RatCreature’s Artwork

Genre/Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters/Pairings: a bowtruckle
Media: pencil, fine liner pen with waterproof indian ink, black tea, GIMP
Notes/comments: While the drawing is finished, I hope there’ll be better text eventually that would make it seem more like an excerpt from an old book about magical creatures from the HP universe. For now I’ve just added some text labeling it like a plate in an encyclopedia would be, so you have to imagine the suitable text going with it. Its style is supposed to reminiscent of early encyclopedias, like Diderot’s from the 18th century with copperplate engravings of observed plants and animals. My attempt at this isn’t very convincing because this is the first time I’ve done a b/w picture in ink with crosshatching since I think 9th? grade when we learned the technique in school, but considering that it is not so bad. I may do more HP beasts in this style eventually as part of this imaginary book too, but I haven’t decided which yet.

bowtruckle — screen resolution (ca. 272k)
bowtruckle, detail — high resolution (ca. 200k)

Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis
Characters/Pairings: John Sheppard & Steampunk!Puddlejumper
Media: pencil, fine liner pen with waterproof indian ink, acrylic paint
Notes/comments: I did this for the prompt “Victorian steampunk AU” for the SGA fanart fest Painted Spires. Admittedly mechanical pterodactyls aren’t the most efficient way for a flying machine, Steampunk or otherwise, and not a very likely or even possible path technology would take from an SF standpoint, but this way was much cooler visually than merely changing the puddlejumpers with pipes or gauges or whatever. I mean, they more or less look like flying lunch boxes. Not really realistic technology, but this is Stargate after all, and I’m pretty sure John would think that mechanical, flying dinosaurs were cool.

The original is 30×40cm, so unfortunately I had to scan it in two parts, and you can see a slight line where I merged, because I fail at digital manipulation and didn’t know how to make the two parts fit completely seamless.

Sheppard flying a Steampunk!Puddlejumper, pencils — screen resolution (ca. 168k)
Sheppard flying a Steampunk!Puddlejumper, inked lineart — screen resolution (ca. 188k)
Sheppard flying a Steampunk!Puddlejumper, finished image — screen resolution (ca. 244k)
Sheppard flying a Steampunk!Puddlejumper, detail — high resolution (ca. 228k)

Fandom: DC Comics (Green Arrow)
Characters/Pairings: Roy Harper (back when he was Speedy)
Media: Wacom tablet in GIMP
Notes/comments: This took me a really long time, and I don’t just mean that I first had the idea for this in 2006. I have no idea what I am doing wrong that digital coloring takes me so long, isn’t it supposed to be efficient? I suppose it’s one of the pitfalls of being self-taught. Anyway, it’s Roy during the famous heroin addict story line. As always, feedback is very welcome.

Junkie!Roy — screen resolution (ca. 116k)
Junkie!Roy, detail one — high resolution (ca. 72k)
Junkie!Roy, detail two — high resolution (ca. 40k)

Fandom/Genre: Stargate: Atlantis / His Dark Materials Fusion
Characters/Pairings: John Sheppard, Teyla Emmagan, the team’s dæmons Nioke, Keho, Tykallita, and Imara
Media used: pencil, fine liner pen with waterproof indian
ink, acrylic paint, a little bit colored pencils
Rating/warnings: G, none
Notes/comments: This is an illustration for Trinityofone’s SGA/HDM story Dæmonology, John and Teyla and their respective dæmons are sparring with each other, while Ronon’s and Rodney’s dæmons watch (these two themselves are somehow offscreen). The story itself is McKay/Sheppard slash, but the picture is very much gen.

The faint, yet still annoying line in the middle where the colors don’t quite match is there because the paper of the original is of a larger format than my scanner, so I had to scan it in two parts, and didn’t manage to make them fit perfectly.

Astrid helped me fix some perspective and relative size and positioning problems in an earlier pencils sketch of this. The illustration is much better for it. Any remaining problems however are my fault.

illustration for Trinityofone’s Dæmonology, pencils — screen resolution (ca. 184k)
illustration for Trinityofone’s Dæmonology, inked lineart — screen resolution (ca. 180k)
illustration for Trinityofone’s Dæmonology, finished image — screen resolution (ca. 256k)
illustration for Trinityofone’s Dæmonology, detail one — high resolution (ca. 208k)
illustration for Trinityofone’s Dæmonology, detail two — high resolution (ca. 72k)

Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters/Pairings: Severus Snape/Kingsley Shacklebolt
Media: pencil, fine liner pen with waterproof indian ink, acrylic paint, a tiny bit of white conté chalk
Notes: I’ve already illustrated the epilogue of this story a while back, but always wanted to draw this Snape/Shacklebolt scene in the alley. Now, with barely two years delay, I got around to it. The relevant bit from Beth’s In From the Cold is: “Severus loosened his grip on Kingsley’s shoulders and slid his hands down Kingsley’s arms. He stopped when he reached the ends of Kingsley’s sleeves, encircled Kingsley’s strong-boned wrists with his fingers, then pulled Kingsley’s arms up over his head. Severus transferred his hold of Kingsley’s right wrist so that both of Kingsley’s hands were pinned against the brick wall by one of his own, then Severus slowly lowered his other hand until it came to rest on the top of Kingsley’s head.

