Reflection #19 – May 19

Hello everyone!

 Phew, I am quite exhausted right now. Has been the hottest day so far this year and I just can’t befriend the thought of it getting even hotter every year. I’ll be wearing shorts from now on and dig my cave a little deeper in the ground.

 Aside from that, what has been going on this month?

 I attended the European election for the first time, a privilege for me and many other first-voters and it will definitely not be the last time I use this privilege. Other than that… ehh, oh sure! I got the new Album of Rammstein and I like it very much, so that’s a win. Unfortunately I cannot remember what else happened this month… maybe due to my current state? I don’t know, I should continue with what I do know:

Artwork

Lucote – Verticality [Raffle Prize]

My upmost priority this month was it to work off the remaining raffle prizes. The third one; a waist-up portrait was a pretty nice way to start this month. I enjoyed it and the little bit of technical drawing of this vertical crossbow here, which was later re-used and reinterpreted as a functional 3D model by a friend: DregonV8.

 Even though, my experimental exaggeration of his arm size (which is only a little shorter than portrayed in the image) and variations from the resources given to me, I like how this turned out. Perhaps I could have balanced the colours a little more but the way those orange-red parts on Lucote’s body pop out are a nice eye catcher to me.

Tetrix – Selfie [Raffle Prize]

And then there’s the struggle. Yeah, I say it upfront; it was hard to work on this one… when I see this now, the first thought that’s entering my head is what a pain it was to put a decent rendering on this one.

 But of course, it isn’t as bad as my first memories make it. I really like the pose and the lineart I made, yes also the final product. It first came together when I put this background in there, so I had a nice secondary or environmental light to bounce at the character, then thankfully, the rendering worked out and the colours worked together.

 Working on this project was, once again a reminder to me that I cannot rely on only one technique for all of my artworks, or at least I haven’t found the right one for me yet. I’ll keep practising.

Fruit Hat – Souvillaine

Hehe, I was looking out to do this one.

 Sometimes I save up some concept ideas and then lose them again or lose interest in them. Here, I am happy I didn’t, and executed it, re-aproached it and after the 3rd attempt, succeeded. And I am glad I could do so, it makes me happy looking at it and I have heard of others that this image has a similar effect on them. So that’s always a win! It often crosses my mind that the prerequisite of a good artwork is to elicit an emotion… and maybe that’s true. If so, why shouldn’t it be a positive emotion? I know I don’t do that often, but it feels good to spread some happiness in my artworks ^v^

Upcoming Stuff & Preplanning

With no more raffle prizes to look out for and no motivation to do any commissions as of now, I finally want to return to my originality. I have an old character in the making whose lines are almost finished and will be revealed in an upcoming status update.

 Then there’s a nice new character in the making, the most special yet because I let YOU decide on him (with my limitations though). If you haven’t noticed the many polls lately regarding this new female character. And the process of creating a character with your help with the decision-making is a great experience so far. I think we’ll have more of these sessions in the future.

Shoutout

This is a shoutout for two wonderful artists I found over the course of May.

 Paddalo:

 This young Austrian female has caught me with her distinct style of portraying anthro characters. Twisted and dynamic poses, distorted muscle masses and bent limps… yet oddly harmonic when put together. Her style is sometimes death-serious, other times wild and comical. There’s always something new to see so go and check her out.

 Remarin:

 Felicia from Luxembourg rocks with her solid linework, fantastic rendering and . most intriguing for me – admirable fashion for minimalistic painting skills. There’s not much to add to that, except the sometimes appearing animations which capture an animal’s movement very realistically.

Another honourable mention goes to Nikolaspascal and his beautiful realistic anthro designs. I would have given him a fully fleshed-out place in my shoutouts but sadly, he isn’t active here anymore, so you only have a wonderful gallery to scroll through or follow him on his tumblr.

Oh and by the way, I started my furaffinity account this month, be sure to check it out if you are lounging about over there: >klick me<

I hope I’ll see you all at the end of June. Have a nice month! ~Souvillaine