Almajest the Wizard

I've let my blog go and haven't updated the poor thing in a while.  I found some posts that didn't end up being posted. Here is one from earlier in the year:

I'm currently working on a personal project little by little this past year.  It's based around a land called "Nevathi".  I'm creating characters, flora, fauna, geography, and stories revolved around this land.

Almajest is one of the characters that lives there.  He is a Wizard that lives deep in the forest in the Surface Realm.  He communicates between the Sky and Water Realms using messenger creatures of various kinds.

Here's the initial thumbnail sketch idea and a quick color comp idea:

A few more color comps:

Here's the pencil sketch:

 

And I inked it digitally:

Reckless Deck ArtOrder Challenge

 

"Guardian" - watercolour and digital

This painting was done over the holidays for the Reckless Deck ArtOrder Challenge.  For this contest, you had to create a character using a random set of Reckless Deck cards.  Each card has an attribute on it, so when you randomly pick a few, you can get any crazy combination of words to inspire you and generate ideas for characters. This is the set of cards I got (by clicking a link on the contest page):

 

I started to come up with ideas of a Guardian angel character.

Below were my 2 fave thumbnails which I then colored.  I hasd some crit at this point and then had to choose which one to do. I started to develop the one on the right but ended up changing my mind.

Once I committed to the one on the left, I took some reference photos and did a final drawing on watercolor paper and got painting.

Finished watercolor:

The watercolor painting was a good start. I scanned it in and did some changes digitally to the color, lighting, and whip.

I received more crit at this point and made some final tweaks and here's the finished painting:

"Saying Goodbye" Watercolor Process

Happy New Year! It's time to get in gear after the holidays and post some things. Do you have any New Year's resolutions? Here are a few of mine:
-  Do more drawing and painting from life
- Work on a series of paintings (more info once I get going)
- Continue working on my personal project (blog post to come soon about this)

Anyways, on to this ink and watercolour painting. I painted it back in November and I did the ink drawing for Inktober.  My goal was to just have fun with it and experiment with colour.

Here's the ink drawing I started with.  I left the back trees pencil so they would stay faded.

Here's a sped up version of the painting process:


When it was done, I scanned it in and did a few tonal adjustments digitally.