Inktober 2019: day 29 - Pentel pocket brush and ink wash

Berix isn’t crying, those tear tracks are permanent stains caused by a hallucinogenic drug.

Just time enough to introduce one more new person! Berix is another courtesan of the Dai Empress. His people make extensive use of mind-altering drugs, so one of his special skills is formulating them for courtiers. He enjoys music.

Inktober 2019: day 23 - Pentel pocket brush and ink wash (G-pen for the strings)

Here’s another character we haven’t met before, although you may have seen his eye if you’ve been here a while. Jothan is a courtesan at the palace of the Dai Empress, with music among his specialist skills. His people never show their open mouths, so he wears a veil if he’s been asked to sing as well as play.

(The harp design isn’t final, I think it should be a bit less symmetrical.)

Inktober 2019: day 13 - brush inking and ink wash

A character we haven’t really met before! This is ‘Sapling’, the Dai Empress, in extremely casual clothes. This might even be something like pyjamas. She rules a vast empire that spans more than half a galaxy.

I normally try not to use the same inking method two days in a row, but carrying bottles of ink to and from work was making me nervous so I thought I’d better do all the brush inking at the weekend. I did use different brushes though!

4 Diamonds

Here's the final set of eyes from the 'eyeball sketchbook', it's the Diamonds from Steven Universe, of course. The Diamond Authority is still my favourite part of that cartoon, so I'm happy to finally have a canon character design for all four.

I will admit to being slightly disappointed that White Diamond wasn't a point cut, since it would have been neat if their cut of gem got more modern and refined, but also smaller, as you went down, but oh well.

The previous sets from this sketchbooks were horror deformations, some sci-fi characters, and some fantasy characters.

Inktober 2018 : Day 15 - gel pen

Violet has cold hands and she's not afraid to use them.

Inktober 2018 : Day 8 - gel pens

Violet lives with the Vrega because she was accidentally exposed to a terrible Vrega disease called Black Rot. It doesn’t affect her the same way as them, so she’s not in immediate danger of dying and isn’t contagious, but it does have symptoms. A common one is sudden attacks of nausea and stomach pain, there’s nothing to do except wait for it to stop.

4 Sci-Fi Eyes

I wasn't sure if the top two should count as one or two eyes, since they're the same person.

Apparently I hadn't got all the eyes out of my system, so here are four more. These are three aliens from a story I don't think I've ever shared before, so I suppose this can be their first introduction! All of them are members of a royal court in the far future, far away from Earth.

Top to bottom these are: Jothan, a Perevin courtesan (both relaxed and agitated); Susu, a Shyskish courtesan; and 'Sapling', the Dai Empress.

Some Vrega

I'm fairly often guilty of developing characters with important colour schemes and then only drawing them in black and white, so here are some colour pictures of the vrega. There are many minor differences between them and humans, but the only obvious one is their slightly corpse-like purple skin, which you can never see because I never draw them in colour.

Khet and Vekh are showing off minor mutations that are considered to be a blessing from the god of nature, Violet wants to know if those spikes are sharp, and Visuk at the bottom just is not, and never has been, a morning person.

Inktober 2016 - Part 1

It's Inktober again! Here are my first 10 pictures from this year. I'm often tired from work so we're a little short on backgrounds so far, maybe I can make up the gap later in the month.

Day 1 - mapping pen : It's still not a good idea to take fruit from fairies, even ones who go to your school.

Day 2 - brush inking and ink wash : Spider's parents didn't do a great job of dealing with his seemingly ever-increasing psychic powers, but in their defence I don't think I'd handle this very well either.

Day 3 - cartridge pen : Vekh, if you keep saying things like "Oh Meruch, you're... so strong" he's going to start refusing to carry you. I made a bad choice of pen for this one, my cartridge pen ink looks very different to my other pens so I have to use it for the whole picture, and it took forever to fill in the black areas with such a fine nib!

Day 4 - brush pen : It's not a good day for Nettle. (This is probably the pen I should have used for the previous one.)

Day 5 - gel pen : Lena is dowsing for a lost object, probably her brother's house keys.

Day 6 - g-pen and markers : Psychics are generally more dangerous as children than as adults.

Day 7 - fineliners and grey pen : Isaac would make a good guardian angel for a goth child who likes things creepy, always assuming he is an angel.

Day 8 - g-pen : It says something about Spider's personality that he can be so happy about bending that one spoon when Nettle is levitating him, herself and probably half the house without even really trying. I think I've drawn a variation of this picture for the last 3 Inktobers in a row, it's probably fine as long as I keep using different pens, right?

Day 9 - ink and water : I've used surprisingly little ink and water so far this year. Louise likes the rain, but I've never tried to get a rain effect in this technique before so I don't know how happy she'll be with that view.

Day 10 - mapping pen : Lottie lives in a cold place, but her adoptive parents buy her lots of fashionable fur-trimmed coats.

Part 2, Part 3, Hallowe'en

Inktober 2015 - Part 2

Here's the next few pictures from this year's Inktober challenge.

Day 11 - G-pen and brush pen. I was short of time so I went with a dolly-style picture again, this time Louise with a bonus Sweetpea.

