OMG Lava

OMG Pictures!

Been having trouble drawing lately...
Except stupid Tayne + Kisa pictures apparently...


Enjoy

(Tayne looks short... and that text bubble looks green... WHELP, can't be bothered.)

Mutant Zombie Concepts

I was recently rejected for an Rp group on dA. Called Umbagog, it focuses on mutated zombies. Yup, zombies. And yup, rejected. "Practice basic skills" they said, and I'm like "What?! I RULE at basic skills!" Stuff about backgrounds and anatomy, which makes me think I just sent them the wrong example art...
None the less, I said from the start that I would draw and post zombies whether I'm accepted or not, so here's my concepts so far:

Pencil wakes up as a perfectly normal zombie in the middle of a random street. You can see another zombie took a chunk out of her side already.

She makes a very good zombie...

And collects some random junk...

"That's no ordinary rabbit!"
Her leg is stolen by a high-level zombie, but her mob leader chases him off. Only he can eat his zombies!

So there's that...

How does one walk with one leg? funny you should ask...

No really, I imagine it's quite ridiculous to watch.

This is a long post, so we'll continue with other ideas and Pen's transition to a super zombie on another day.

... Day?
... Night?
*looks at clock*
... Morning.... yup, time for bed...

Good night, don't let the zombies bite.

Character Scribble

It's midnight and I drew a picture of Volancoru:

"Hey Vol, watch the eye shadow. Any more and you'll start looking like a girl."

*growl*

"Ok then, see ya."

Creature Concepts

How do I title a nameless character idea? ... well, I guess that works.

I saw something on dA that inspired this:

A small, winged pearl with some odd smoke inside. It could flap around and the smoke/spirit inside could manifest in various shapes. It would be a guide character, like Navi or Tatl in Legend of Zelda.

Character Dump 01

I have a new handheld scanner, so expect these posts more often.

A fan character for Sonic the Hedgehog. Her name's River the Salamander.

Comic with Kisa, Tayne, and a random generic fox (or maybe rune).

Basic notes about hair and eyes for these two, Kiayra and Ryuka

Jake the wolf-spider-dog thing. More info on him when I have a better pic.

Character for someone else's kid's book I considered illustrating. Never contacted him though. I think the kid's name was Timothy.

OMG a post!

same as I put on my dA journal:

Back from unofficial hiatus (school is so rough)

I have graduated (unofficialy, I get my diploma tommorrow)

Things to do:

Finish illustrating my three children's books.

Buy a new computer monitor and/or laptop

Stop playing minecraft (...PFFFT. so much for that one)

Some artwork I did for my school art show:

Gillgan, a character of mine. Love the brown tint in the fur.

A random amphitere that I finally finished (after sitting in my computer for nearly a year). Background color/texture is just the original horrible photograph I used to trace over.

Next up will likely be some recent sketches and when I get around to it there will be scans from my school art show.

Playing Possum

New year's resolution: update my blog semi-regularly.

Anyways, Dad set up a trap to catch some stray cats that have moved in around our house.
(No worries, it's a live trap. The plan is just to move them to the fairgrounds nearby where they can be happier)

Instead of catching a cat though, he caught a possum. We've got lots of them around our house, but I don't usually see them close up, so I asked him to leave it for a bit so I could do some observational drawings. Here they are:

Things I noticed:
1) Their tails are scaly
2) They have what appears to be a backwards toe that they walk on on their back foot
3) Their faces are a bit shorter than I thought, so I had trouble drawing the angle accurately.
4) I also had trouble keeping the paws and head in porportion

In the bottom corner (in the circle) is the picture I did from memory the next day.

-Courtney

MoM: Meteor

For the latest Mercs of Meleee challenge: We had to stop a meteor.

Tayne held the heavy book and stared straight at the fireball quickly growing in the sky. According to Kisa she had the book open to the right page, not that she could read it anyways. Kisa leaped up onto Tayne's shoulder and stepped down onto the spellbook.
This would have to be a team effort, and they had to act fast. While Kisa could read even the ancient script of tomes like this, she could not speak. Tayne was totally illiterate, but at least she could speak, and with their shared telepathy, that was all they needed.
One spell later the meteor was gone; blasted off to another dimension

new group and (maybe?) a new style...

So, on dA I joined a group called Hetherev, another art roleplay group like MoM.

Volancoru the Dragon. If you can't read it, go here.

The idea is that characters get dropped in the world of Hetherev, losing much of their power and memory in the process. Once there, they go through the various challenges, getting chances to interact with a vast array or chars.

Number one was the entrance challenge. How and where does your char enter heth...

Naturally, Vol's lucky enough to wake up in the one and only active volcano. Notice the (almost) monochrome coloring? That was so much fun I decided to do more...

There's currently a special challenge going to draw you char as an elemental (a being adapted to one specific element). I started with wind:

But I liked it so much I did fire, water, and earth too:

Fire's my favorite out of the bunch.

