Here are some drawings I've done this spring for a role-playing game commission. Brush and ink and pigment markers, for the most part.

The View from the Top and Some Diary Comics

Hey, kids! It's been a while. I've been drawing some diary comics lately, and here are some of them.

Some illustration work (August 2018)

I've had a couple of illustration gigs this summer. The first one consisted of drawing some superheroes, for what use I do not know. Here are some of them. These are all pretty much pure watercolor. I wish I'd sprung for better watercolor paper. Instead, I used bristol board. The White Wombat is brush and ink and watercolor, while the Kirby-ish one with the Superman knock off was drawn with a mix of brush and ink, Pitt pens, and watercolor. I like stretching my legs in watercolor. It's my favorite painting medium. The client wanted most of these to look like comics from the eighties, and the only really specific instruction I had was to make the Red Queen look like the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club, only in red. These turned out okay and they were fun to do.

Late August Art Dump

I've been making a lot of art this month, but a lot of it is stuff I can't show. That hasn't stopped me from going to my regular figure drawing sessions, though, and here are a bunch drawings from those sessions I attended this month. The drawing at the head of this post is pencil and almost dry Copic markers on sketchbook paper. Dry copics have their uses, but I think I need to refill mine.

Sci-Fi Illustrations

These are a couple of illustrations I've done for a science fiction novel. I'm on the hook for five of these and the cover. Here are the two I've scanned for the client so far. I should have been done with these last week, but I suffered a blow to the head last month that scrambled my ability to draw for a week or two. I think I'm better now.

Brush and ink and Pitt pen on bristol.

Fanciful Creatures

Here are some more drawings for my current RPG contract. I'm drawing a lot of insects and dinosaurs for this commission, which would please the hell out of the twelve year-old me. I drew a lot of dinosaurs when I was a kid, and now I'm getting paid to do it. Dream big, kids. They come true some of the time. I'll be doing drawings for this assignment for a while. I think there are 47 drawings all told, of which I've done about a quarter of them.

The brief on these: the ant is an ant, obviously. In the game, it carries an electrical charge, hence the glowing spots on its carapace. The big critter is a variety of ankylosaur, used by the game's lizard people as a draft animal. This is an example of combining existing animals in a drawing to make the resulting fantasy animal credible. This draws from several types of turtles and lizards. It has the head of a snapping turtle and the legs and feet of a Galapagos tortoise, along with some other influences from horned lizards and ankylosaur fossils. It turned out better than I expected. The caterpillar is described as a "crawling wig," and when I went looking for references for such a thing, I turned up this! I went to pains to avoid just copying the real thing.

The ant is brush and ink and Pitt pens on Bristol board. The dino and "crawling wig" are entirely brush and ink on Bristol board.

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More Creatures

Here are a some more creatures for the RPG commission I'm working on right now. I'll have more of these pretty soon. The top one is another feathered dinosaur, though one that's more overtly a dinosaur. The other is a giant flea. Insects are insanely fun to draw, especially fanciful ones where I can cut loose. The first drawing is entirely brush and ink. The big bug is brush and pen and Pitt pens. Both are on Bristol board.

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I'm trying out Patreon as a means of funding my blogs. They don't have a widget yet, so this link will just have to do. If you like my writing and if you'd like to support Krell Laboratories and Christianne's Art and Comics, please come on over and pledge. Thanks.

Ol' One Eye, finished

Well, this is done. I'll send it off to my client today.

Here's how this went in my household. It helps to know that my partner is a secular pagan whose religious tradition is Odinism. When I was discussing this with her, she suggested that Odin needed a big floppy hat and that he should be young and "hot." When I showed this to her she seemed disappointed. First, because I didn't do the kind of floppy hat she expected (I thought it made him look like Gandalf rather than Odin), but also because she couldn't tell how well-hung Odin was. "Perhaps I should have had him writing runes in the snow?" I said. "That would have worked," she said.

Whatever.

Brush and ink and pen and some white paint on Bristol board. The original is 11"x17".