Severus ghosted his long, sensitive fingers over Kingsley’s scalp, surprised by each tiny bump and dip in what seemed perfectly smooth from a distance. He slid his hand down along the side of Kingsley’s head, and he could feel Kingsley lean into his palm while Severus traced along the edge of Kingsley’s ear with his thumb, clicking his thumbnail softly against the small silver hoop that hung from the lobe. Severus leaned in and took the earring in his mouth, turning the hoop slowly with his tongue.”

illustration of the Snape/Shacklebolt alley scene, initial pencil drawing — screen resolution (ca. 308k)
illustration of the Snape/Shacklebolt alley scene, inks — screen resolution (ca. 304k)
illustration of the Snape/Shacklebolt alley scene, finished image — screen resolution (ca. 320k)
illustration of the Snape/Shacklebolt alley scene, detail — high resolution (ca. 222k)

I’ve also written some commentary on drawing this picture with scans and photos of the inbetween stages.

Genre/Fandom: Temeraire Series
Characters/Pairings: Iskierka
Media: pencil, fine liner pen with waterproof indian ink, acrylic paint, a bit of white conté chalk
Notes/comments: This illustrates Iskierka’s hatching. I hope she looks enough like a baby while still fitting the description that they look just like smaller versions of the big ones. But making the head long and lean like I normally do for dragons to make them look ferocious didn’t work for me for a baby dragon. The coloring didn’t turn out quite like I intended, and for some reason my scanner not only produced a weird stripe artifact that I couldn’t get rid of (it is not that intrusive, but still), it also reproduced the colors less bright than in the actual picture.

Iskierka’s hatching, pencils — screen resolution (ca. 184k).
Iskierka’s hatching, inked lineart — screen resolution (ca. 172k)
Iskierka’s hatching, finished image — screen resolution (ca. 172k)
Iskierka’s hatching, detail of the head — high resolution (ca. 136k)

I’ve also written some commentary on drawing this picture with scans and photos of the inbetween stages.

Genre/Fandom: Temeraire Series
Characters/Pairings: Temeraire
Media: pencil drawing, inked and colored with a Wacom tablet in GIMP
Notes/comments: This was done for the Yuletart gift exchange for Tylercat. I’d also like to thank Brown Betty for helping me to come up with a motif, when my initial idea didn’t work out, and for taking a look at the half-finished stages, spotting problems with the rocks and such. Please do not reuse this image as this was gift art for Tylercat.

Temeraire admiring his jewelry — screen resolution (ca. 140k)
detail of the head — high resolution (ca. 180k)
detail of the wing — high resolution (ca. 60k)

Genre/Fandom: original fantasy
Characters/Pairings: some random dragon
Media: pencil, fine liner pen with waterproof indian ink, acrylic paint, a bit of color pencil

dragon drawing, initial pencils — screen resolution (ca. 200k)
dragon drawing, inked lineart — screen resolution (ca. 200k)
dragon drawing, ink and acrylics — screen resolution (ca. 230k)
detail of the head — high resolution (ca. 224k)

Notes/comments: I made some longer notes on my process, because this is the first time I used acrylics to color a drawing. Read the rest of this entry »

Genre/Fandom: drawing exercise, comic
Characters/Pairings: just background scene setting, though there is a cat
Media: pencil, inks, watercolors
Notes/comments: I drew this for this prompt on Slothsdraw. I did the second exercise, and drew a nine panel comic showing fragments of a place that’s supposed to express one of these themes: abandoned, serene, forbidding, welcoming, official, exotic, innocent. I inked and colored my pencils but to safe time I did it on paper not the computer, and unfortunately the cheap paper I drew the pencils on wasn’t really suited for either. Anyway, I scanned the inbetween stages, so pencils, inks and the colored version are all behind the cut, and I hope you can guess the mood at least.

drawing exercise, establishing a mood in a comic, pencils (ca. 100k)
drawing exercise, establishing a mood in a comic, inks (ca. 150k)
drawing exercise, establishing a mood in a comic, watercolors (ca. 172k)

