yasha“ for now since it wouldn’t have fit into the witches name system that I established so far (on the other hand this leading to writing the Almanac (see below) to explain the handling of the witches names (among other things)).

However, you can be asured, the name „Yasha“ connected with Kimeira will pop up again in the future.

Another issue I was struggling with was if she is going to be called a „Battle Witch“ or a „Warrior Mage“. Again, the fist one wouldn’t have fit into the nomenclature system of my witches world where witches with a magical profession are called „mages“ and, well, nobodys stops her (or others) to call „Battle Witch“ in day to day live.

*The not yet mentioned region where the Witchphibians series is taking place.

With this piece I took the opportunity to playing around with blurs again. Sadly, many of the background details I worked on for hours go blurred too and there was no way to de-blur them without crushing the whole painting. But, well it, it wasn’t that of a problem.

A problem was, however, that I added a leafy shadow overlay but I forgot to blur it first round. Therefore, it looked more like Kimeira was covered in mud. The (now) final piece, though, is the corrected version.

Sidenote: Not long after I finished Kimeira, the anime show „Izetta“ on Crunchyroll caught my eye (and I loved to watch it). Seems like there already have been other people around with the idea of a fighting witch riding on a weapon through the air – Izetta even has the same hair colour like Kimeira.

DTIYS: Cactus Knight

I don’t do a lot of DTIYS. Like with fanart, ideas regarding my own OCs are too many and time is rare. Still, this DTIYS of Greenfinch.Garden (Instagram) caught my idea right from the beginning and I wanted to participate. However, it took me until a few days before the deadline before I got any idea how to approach it.

I got the idea of an armor resembling an organic grown plant and its leaves with spikes, like a cactus. Same applies to the sword. Hence the title of my drawing. I even thought of giving her a green skin colour but then I thought brown also will be fit for a cactus.

The armor in the original painting is more silver but to get the cactus, it had to be changed towards green. This had the disadvantage that I had to struggle with the sword not standing out enough. Both had the same colour tone, the one the original painting provided for the plants. So I painted the blade way brighter and the hilt way darker.

I also changed the pose and this resulted in an exercise in shading because now one side of her body lies in shadows, the other one is lightened by the moon. Actually, I’m quiete proud how I managed this.

Witchphibians: The Witches Almanac

As hinted above, when creating Kimeira I noticed there were so many details I until now only kept in my head or hinted at in past posts you would have to search first to get this information. It also may become handy to have something you actually can look minor details up, if they slipped your mind (even as creator of the series).

So, the idea of an almanac to collect all the lore of Witchphibians was born.

I put it in the design of an actual Almanac, using the paper texture as background which I used since the Mermay 2020 entries as background for things written down on pages (may it be Samandra’s Fabric Journal, the Mermaid Squad’s character sheets or the letter Sam received on „Pragmatic Alien Day“).

Right from the beginning I wanted to decorate it with (newly drawn) tiny sketches but it also came handy to just insert old drawings in black & white (or rather a deep purple & transparent parts).

So far I shared three postings on Instagram, feauturing the introduction, a disclaimer, the terminology and some chapters of the main part.

The first part is some kind of introduction and terminology to tell you what the Almanac is talking about when using certain terms. And since there were space left, I also included a disclaimer with copyright information and information about what influenced to this series.

The more interesting information is to be found in the main part which gives an overview over the witches community, social structury, some traditions and general behaviours. It will be continued in the future whenever new information comes to my mind and feels consistent enough to be put into words and sentences.

Arcryla City: Kiss on the Beach

Since my last Crissy painting (as Aquarius) was from January, my last Arcryla City painting (Secret Santa to Eun Bee, depicting her OC) and the last Crissy Arcryla City painting even from end of October (the Midnight Gala piece), I felt the urge to draw a Crissy Paula Arcryla City painting again.

