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.“

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.

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:

Third week vitranas_arts Junicorn challenge has passed and again I did a drawing matching the third week’s Wind theme and accompanying subtopics. Again it’s part of Samandra’s Fabric journal.

Creating a wind based unicorn, a birdlike creature came to my mind. At one point of the design process I even thought of giving it a bird’s beak but it was hard enough to keep the unicorn features in this creature, so I went with the simple snout.

I’ve to admit, I was almost finished as I spotted that the legs were rather tall for a flying bird. To fix this issue, I also made it a running bird, this way also fitting the unicorn theme. Since I right from the beginning thought of giving it the power to create strong wind blows (and with the horn even tornadoes), it worked out nicely in the end.

The name, of course, is a pune on „Hurricane“.

This time it’s Samandra who gets in trouble by being caught of one of these wind blows and she isn’t too proud to admit it (although she also doodled a facepalm into the journal).

„Running faster than a horse, ruling the sky like thunder, the Hurricorn is on the hunt, causing storms and mayhem thereunder.“

PS: After request I also did a smartphone wallpaper of the Hurricorn for supporters on Ko-fi. The size should fit for most smartphone screens but if it’s completely out of the frame, please just tell me.

I’m really hyped that there is another Summer Festival again on my beloved Arcryla City Discord server. We had so much fun, last year, participating the showcases, looking at all the great artworks we came up with, the comments, the chitchat.

This year our OC’s have been transferred into a fantasy AU realm, main challenge prompts and general prompts following this topic.

To remind you: The showcases for the main challenge prompts are taking place every two weeks on Saturday evenings Pacific Standard Time (PST), meaning in the Suday morning hours of European time zones.

Since the entries for the main challenges are revealed during the showcases, I’m going to share them only afterwards to keep mine as a surprise. Still, this fits perfectly with publishing my PaintLog.

The first main challenge asked for a fantasy version of our Arcryla City OC’s. I, of course, went with my OC Crissy.

Crissy doing Crissy things, creating, fixing and crippling devices whenever required – but keeping away from people as good as possible.

I slightly changed her name to make it sound more mediaval, but stuck to her usual colors, the boots‘ and trousers‘ design, the skirt and the top resembling the mechanic’s coat of her steampunk design. The glasses are made of a wooden frame, however, and instead of a steam driven driller she’s equipped with a arm-mounted crossbow. This is inspired by the hand-mounted crossbow Marcy Wu in show the Amphibia used to carry around.

Since there also are DnD game nights going on during the festival and although I won’t going to participate, I wanted to keep the option open, I also gave her a classical DnD class, fitting her finger (and fighting) skills best. The character traits are the same like the Crissy’s ones in the steampunk world.

Almost immediately after reading the first main challenge prompt, also an image of Crissy’s girlfriend Paula in a fantasy outfit popped to my mind. There were green clothes right from the beginning and also a bow, but Initially I had something more Robin Hoodish in mind. I dumped this approach to fit her character better.

Deep in the forest, Paula found herself race swapped into a wood elf. Not that she did mind, after all, cool bow and arrows went with it and she even got a flying mount.

Like Crissy’s I changed her name slightly to sound more mediaval and instead of a jetbike, she now is accompanyed by a big flying mount. I chose her to be a elf because, well, I thought of her as some (gothic) kind of vivid elf or sprite right from the beginning.

I came up with the flying mount quite lately (everyhting else already painted and texted) but since Paula owns a jetbike in the steampunk realm, it only would fit her chraracter (again, I kep all of her character traits she’s got in the steampunk realm).

My first thoughts were revolving around the bird Marcy Wu (yeah, again, and again Amphibia) rides in her show but were wiped away by the chocobo birds you get in Final Fantasy with the addition to be able to fly. Still, the name of Paula’s bird refers to Marcy’s one who was called „Joe Sparrow“.

„Paula, having the attention span not of a young kitten but of a full-grown lioness, reconsidering her day’s target when distracted by her girlfriend Crissy.“

Btw, this is one of the rare occasions that you can spot that she actually is smaller than Crissy since in her steampunk design she always wears those high heel platform shoes.