Ol' One Eye

This is a work in progress. The client wanted a drawing of Odin with his ravens and wolves, but didn't want him in a warrior aspect. Research told me that he was going to need a big hat, but I didn't want a hat that would make him look like Gandalf. The outfit is based on a Viking coat from Birka, while his belt buckle is patterned after the great buckle from the Sutton Hoo ship burial. It doesn't look very "viking" by the popular imagination, but this is actually pretty heavily researched. The hat, I admit, I kitbashed from a couple of historical sources and probably doesn't resemble anything real. In truth, I'm tired of drawing fur. I've drawn a lot of it this year. Check back when this is finished, by which time, I'll be tired of drawing snowy branches.

Unfit Transportation

Here's my third day drawing for Crystal's 30 day drawing challenge. This time, the instructions were to draw "Unfit transportation." Pitt pens on Canson sketchbook paper.

This is for sale in my Etsy store. 

Ripping Creeper

This is a piece I did for a game. The brief called for a particularly nasty carnivorous vine with hooked thorns. I love inventing horrible alien botany.

Pitt pen on 114gsm paper.

Fearless Monster Hunters

This is an illustration I did for a roleplaying game that a friend of mine wrote. She wanted a Hammer Horror sort of feel by way of Bernie Wrightson, so this is the result. (And, oh, look at that! Another excuse to draw Peter Cushing). Brush and ink and crowquill and Pitt pens on Bristol board. Technically, this is still a work in progress, but whatever. The finished piece won't be too different.

Exile pages 7 and 8

Finally back to work on this. It's amazing how much easier it is to draw comics when your hands aren't covered with sores. This is a two page spread. I drew the top of this digitally, and I'm not really all that happy with it. there are some things I like, but not many. My avoidance of gray tones here borders on the masochistic.

The two pieces of art on the walls here are by Jim Dine and Willem DeKooning.

Voices Against Bullying

I'm contributing to an anthology about bullying this month. These are the first two pages of my story. Pitt pens on Bristol board with digital lettering. The title font is Benguat Frisky. Everything else comes from Blambot. This will run five pages. I probably won't post much more than this, since this is going to be published. Should be out sometime in June. I'm still working on The Exile, btw, but I've had a couple of setbacks with that story. I hope to have it finished by the end of May.

The Exile Page 6

Here's page six of "The Exile and Happy Landing of Natalie Rios", written by Rachel K. Zall. I'm pretty happy with this page, but I took too much time to draw it. I get that way when I have to fiddle with perspective and backgrounds sometimes. If I wasn't already committed to black and white, this page has sealed the deal. Hopefully, the next page won't take nearly so long.

Brush and ink and Pitt pens on Bristol board.

Exile Page 5

Here's page five of "The Exile and Happy Landing of Natalie Rios," written by Rachel K. Zall. Brush and ink and Pitt pens on Bristol board. Very not safe for work.

Exile page 4

Here's page 4 of "The Exile and Happy Landing of Natalie Rios", written by Rachel K. Zall. Pitt pens on Bristol board, mostly. Some brushwork. Not much. I'm pretty happy with how this is going.

Exile page 3

Here's page three of "The Exile and Happy Landing of Natalie Rios". This page is only somewhat NSFW. Pen and ink on Bristol board. Mostly Pitt pens on this page because my inking brush is dying. I should probably mention that I'm using Smack Attack from Blambot for most of the lettering on this story.

Exile Page 1

This is the first page of a comic I'm drawing. This is VERY not safe for work, particularly if you work for anyone who is even a little bit homophobic or squeamish about queer sex. I haven't decided whether or not this is going to remain black and white or not. I like it in black and white and it'll be easier to print it that way, but the web is color.

This will be eleven or twelve pages when it's done. The story spans 21 years in a short amount of time, so it's a challenge. This is mostly brush and ink and Pitt pen on Bristol board. I lettered it in Illustrator.

Revenge

This started in my sketchbook and then took over my brain for a week. The first three panels are Pitt pens on crappy sketchbook paper, the rest is (mostly) sumi ink on Bristol board. This may or may not be autobiographical.