„One advantage of living in a floating city was that you were able to go places. Sandy, warm and splashy places.“ (NSFW version: „One advantage of living in a floating city was that you were able to go places. Sandy, hot and wet places.“)

I felt, they needed some „us“ time and also wanted to took the opportunity to practice anatomy and anatomy poses again (at the same time adding more content to my Patreon account for more explicite poses).

First I thought of depicting them making out under the shower. To get a SFW piece I would’ve tucked them into one big blanket. But this wouldn’t have taken away the N in NSFW at all (even more so, because it would’ve fired the fantasy and got you an even more imaginative picture in you head of what they might be doing there under the blanket).

So, I tried to skip the blanket and just give them swimsuits* for the SFW version and it worked in every way I could imagine. The shower head remained, though, because there are showers on public beaches. The hardest part of this drawing was to draw the kiss, though. If you don’t want to get a nose boop, the heads had to be tilted. Therefore, I looked up references and drew my way pixel for pixel towards the kiss you are able to see now.

The first approach of beach scene already contained Acrcryla City floating in the sky in the background. There were two reasons why I additionally put some leaves in the upper right corner.

1. Because I planned a NSFW version it would’ve looked strange seeing them enjoying each other when a whole city in the background is able to watch them doing so.

2. The city alone won’t have the same effect as the other object in the edges of the painting. There would’ve been some kind of big space, leading the eye away from the important part towards the floating city.

So, I added an extra object to frame the painting properly. In a first attempt, now the city wasn’t to be seen anymore at all, but I erased some of the leaves. Therefore, you now are able to spot the city again (after giving attention to anything else).

*Perhaps you noticed, Crissy’s swimsuit resembles the colours of the Pansexual Pride flag, Paula’s fingers and toes nail polish together with the bikini the one of the Lesbian Pride flag.

From Snow to Space

Witchphibians: Warming Thoughts

Ride with Sally

Pragmatic Alien Day

ZodiOCs: Pisces

February is a short month, 3/4 are already gone. I managed to draw five paintings in three weeks. Surprisingly, two of them were fanart or kind of fanart. Still, I only will show you four today to keep the fifth for the next time.

The first one is another tale from the Witchphibians series, not only telling a story but also adding to the lore.The second one is fanart of the Netflix series „Trinkets“.

There won’t be any (heavy) spoilers, although in theory the painting as such may be considered a spoiler (despite not really being one).

Another fanart is the Valentins piece I drew of Sam Uggler, the OC of the Instagram artist AlienPrideArt and last but not least, we entered Pisces season. So, enjoy the addition of two fishy OCs to my ZodiOCs series.

Witchphibians: Warming Thoughts

This piece was inspired by an exchange of thoughts on a Discord server about how Raven and Sam would manage winterly tempertures. While feeling cold easily but managing quite well in their human forms, it could get quite freezily when changing into their amphibian forms at the wrong moment.

So, this image popped up in my mind and it was rather convenient since I regretted that I couldn’t show all the character design changes of Raven in the SFW version of the Witchphibian painting before. Now you will be able to spot the freckles on the shoulder region, the arms, the legs, regions that usually would’de have been covered by her dress (on Instagram and Ko-fi at least, for the NSFW version see Patreon).

There were a lot of things I practiced this time when drawing it: Perspective, pose, anatomy, water in it’s various forms, but it turned out the actually new thing I tried out was the overall lighting of each section of the painting (left, right, front / main characters) to give each of them a specific feeling.

To this purpose I used overlays and colour gradients. The left side got a blue overlay to give it a cold, wet, muddy feeling, the right one an orange overlay for a warm, dry and clean impression. Finally, I laid a red overlay over the front to make it rosy, cosy, comfortable.

Finally, there is the Spongehole Magic you can read about in slide two. This is an idea I came up with when adding Samandra’s glow to her spots. They glow when she is excited or when she’s doing magic. So, the spongehole magic theory was a handy device to provide her with as much fresh, hot, clean water as she needs to thaw Raven out.