All of these took roughly 2-3 hours and are done in monochrome, and I LOVE them. So... I think I'm one step closer to finding my own style. WOOT!

Evergreen State Fair 2011

I entered some artwork in the local fair this year, and they all won!

I haven't posted this one yet, full size coming soon
Jorogumo - 96 Points - First Place

Dobhar-Chu - 91 Points - First Place

Daleel - 84 Points - Second Place

Each category had multiple winners, your place was based on a score card and not who's the absolute best. 90+ got you first place, 80+ got second, and 70+ got third. It was sort of like grades in school: this many points gets you an A, this many gets you a B, etc. That was possibly my favorite part of the contest, that they gave me the score cards afterward so I could see WHY I got the scores that I did, they even wrote critiques on them!

Commissions Open!

I can now take commissions! Support a developing artist! If you have money, please buy one!

(Overselling it much?)

Basic prices:

Black & White Sketch - $5

Monochrome Sketch - $5

Color Sketch - $7

Blank Line Art - $10

Detailed monochrome - $15

Flat Color - $15

Full Color - $20

--------------

Simple character?

Subtract $1 - $5

Head only?

Subtract $1 - $5

Complex character?

Add $1 - $7

Complex pose?

Add $1 - $5

Detailed background?

Add $5 - $20

Multiple characters?

Double the Price

--------------

- E-mail me at DragonNightArt@gmail.com or send me a note on deviantArt.

- Explain the scene/pose and type of commission you want me to draw. If you are using your own character please provide a reference image.

- I will contact you with the final cost of the picture.

- When I have received payment I will begin work on the picture. I will E-mail the finished artwork to you within two weeks.

At the moment I will only accept payment through PayPal.

I will not draw copyrighted characters. No Pokemon, Digimon, Anime, etc.

I am currently testing these prices. They may change with little warning.

Want a something special not listed here? E-mail me!

*I'll add more examples as I get them, but it might take awhile*

Ren's Mission

Mission 7 for Mercs of Meleee, "show us your character's evil side". This isn't for Tayne, instead I finished msrandompants challenge. Her character is named Ren. Ren's Bio says she's a kickboxing necromancer with a psychotic side. During the mission she turns into a zombie and gains telekinesis. Yeah. Fun.

Here's the story, enjoy!

The evil that haunted the Merc Mansion floated through the halls searching for its next victim. Ren (as she will now be called) just woke up from a peaceful slumber. The starving cat village had taken a lot out of her and she immediately ran home, bathed and fell asleep. The evil energy spied the refreshed mercenary and a feral grin broke out on its red face. With inhuman speed it zoomed through the hall and straight into Ren, emerging from her chest seconds after. It laughed and watched as its power infested the merc.

She felt pain, otherworldly pain as she felt her very soul torn from her body. A bright blue light erupted from her eyes and mouth, allowing her soul to escape. She released a ear-splitting scream before she dropped to her knees.

The blue light floated from Ren's body as she fell and turned into a purple form. She sat on her hands and knees, breathing harshly as the form began to speak. It raised a glowing hand to its face and laughed.

"I'm finally free of that rotting bag of meat! Hahaha! This feels fantastic! Might as well put that empty shell to use...so Rise! Follow my commands!"

Ren's soul was the embodiment of her necromantic powers and due to the evil of Merc Mansion, it was turned into a vessel of pure hate, bent on destroying all in its path. 

Ren's body however, suffered through a massive change. As it was no longer the host of a soul, the body had rapidly rotted, leaving her hair light grey-ish brown and her skin green and sickly. Her jacket seemed to have lost its coloring while her pants morphed from blue pinstripe to green camo.

A purple light surrounded the corpse as she was placed under her soul's control.

Ren's corpse rose to its knees, ready for its master's commands. A dark red smoke wafted from her body, forming the Evil's symbol above her head.

"Be a dear and show them your dormant power." Her soul floated in front of Ren, watching as her new puppet charged a blue energy in her hands. The zombie lifted one arm and directed the energy to a nearby chair that had been placed in the hallway. It was surrounded by the energy and began to float.

"Perfect! Now, destroy it!" 

Ren clenched her outstretched hand and the chair was crushed under the weight of the power.

"How delicious! Who would've known that Ren, haha as a corpse, could use telekinesis? Oh how lovely!" The bodiless soul clapped her hands together and smiled.

"Now follow me puppet. We have a mercenary guild to destroy!"

--------------------------------------------------------------

And now, the conclusion, written by me:

Sketch Dump #1

My very first sketch dump. Woohoo!
First up are a series of character concepts for I story I probably won't ever write. Drawn because I wanted to play in grayscale.

Fun design inspired by something online, and two character concepts for a different story I probably won't write.

A "just for fun" character and her pet.

 Finished this about five minutes ago, more character concepts. Belongs to the second storyline I mentioned.

As you might have guessed, I have lots of story ideas that I'm not really doing anything with. I mostly keep them around so I can abuse the characters when I'm bored.

