Arts from before Christmas

Here’s some artwork I did leading up to Christmas!

Unhealed Wounds for Destcember

Concept art for a character named Sorrel who is learning why you don’t touch weird black globes with stars in them.

Commission for a friend’s DnD character

This is a spoof news article based on the one about the family that found a live owl in their Christmas tree.

Family finds Ghost in their Dawning Tree

A City family was surprised last week to find an unexpected Dawning gift in their tree.

Gera Hurst and her two children, Freda and James, were eating dinner last Thursday when Freda, 10, made the discovery.

As Freda cleared the table in another room, Hurst heard her exclaim, “Traveler’s Light!”

“She enters the room very dramatically and goes, “‘Mama, that ornament frightened me!’ Then she burst into tears.”

Hurst explained that she’s a big fan of Ghosts. She had about a dozen Ghost ornaments on her Dawning tree. That’s why Hurst thought Freda had just seen an ornament. As she took a closer look at the tree, Hurst saw the ‘ornament’ blink his eye.

“And I’m going, ‘Oh, that’s a real Ghost,'” Hurst remembered as Freda ran into another room crying.

If that wasn’t strange enough, the Ghost had been in the family tree for more than a week. Hurst’s husband, Rand, told the news they had bought their tree two days after the Festival of the Lost.

“It was about to snow, you see,” said the Ghost, who called himself Dusk. “I was hanging out in the tree lot, looking for my Guardian, when this family picks the tree I was hiding in. I figured this was a great way to get out of the cold for a while, so I just kept quiet and hidden.”

“But didn’t you spy on the family?” our reporter asked.

“A little,” Dusk admitted. “But I stayed in the tree, and they seem like a nice family. I didn’t mean to frighten the little girl.”

That was all we managed to get out of the Ghost before Gera Hurst chased him out of her house with a broom.

Artwork in color for once!

I was tired of all the black and white, so I decided to do some art in color this week. Each pic took a few days, so there’s not as many, but they’re pretty.

Another artist was talking about using the selection tool and a gradient to make backgrounds very rapidly. So I tried it and this was the result. I kind of like it.

Fluffy fur collar! Hot chocolate and marshmallows!

“Merry Christmas, Guardian.” From a lore page that made everyone sad.

I wanted to draw this character named Osiris because he has a crazy complicated design. Look at all the feathers! He’s designing a new shell for his ghost.

Just trying different styles this week, studying artists I like and trying to figure out how they do it.

Week 1 of Destcember art

I’ve been participating in Destcember, which is Destiny art or stories for the month. Here’s what I’ve managed to crank out:

And there were a few very short stories in there for days I couldn’t do art. No point in posting them here, though, since they’re pretty Destiny-specific.

We’ll see how next week goes! There’s some blank prompts, and I plan to draw dinosaurs on those days.

When roleplay is appropriate … and when it’s not

Roleplay, or ‘RPing’, is a form of storytelling that’s been around for a long time. “I go here and do this and now this thing happened …” You pretend to be yourself in some funny situation. Or you pretend to be one of your characters and play with people pretending to be their characters. Kids do this all the time with toys.

But there’s a time and a place for everything. RPing on your social media? Okay, whatever. RPing in a chat with your friends? Perfect. RPing on your blog? Now it’s getting weird. RPing your characters advertising your books in your newsletters? No. Just … no.

Authors, for some reason, have this idea that since people liked their characters enough to read about them, readers want to interact with these characters. In fact, people want these characters to give them all their news updates! They want the characters to advertise other books to them! So authors fill their newsletters with cutesy RP, pretending to be their characters.

Some people enjoy this. Other people silently unsubscribe and never read any books by that author ever again. Characters belong in books. They’re not Muppets.

So, this is my unpopular opinion: save the RP for a chatroom, or when you’re writing a book and RPing in your head. Keep it out of the newsletters. Notice the “NEWS” in the word? We subscribe to get news about new books and sales. It’s for business. Not to read a random character rambling about the events of their imaginary lives … sometimes for pages and pages.

Rant over. Go RP, people. But not in your professional correspondence.

Sketches and comics

Haven’t updated in a while, sorry about that. The whole family got sick, and in between, I was working on this commission I can’t show off until after Christmas. In between, I drew a few things here and there.

Hugs are hard to draw, so I did some practice on them. The arms are wonky, I know, it was just practice, trying to figure out the poses. I’ll do a better hug sometime.

Girl and robot guy, because even cyborgs need a little love. The textures in this pic were interesting to pull off.

A kind of sad comic I had in mind. In the end of Destiny 1, Ghost basically gives you this little speech where he thanks you for being his Guardian. I decided to invert it, have the Guardian say it to his ghost. There was supposed to be an extra panel at the end where things get better, but I couldn’t figure out how to draw it.

I drew this after I finished my huge commission, just to show how I was feeling after all that work.

In December, there’s this little thing like Inktober, only it’s called Destcember. I participated a little bit last year, and it was fun, but I had a new baby who limited my capabilities. So, today’s prompt was a New Look. So I went with a joke about the ugliest helmet in the game.

I guess I had more art to post than I thought I did. Scraping it al together makes a nice little pile. 🙂