It is inspired by wormholes, of course. When wormholes are holes in space adn time that are connected by tunnels, why shouldn’t the same apply to sponge holes? You would have to have magic abilities to use them, but since sponge tissue technically is nothing different from any other natural fabric materials (animal or plant based), it would be an easy match for Samandra the Fabric Mage to get hold of them.

For everyone who is interested in the drawing process I also created a short video clip made from the drawing steps which I shared earlier with my supporters on Ko-fi.

Ride with Sally

The Netflix show „Trinkets“ is one of my guilty pleasures. I can watch the show again and again and again (and actually, I’m doing this). It’s one of my comfort shows with a great cast, great music, lovely relationships and teenage High School drama with a lot up and downs (most of the time simultanously). It’s already a few years old but Elodie and Jill still make a cute couple.

Is this a spoiler? Not really, not if you already saw the painting. And even regarding the show it’s no real spoiler since the he depicted scene only is inspired, not an actual scene of the show. If you know the show, you surely will recognize the scene, though. If not, see here (Spoiler alert!).

You will notice that I changed Jill’s costume slightly by adding the badge (which also has a special meaning within the show).

It says „I ride with Sally“, hence the title of this piece.

Pragmatic Alien Day

AlienPrideArt‘s drawing and dialogues with his OC Sam Uggler are hilarious. They made me want to draw Sam in my own style and in the forefront of Valentines Day inspiration struck me after seeing this post.

Sam may be a very pragmatic alien, but she asked for Tequilla, so she will get Tequilla and a good old-fashioned Valentines letter.

Happy Pragmatic Alien Day, Sam!

ZodiOC: Pisces

Admittedly, this was an easy one. I remembered Arrivals comic strips that featured two fish last year. Therefore, meet Eusthy and Eusthwo again!

I kept the drawing style of the comics and (of course) the mood of their personalities. In the background you may notice Lilly’s (the dragonfly), Miles (the millipede) and Silvies (the silver fish) accompanying them as constellations in the sky.

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.



Skatie Skysurfer



ZodiOCs: Aquarius



Witchphibians: Secrets

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.

  • 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.
  • Character sheeet, the original painting slightly faded in the background, text: "Skatie Skysurfer"; "Born with wings too small to fly the usual way, Skatie had to get inventive to keep up with the other fairies. So, she created her own pair of wings and surf gear to plow the skies."; "Natural wings still strong enough to propel her forward"; "Leaf wings designed for uplift and steering, attached to the hooks on her belt when on ground"; Natural fairy dust, weight-reducing to some extent, this way supporting the take-off"; "Riding the Wind: Using winds and aiflow for controlled gliding through the air".

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!

  • Digital painting, comic style: Crissy Faith (young woman, short purple hair, big round glasses, wearing a bellyfree pink pyjama with waterbear embroidery) hunkering down to an eight-legget mechanical robot with the head of a bear and an aquarium on its back, it has a ball in form of algea cells between its foremost paws, the eyes are closed; Crissy is holding a vase with cockwheel decor, the lit opened by cockwheel gear, pouring water into the aquarium from the vase; stars in the night sky in the background as well as the astronomic sign and the letters "Aquarius"; a bunch of stars also forming a pocket watch.
  • 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

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:

Fly Catcher



ZodiOCs: Sagittarius


Brewing Magic



Don’t Ask


2022 Recap

More than one month has passed since my last PaintLog entry. This year was the first one I wasn’t able to maintain my weekly pace. Still, I would like to provide you with a regular PaintLog.

Therefore, I thought of changing the pace to a monthly PaintLog, maybe sometimes more often if motivation, time and content allow. It’s the end of the year now. To this occasion, I did several recaps and I will summarize the year in this month’s PaintLog.

But before I’ll come to this, I’ll present you the art pieces I did since the last PaintLog. They actually were quite a handful:

I did another ZodiOC and one The Owl House fanart Secret Santa as well as another piece showing my OCs Raven and Samandra from my Witch Apprentices universe.

Two more paintings are in the queue which I didn’t find the time to prepare it to show it here (but, as said before, it’s always good to have some paintings as backlog).