As of writing this I have:

4 ideas that I could turn into books if I had the motivation.

4 ideas that I want to turn into video/board games but lack motivation

7 ideas that are missing key details for me to turn into books

1 fully developed world that has no real use

and countless ideas that I gave up on that will one day be reincarnated in a way that makes much more sense than the original.

Yeah, I don't think I'm EVER going to run out of ideas.

Enjoy!

Deliver milk to the villages

Mercs of Meleee mission six is finished. I wrote a short story to go with my entry.

Enjoy!

"Our poor neighbor villages are starving! Go and deliver some milk to them please. It's all we can do for now..."
..................

"This is a bit ridiculous"
("You're the one who volunteered")
A cart carrying the giant milk bottle rattled as it hit a rock.
"I didn't realize I was signing up for this!" Tayne said.
("Too bad") was Kisa's telepathic reply. She rested comfortably, perched on the ox who was towing the excessively heavy cart.
There was a sudden thud, and the ox took off at high speed. Tayne spun around just in time to see the milk bottle rolling away. She dashed off in pursuit.

Kisa, on the other hand, was getting a bumpy ride on the back of a surprised ox. She grabbed the reins in her teeth and tugged on them, bringing the beast to a halt. She dropped down and ran after Tayne.

Tayne was out of sight when she caught up, but was quickly spotted several feet ahead of the milk bottle, braced for impact. Was she going to catch it? A moment later though, she realized just how fast the bottle was accelerating, and that she was going to be crushed. She stood staring, like a deer in headlights.

(“Jump, you dolt!”)
Snapped back to her senses by Kisa’s insult, Tayne jumped, ending up on top of the milk bottle.
Kisa cried, (“How do we stop it!”)
"Who said anything about stopping? I bet we can get there twice as fast this way!”
"I hope the villagers don't mind getting some cream instead......"
Kisa rocketed off a passing rock, landing next to Tayne, and the pair rolled away into the distance.

Painting Practice

Digital painting, that is.

I did this yesterday, just for practice. And I couldn't think of anything better to do.

This took... three hours?
I dunno, I wasn't watching the clock.

It was fun to draw.
Enjoy!

Mercs of Meleee

I've joined a group on DeviantArt called Mercs of Meleee (Like melee, only with an extra e to make it more awesome). It's a type of role-playing group. A quick explanaion:
"The Mercs-of-Meleee is a group of dedicated heroes and heroines who risks their lives to take on dangerous missions. Each Deviant can use themselves or their original character and set them out on the missions available. Missions can sometimes include defeating a powerful dragon, saving a princess, or even delivering milk to the nearby poor village."


These are my heros:

If you have trouble reading it you can go to my deviantart page to full-view it.

Their first mission had to slay a dragon. Tayne fights fire with fire to gain victory.

The next job she took was mission 4: Rescue Puffluff the dogfish. Puffluff had been kidnapped by an evil hooded man and was going to be cooked and eaten!

Luckily, the plan went off without a hitch. While Tayne distracted the hooded man (she's good at that), Kisa freed Puffluff and the two slunk away to safety. She signaled Tayne via telepathy, and all three of then fled before the man had time to realize their trick.




That's all I have for now, but expect more of these two in the future, I really enjoy drawing them, and I've got another roleplay group for them to join when I have time.
Enjoy!

Fireworks

Happy 4th of July.

Enjoy.

Happy Father's Day

This was my present to dad this year:

 Why yes, that is a green dragon, sitting on my dad's truck, eating a squirrel and holding a half-empty beer bottle.


Here's a detail shot:

It looks like you caught him in the middle of his snack!

Enjoy!

Styles

As I said yesterday, I've been working on a school project for my science-fiction class. The task is to create an imaginary world. To top it off, we have to have a short story (or movie) involving creatures and events from the project. This whole thing would be easier if I wasn't over-achieving of course, (we need three creatures, I have four) but still...

Here's a picture of the creatures:

We have to include culture and mythology for each creature, and to illustrate it I played with some different styles. I decided that, while they all believe in the same group of gods, they worship different ones.

First, the spiky one:

I tried to mimic ancient cave paintings. These creatures spend almost all of their time underground. Their god is the god of earth. He sleeps constantly, but when he stirs, it triggers earthquakes and rock slides.

Next, the half-fish people:

You can probably tell, but I tried for stained glass. The fish people are almost entirely farmers, because the planet is too dry to grow anything except underwater. Thus, it makes sense for them to worship harvest gods. Some notes: The far left one has seaweed for hair, the one next to her is the only one wearing clothes, and I tried to give the one on the far right a really long tail, but it blends into the background somewhat.

Then there's this picture from yesterday. (I'll use a small version since I already posted it.)

I used something similar to my normal stencil style. The planet has two suns and two moons, so these are twin sun and twin moon gods.

Last, the gods of the nomadic desert imps.

The gods of sandstorms and rain. I tried to mimic traditional Chinese watercolor. It's not perfect, but I like it.

That's all, Enjoy!