Day 12 - mapping pen and markers. I hope coloured markers count as 'ink'. Visuk suffers from a skin condition that's a little like eczema and a little like herpes. Flare-ups last about two weeks. Meruch is there to make sure he doesn't scratch.

Day 13 - gel pen. I wanted to check I could still use gel pen reliably after such a long break. Nettle's effect radius for this sort of thing is more than a mile, but you'll be safe as long as she can see you're running away.

Day 14 - brush pen and grey markers. The process for this one went something like this: Brain: Okay, we're going to do something different, something subtle, with a proper background and- Hands: Re-hash a theme we already used with the heaviest pen we have and no background at all, got it!

Day 15 - ink and water. I don't think I've ever drawn the mirror twins in ink and water before, so it seemed a good time to give it a try. It's nice to make new friends. At the graveyard.

Day 16 - mapping pen. Sometimes you're tired and you just want to draw a big pile of hair. Andersen has the biggest hair among my characters so here he is.

Day 17 - ink and water. They're lost. I'm trying to develop a technique for doing decent backgrounds in this style, but it still needs a bit of work. The sky isn't bad I think.

Day 18 - brush inking and ink wash. Fun fact, that roof is the roof of my local church (from memory though). Rooftops and windowsills are the Crow Boy's natural habitat.

Day 19 - G-pen. I wondered what Ely and Trispin would look like in dolly-style, the answer is apparently 'like a much creepier Poppet'.

Day 20 - brush pen. I accidentally crippled my hand copying up notes and could only manage a line drawing. Violet has taught Khet and Vekh anime poses, but they're not as cute when you have terrifying goat eyes. Adorable vampire teeth are okay. These two are perfect for my poor, crippled fingers because as devout Khukh-worshippers (the vrega nature deity) they are forbidden from cutting their hair, wearing piercings, ritual scarification or any of the other fiddly details my vrega usually have. Violet likes it too, since they opted out of the Trial due to the ritual mutilation aspect, and therefore have no back-spikes and can give a decent piggy-back ride. At a relatively short 6', Khet also doesn't loom over her quite as badly as most of them do.


Part 1, Part 3, Hallowe'en

Inktober 2014 - part 5

Day 25 - cartridge pen. This is the same pen I use for ink and water, but without the water there's no way to correct my horrible perspective.

Day 26 - fineliner, grey pens and ink painter. This is the same Derwent fineliner and one of their new ink paint pens that I was given at LICAF. Nettle and Spider are not really the same height, but they look more dramatic this way.

Day 27 - g-pen. Since I drew Chiihon, here's her friend the Devil Boy, who is a pre-Disaster vrega. Their planet was not a nice place to live back then. (It's not now either, but at least it doesn't make your teeth fall out any more.)

27.5 - ink and water. My manager wanted me to draw a lightbulb in ink, so I did.

Day 28 - g-pen. I think I made Nettle too short this time. She probably wants the hug but doesn't really know how to express that, so she'll just stand there awkwardly until it stops.

Day 29 - brush pen. Meruch likes to carry Violet because otherwise all he can see is the top of her head.

Day 30 - mapping pen. Ely's toenails are just as long and gross as her fingernails.

Inktober 2014 - part 4

I got ill in the week before London MCM, so between that and con prep I fell very behind on these. I think the next one that was drawn on the right day is 29.

Day 19 - g-pen. I inked this on a moving train. Visuk thought being carried by Meruch would be fun, but it turns out it's mostly embarrassing. Also Visuk has at least two scars that I forgot to draw.

Day 20 - ink and water. I realised I'd never drawn Lottie in ink and water, so here she is.

Day 21 - mapping pen. I wasn't totally happy with the way I drew Trispin's standard glamour, so here's another try.

Day 22 - ink and water. Adventures in late-night character design. This is the doctor on Meruch and Visuk's ship. He's also a priest, which is common. He wears the ponytail and that vial for religious reasons, and is a lot older than he looks to humans. (He looks his age to other Vrega, since they know what they're looking for.)

Day 23 - g-pen. This is where I fell behind, I sketched this on the 24th, but didn't ink it until the 27th. This is Chiihon, who appears to be a mammal but is really a carnivorous plant. Her people eat their planet's native hominids.

Day 24 - ink and water. I tried drawing the Crowboy this way too.

Inktober 2014 - part 3

 A little late in posting, but here are some more Inktober pictures.

Day 13 - ink and water. Levitation practice is also nap-time.

Day 14 - brush pen. I have a Pentel brush pen that I usually use to fill in black areas or occasionally for observational sketches, so I tried using it for a whole picture. It quickly became a game of 'how much black can I put on this before it becomes an unreadable mess?'

Day 15 - mapping pen. I drew Trispin a lot, so here's Ely.

Day 16 - g-pen. If you're wondering why other people don't just stay away from Ely and Trispin when they're so obviously bad news, the answer is glamours.

Day 17 - brush pen. This one was done at LICAF! Violet is tiny compared to most Vrega. For reference, Khet (who is carrying her) is just over 6' tall.

Day 18 - fineliners and grey pens. The Derwent people gave us free fineliners at LICAF. Take three cards and Lena will tell your fortune.