Sagittarius

Brewing Magic

Last month I started my Zodiac sign series represented by my own OCs. After Scorpio Sagittarius added to the series. This sign is represented by Raven, my witch apprentice OC, and her ability of using light glyph magic.

Every so often she or parts of her turn into frog unintentionally. So does her tongue in this painting. Catching the fly is based on a detail in an early concept of a drawing that I abandoned.

I just felt, it would’ve been too much and saved it for a future painting. Little I knew back then that I would use this concept for the ZodiOCs but it fits perfectly „the Archer“.

I was playing around with light and shadow effects and since the last time I painted Raven I got some nice new brushes to include magic circles and symbols. In the background you also can spot her friend’s Samandra’s amphibian form as star constellation (the meaning is yours to guess).

The next part of Raven’s and Samandra’s story. I feel like this piece I wanted to draw since ever (since I created Sam as companion to Raven at least). Still, the Weaving Magic piece (see slide show slide 3) hat to be done first because Sam had to enchant Raven’s amulet so it won’t be lost in their magic soup. Then Mermay hit and several other assignments that kept me busy for the rest of the year.

All in all this painting took me two weeks to finish. It was an exercise in lighting, dynamic poses and perspective, trying to leave my comfort zone some tiny steps more.

As usual I hid several Easter eggs in this painting which you can spot in the background. Perhaps you even recognise them from past paintings. If not directly, just swipe to slides 4 and further.

  • 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.
  • Digital painting, comic style: A black unicorn with yellow spots, eyes, horn, mane and tail are made of fire, the hooves are red, fire around them; burning coal falling from its mouth; it's standing above as stream of lava, volcanoes, a castle ruin and a dark blu night sky in the background; sparks in the foreground; in the right upper corner a rock, a frog (labelled "Raven") and a salamander (labelled "Me") doodled on it with pink crayon, the frog is falling from the rock, the salamander is holding it by grabbing it feet; text: "Samandra's Fabric Journal"; "The Pyrocorn"; "Eternal Fire (Horn + mane); Flintstones"; "Fireproof fabric (Fur + skin)"; "Inflammable acid (Salamander spots); Burnt coal dust (Digested coal)".

However, one Easter egg I have to point out separately. A week before I finished this work, nick.burgoyne.art (Instagram) asked for book titles in the background of one of his paintings. In April of this year I read his novel „The Deepest Shore“. It featured a blob creature called „Bob“ that met a gruesome fate. Back in April I even did a fanart about it titled „Remember Bob“ and now I suggested this title for Nick’s background bookshelf (where you actually will find it).

At the same time it inspired me to put another edition of the book on Samandra’s secret potion brewing shack’s shelf. We can’t remember Bob enough!

I hope you can spot it in the background together with the other references.

Don’t Ask

This is a Secret Santa I did for another Discord server. I drew it for apricotmayzel (Instagram). It refers to a comic she drew in which – purely by coincidence – Raine’s violin got smashed. Since The Owl House was one of the topics I was allowed to draw for her, I decided to refer to this special comic.

It was the first time I drew Raine (or, speaking of, Eda). If you know the show, you will recognize several details I put into the painting. The wrapping of the present has Hootie stickers, the mittens are made by Blight Textiles and the cushion Eda puts under her Santa costume has Luz‘ hoodie colour.

Furthermore, you will recognise the fur part of Eda’s hat from episodes playing in the colder parts of the Boiling Isles and the hair combed forward to show the face of an old man Santa, of course, is taken from „Eclipse Lake“.

Within a few hours after sharing on Instagram this painting almost passed the „Reaching Out“ fanart from April as new top post (current score 120 likes vs. 107).

2022 Recap

As every year I do a recap of my art that I drew throughout the year. I summarise them in collages separated by topics. In the following slides you will find the collages

Summary of Art
Kritz‘ Choice (aka Best of 2022)
Best of Fanart 2022
Face Your Art
Face Your Art Mermaid Edition

In 2022 my job kept me even busier than 2021, so I had to do some compromised and I couldn’t nearly as much as I intended. A lot of projects just didn’t were to be in this time, including the weekly pace of this PaintLog.

