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.
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!
Zum Kritzeleck 