As I said in last week’s post, “one of these days, I might even post a couple sketches I’ve made, if you promise not to judge me too hard. Hehe.” And here we are.

Over the lovely Valentine’s Day weekend I had with Mr Adderly, we spent a few hours having Art Time. Which mostly consists of us sitting around the living room sketching away while I try not to annoy him too much with my choice of background music. During this time, I got a bee in my bonnet to make a pencil portrait of Kadrian Ayzhus, our womanizing general from After Exile. I also had the rare foresight to take some work-in-progress pics (where were cell phone cameras when I was in painting class in college?), so you can see a little of our Parthi Blyd Kriga’al as she develops on the page.

I’m not entirely happy with the right side of her face (her right). I feel like somehow I was going for three-quarter profile, and the way I have her nose and left eye, it’s looking closer to a full profile. But otherwise I’m content with it for now. Her smirk took a lot of fiddling, but it conveys the tone I have in my head for Kadrian. I’d like to pull the sketch into Photoshop at some future point and use it for an guideline for a digital painting. It’d be nice to see her in color with some decent lighting.

I’d like to do Bellora and Niquel next (I want to do Raothan, but I’m horrible at drawing men!). I’m sure they’ll materialize as the mood strikes me.

Progress Part 1: I’ve got a head shape down and the beginnings of some facial features. It’s funny, in oil paintings, I always do the eyes last. In pencil, they always show up first. I could have got some earlier pics, but it didn’t occur to me to take progress images until this point.

Progress Part 2: some more definition to the rest of the face. There’s something Lady Gaga-ish happening with that overbite, no? Unintentional. Am just seeing it now as I write this caption. Also, it’s hard to show a scar that’s really just a furrow in the skin in a basic pencil sketch. A future color version and I’ll have that looking more natural.

Final Sketch: There she is, in all of her arrogant, tattooed glory. Note: sketching hair and braids with a mechanical pencil is bullshit. But I was too lazy to hike upstairs and root around in the attic/storage for my legitimate drawing supplies, so that’s what I get. Feh. So you can see her Blyd Kriga’al ram’s horn tattoo there on the shaved portion of her head. And her warrior’s queue (“braid”, Americans, braid). If you’ll picture this hair on a man, then you’ll know what Raothan’s running around with. Though I don’t think he keeps his queue bound (that was a spur of the moment decision I made while drawing).

So yup. That happened. It felt good to draw something. I haven’t made time to do it in a long time. And drawing and painting is something I used to do all the time. This whole “adult” thing is BS. Where’s all the fun shit I was going to get up to? Why don’t I have time for anything?

Chapter 8 of Emperor is in progress: 5400 words or so as of last night. Hope to have you more to read soon!