Still, I had a lot of fund and I still have on the Arcryla City Discord server and the people there. I also joined some more Discord servers to get into contact with even more other artists.

I also shifted from Patreon to Ko-fi. Patreon is merely an archive and the space for paintings Ko-fi or wordpress wouldn’t allow to share publicy or at all, including artistic nudity or pose studies (see my Ko-fi account, for a tip in my jar you will find the link).

This said, I also got my first supporter. Thank you! This means a lot to me and helpf me to keep this website and to share my art for free.

On the artistic level I tried some new things, new poses, new techniques but also stuck to old ways and even more to my OCs.

Raven and Samandra were an addition to these. Raven was an output of the this year’s School of Games Moodboard Challenge in March. This one takes place every year and it was my second participation. This time I not only drew Raven, I added Samandra to this new OC universe later, I started to develop a lore and I put them as cameos into other paintings. There even were challenges that I concepted as spin-off of this duo‘ doings.

The Mermay was the next highlight, this year hosted together with Potato_Beta (Instagram) with whom I already did other collab projects. Soon after this the Arcryla City Discord server again hosted a Summer Festival, this time in form of a Fantasy Festival, and in October a Halloween event when at the same time I followed a weekly inky October challenge with my Heartbroken Goddess.

To my surprise (that shouldn’t have been much of a surprise at all), the most liked paintinsg were The Owl House fanart. I’m still very proud of the „Reaching Out“ piece, so it certainly deserves this much love. I’m also happy that I obviously met Raine and Eda this good that they almost got the same amounf of love within a few hours.

Well … Love is a good final word:

I wish you all a Happy New Year, thank you for staying around, have a wonderful year 2023!

See you next year!

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.*

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.

*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.

  • Text sheet, the announcing painting as faded background: "Draw my OCs, Raven Frogfeet and Samandra Elvennewt, in your style; Use the hashtag #Kritz200, feel free to tag me (@DerKritzelFaZke), so I can see and share your artwork; You can change pose, actions, background or other things, just keep them recognisable; You can draw both or only one of them, honor points, if you draw or add their amphibian forms*; No deadline, no prices, just for fun; *More information, lore and reference pictures on the next slides, in my gallery and on my website".
  • Text sheet, the announcing painting as faded background: "Former thief, now witch apprentice; A light rune mage, she's a special knack discovering, inventing and combining light runes, this way - in theory - able to conjure nearly everything - if she remembers the correct and often quite complex combinations; Since her witch once turned her into a frog, she (or parts of her) still occasionally turns into one unintentionally; Her raven amulet is the only thing that's left from her family, to not to lose it, her friend Samandra bewitched it to become part of her frog body whenever Raven changes forms; More details on: https://zumkritzeleck.com/raven-frogfeet/ ".
  • Text sheet, the announcing painting as faded background: "Samandra Elvennewt; Witch apprentice, originally a fire salamander turned into (and raised as) human being; A fabric mage, found her knack in bewitching clothes, textiles, technically any kind of thread and tissue, in theory even the fabric of space and time - if she ever will be able to mastet this level; Her spots are gleaming when she's doing magic; She (or parts of her) still occasionally turns back into salamander form unintentionally (although she has better control of it than Raven); More details on: https://zumkritzeleck.com/raven-frogfeet ".

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!

Enchanting Moonlight

Moonlight Magic
(DTIYS Kritz‘ 200)

Tbh, I miss the home office. We still are allowed to but to a smaller extend. I notice how much less energy I’ve got after one day in the office with all the community travel before and after. This also affects my art creating process, I just can’t keep my planned time schedule anymore because of … zzzzzzz.

Still, I finally finished the painting I created to host the DTIYS I planned to celebrate 200 followers on Instagram. There are still preparations to be done before I can host it, but at least I can give you early access to the painting. It features my two main characters Raven Frogfeet tale.

Moonlight Magic

Perhaps I chose those two to catch two birds with one stone. I created them a short time before this year’s Mermay. I always wanted to continue their tale as soon as possible but every time something else interfered (and I only managed to draw the unicorns for Samandra’s Fabric Journal). So, the 200 followers event is a welcome opportunity to draw them again.

It’s the first time I draw them in sideview. This always feels a little bit weird because it creates an unfamiliar shape that at the same time is supposed to be recognisable as the same person. Regarding Sam, I think, I managed this quite well. Regarding Raven, the sidecut was an additional challenge.

Before I started drawing, I actually thought of switching places to avoid the strands that fall over her right half of the face. However, this is a challenge, to me too. So I kept the first approach.

I placed Samandra’s salamander tail in the center of the foreground because I one more wanted to show her „ability“ to change back into a salamander. Same should apply for Raven who occassionally turns into a frog. But because she cannot do magic in frog form, the hand conjuring the light runes couldn’t have been in frog from. Therefore, I added the second hand.

As for the magic, I finally came up with the light rune magic for Raven. It’s similar to the glyphs and their combinations in The owl House but she can conjure the runes by herself in light illusion form. She still has to combine them and first she has to find them and to learn the combinations. Apart from this, she – in theory – will be able to conjure nearly everything.

Honestly, it tool me a while before I came up with a fitting type of magic for her. And then I noticed, it was right before my eyes all the time, since she already conjured light runes in her very first painting, by accidant, though. I remember at this time I already wanted to paint them gleaming blue but it didn’t fit into the (given) color scheme.

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.

This said, it’s no coincidence that the light rune magic also resembles the hex magic (especially the portals) of the show Arcane. Sam’s fabric magic on the other hand are supposed to resemble some threads weaving tissue. Only quite late in the drawing process I noticed tht the threads also form a shape reminding of a heart. Well, I left it that way because it isn’t that wrong, it fits for reasons not to be mentioned yet.

As for the background … I will come back to this one next week – when the DTIYS will be hosted.

Wyrd Food

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.

Wyrd’s Fruits and Vegetables

Another busy week ended, although not that busy and the next one hopefully will be more relaxced. The reason that I managed finishing only one artpiece was to an equal part that I got carried away.

The approaching deadline for the second Arcryla City Summer Fantasy Festival main challenge prompt may have been a cause to focus on this one, too.

Wyrd’s Fruits and Vegetables

Yesterday the second of the biweekly showcases of the Arcryla City Summer Fantasy Festival took place. Since I needed such an unusual big amount of time to finish my last week’s painting, I was worried to make it in time for this one. Luckily I made it one day before the deadline. So, yeah, I could relax more on Saturday.

The prompt was „Magical Foodie“. Our OC’s got hungry and were roaming the festival for food that we should put into pictures. Since „mangoes“ have been present in Arcryla City since last Summer Festival, I gave them a magical makeover (and invented the „TomatToes“ at the same time). You can read the narrative text on the text sheet in the next column.

The reason I almost went out of time (see above) was, quite obviously, the background.

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.

Paula should be in there plus a wine salesman and I planned to give my OCs Raven and Samandra a cameo too, right from the beginning. But after putting the characters and the stalls in places, I got carried away with the inventory. More and more ideas popped up in my mind that wanted to include, including Perry the Platypus and his hat.

Things you probably recognised from my OC’s universes or from my fanart: As prices of the Catch the Frog game a „Raven in frog form“ plushy, the water lily blossom she and Samandra exchanged this year’s Mermay and which Swampgirl and Amphimaid exchanged in Mermay 2020, Hooty (The Owl House), Perry (plushy) and his hat, the waterbear plushy in the steampunk Arcryla City realm owned by Crissy* (just without the mechanic’s overall). As sales article at „Hex’R’Us“ a deck of Hexes Hold’em cards (The Owl House) and the Amphibia Calamity Box.

*Apropos: Crissy loves water bears, for sure she took the water bear shaped mangogo with her, although not for eating/drinking – probably.

By the way, it is no coincidence that Raven and Samandra are playing „Catch the Frog“ and that Samandra indeed catches the frog.

If you look close you will see the glitter around the fishing line which is a thread and therefore, technically fabric. I don’t have to remind you that Samandra is a fabric witch, right?

„Hex’R’Us“ of course is a reference to „Toys’R’Us“ but even „Joe’s Wineyard“ is inspired by a real wine seller. I don’t know the situation outside of Germany, but here „Jacques‘ Wein-Depot“ („Jacques‘ wine depot“) is a well-known wine selling company. The name inspired me to „Joe’s Wineyard“ for the Magical Foodie prompt (this by itself being a pun since you only have to change a few characters to change the wineyard into vinegar).

Text sheet to "Wyrd's Fruits & Vegetables", the painting blurred and faded in the background, a narrative text in the foreground: Wyrd's Fruits & Vegetables; Hungrily approaching and strolling over the festival place, Crissy remembered the mangoes back in HER Arcryla City and how much she loved them. She wondered, if this place may have something similar. Discovering "Wyrd's Fruits & Vegetables Stall" she found the so-called "mangogoes". You could cut off the tips of their ... err ... whatever those sticks were ... and drink the sweet juice inside the fruit like with a naturally grown attached drinking straw. Still, looking into those little big mangogo eyes indeed gave her a weird feeling, so she simply stuck with the pastry she bought two stalls earlier.

If you look close, you will be able to spot Paula nicking some bottles (that are missing in the stall). Seems familiar? Just take another look on the Photograph prompt of the Arcryla City Valentine’s event.

And then, there are the pennants and flags, of course. The colors are Pride flags‘ colors honoring the orientations of my OCs. The colours of the Lesbian and the Pan Pride flags are interwoven since Paula and Crissy are a couple but you also will spot the colors of the polysexual Pride flag – although I won’t reveal whom’s flag this one is yet (but remember: None of my OCs is straight). Plus above them all the colors of the Progress Pride flag, the last two colours not unintentionally being the same like in the Bi Pride flag (plus the petal’s colors creating this one too).

Do I have to emphasize how tricky it was to render the background? I put this lot of details in it but I also had to blur it. It’s hard to achieve this without getting all these details beyond recognisation, you still should be able to spot them.

Hot Weeks

Digital painting, comic style: A black unicorn with yellow spots, eyes, horn, mane and tail are made of fire, the hooves are red, fire around them; burning coal falling from its mouth; it's standing above as stream of lava, volcanoes, a castle ruin and a dark blu night sky in the background; sparks in the foreground; in the right upper corner a rock, a frog (labelled "Raven") and a salamander (labelled "Me") doodled on it with pink crayon, the frog is falling from the rock, the salamander is holding it by grabbing it feet; text: "Samandra's Fabric Journal"; "The Pyrocorn"; "Eternal Fire (Horn + mane); Flintstones"; "Fireproof fabric (Fur + skin)"; "Inflammable acid (Salamander spots); Burnt coal dust (Digested coal)".
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.

The Pyrocorn – Sparrow on Fire

Not that much in terms of weather (although there were some hot days too), in retrospective it indeed was a hot week in more than one aspect. It was a very busy and exhausting week that prevented me from keeping my drawing time schedule (see below).

On the other hand, I managed to finish two paintings, both more or less under the topic „fire“. Firstly, the last of vitranas_arts‘ Junicorns, secondly my second entry to the Arcryla City Summer Fantasy Festival general prompt list.

The Pyrocorn

The last one. The fourth week of the vitranas_arts Junicorn challenge stood under the topic of the element of Fire. One more time I included it into Samandra’s Fabric journal.

Right from the beginning I got the idea of something resembling a fire salamander, this way honouring Samandra’s very own existence too. Fiery mane and tail and finally the horn also popped into my mind quite soon as well as the background.

Since the prompts for the fire theme also contained „Coal“, the rocks at the lower left edge of the painting were supposed to be coal, but then I got the idea of the Pyrocorn feeding on coal, so some were falling out of its mouth.

I thought of adding flying sparks where the hooves touches the ground but didn’t really manag that. Instead I quite like the small flames in the foreground.

Btw, the scene doodled in the upper right corner is a similar scene I thought of for the very first Junicorn painting, there Raven hanging off a branch, trying to cut some vines from the tail, Samandra holding her.

Both would’ve been in amphibian form, though. You can read my struggle with the first Junicorn painting in the respective paintlog but apart from that, this way is more dramatic, so I kept it for the fire theme.

„In the middle of the now burnt lands the Pyrocorn emerged, bringing fire, flames and fear.“

Digital painting, comic style: A black unicorn with yellow spots, eyes, horn, mane and tail are made of fire, the hooves are red, fire around them; burning coal falling from its mouth; it's standing above as stream of lava, volcanoes, a castle ruin and a dark blu night sky in the background; sparks in the foreground; in the right upper corner a rock, a frog (labelled "Raven") and a salamander (labelled "Me") doodled on it with pink crayon, the frog is falling from the rock, the salamander is holding it by grabbing it feet; text: "Samandra's Fabric Journal"; "The Pyrocorn"; "Eternal Fire (Horn + mane); Flintstones"; "Fireproof fabric (Fur + skin)"; "Inflammable acid (Salamander spots); Burnt coal dust (Digested coal)".

Not intended, but perhaps you registered a „growing“ of the background in every of the Junicorn pantings, from a minimum of grass and a tree to an image filling background:

Digital painting, comic style: A black unicorn with yellow spots, eyes, horn, mane and tail are made of fire, the hooves are red, fire around them; burning coal falling from its mouth; it's standing above as stream of lava, volcanoes, a castle ruin and a dark blu night sky in the background; sparks in the foreground; in the right upper corner a rock, a frog (labelled "Raven") and a salamander (labelled "Me") doodled on it with pink crayon, the frog is falling from the rock, the salamander is holding it by grabbing it feet; text: "Samandra's Fabric Journal"; "The Pyrocorn"; "Eternal Fire (Horn + mane); Flintstones"; "Fireproof fabric (Fur + skin)"; "Inflammable acid (Salamander spots); Burnt coal dust (Digested coal)".

Sparrow on Fire

This week I posted my second entry to the Arcryla City Fantasy Festival, my first fully rendered entry. The server community suggested this scene of Paula and Crissy riding Sparrow and Crissy screaming in the back – and I loved the idea. Still, since I plan to serve the general prompt list, I had to think of which prompt would fit best this scene.

It was a great opportunity 1) to paint Sparrow and 2) to show what those protection sigils on Paula’s braces are all about.

1) was a little bit tricky and I sat several days to get the lineart right. Sparrow shouldn’t be that big but big enough to carry them both. But simply drawing the bird looked kind of boring, so I thought of this perspective with the blurry wing in the foreground.

Paula and Crissy being late for a lantern festival and this way getting into a main bunch of sky lanterns while Paula’s braces‘ protection sigils proving that hey didn’t have their name for nothing.

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.

Another challenge was to create the impression of speed. Thanks to whoever is in charge of the universe, CSP comes with a motion blur effect and the by now well known blossom brushes. Together with the Gaussian blur effect I got a nice result.

The lanterns in the foreground, however, were a last minute idea to create more depth, the smaller one even more since I came up with it only after the final blur and everything already had been finished. It also fit in nicely with the other lanterns, beginning with the big one in the lower right corner building kind of a helix.

At some point in time painting this got really frustrating, though. Not because I didn’t love this idea anymore, it just was a rough and exhausting week with appointments every day that lasted from the morning into the afternoon hours. I thought „well, there is a new main challenge going on but I could do this one first, it won’t take longer than 2 or 3 days“ and, well, in the end it took a whole week.

So, it was a relief that it finally turned out so nicely and I loved to write the narrative text again:

  • 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.