Genre/Fandom: drawing exercise
Characters/Pairings: just slightly fleshed out stick figures
Media: pencil
Notes/comments: I did the body language exercise from this week’s prompts on Slothsdraw., and actually drew all the listed attitudes (pompous, uneasy, impatient, aggressive, tired, humble, stubborn) because drawing the poses turned out rather fun. If you like you could try guessing which is figure is which.

drawing exercise, body language practice, pencils (ca. 96k)

Genre/Fandom: drawing exercise
Characters/Pairings: just balls with different textures
Media: pencil drawing
Notes/comments: I drew this for this prompt on Slothsdraw. I tried the texture practice, taking a ball and trying to make it look like different materials, but with pre-inking in mind, i.e. they are supposed to work as b/w rendering. The success varied.

drawing exercise, rendering textures (ca. 112k)

Genre/Fandom: drawing exercise / DC Comics
Characters/Pairings: Nightwing (Dick Grayson)
Media: pencil drawing, inked with a Wacom tablet in GIMP
Notes/comments: This silhouette practice is sort of fanart. I had Nightwing jumping around in Gotham in mind (or maybe Blüdhaven, what with the lack of gargoyles). I did the pencil drawing and then inked it in GIMP and added a fire escape and roof background that’s vaguely based on a simplified, inked version of two combined photos.

Nightwing patrolling Gotham (DCU), a drawing excercise for practicing silhouettes, pencils (ca. 32k)
Nightwing patrolling Gotham (DCU), a drawing excercise for practicing silhouettes, inks (ca. 64k)

Genre/Fandom: drawing exercise
Characters/Pairings: just stick figures
Media: pencil drawing
Notes/comments: I drew this for this prompt on Slothsdraw. It is a page with more or less proportional stick figures in various positions and movements.

drawing exercise, stick figures moving (ca. 100k)

Genre/Fandom: drawing exercise
Characters/Pairings: random objects drawn first from memory, then with reference
Media: pencil drawing
Notes/comments: I did the third exercise from these Slothsdraw prompts, and picked five complex objects, first drawing them from memory, then looking at references and drawing them again. I chose to draw a beach chair, an electric drill, a turntable, a microscope, and a hole puncher. I c&p’ed all sketches into one image for easier posting, the first attempts on the left, the ones after looking at references on the right.

drawing exercise, random objects drawn first from memory, then with reference (ca. 196k)

Genre/Fandom: drawing exercise
Characters/Pairings: original character
Media: pencil drawing
Notes/comments: I drew this for one of these prompts on Slothsdraw, and picked two of these seven emotions to draw: confident, uncertain, frustrated, hurt (emotionally), flirtatious, mischievous, and tired. So, can you guess which ones I picked?

drawing exercise, facial expression practice (ca. 96k)
drawing exercise, facial expression practice 2 (ca. 76k)

Genre/Fandom: DC Comics (Green Arrow)
Characters/Pairings: Connor Hawke (Green Arrow II)
Media: pencil drawing, inked and colored with a Wacom tablet in GIMP
Notes/comments: It was kind of hard to decide how to draw him, because there doesn’t seem to be any real consensus on how “non-European” he looks. So let me know whether my version matches your mental image of him.

Connor Hawke, initial pencils — screen resolution (ca. 64k)
Connor Hawke, finished colored version — screen resolution (ca. 44k)

Genre/Fandom: DC Comics
Characters/Pairings: Tim Drake (Robin III)/Stephanie Brown (Spoiler)
Media: Wacom tablet and GIMP
Notes/comments: Just a doodle I’ve drawn for a DCU kissing meme, thus it’s smaller/of a lower resolution than my regular fanart.

Tim and Steph kissing, digital doodle — low resolution (ca. 44k)

Genre/Fandom: Marvel
Characters/Pairings: Peter Parker (Spider-Man)/Matt Murdock (Daredevil)
Media: Wacom tablet and GIMP
Notes/comments: Just a doodle I’ve drawn for a Marvel universe kissing meme, thus it’s smaller/of a lower resolution than my regular fanart.

Spider-Man and Daredevil kissing, digital doodle — low resolution (ca. 20k)

Genre/Fandom: Dresden Files bookverse
Characters/Pairings: Bob
Media: pencil drawing, then inked, colored and various digital effects/textures added with Wacom tablet and GIMP
Notes/comments: I based it on a description from chapter six of Proven Guilty: “Other books, notebooks, envelopes, paper bags, pencils, and apparently random objects of many kinds crowd each other for space on the shelves–all except for one plain, homemade wooden shelf, which held only candles at either end, four romance novels, a Victoria’s Secret catalog, and a bleached human skull.” I used an actual Victoria’s Secret catalog cover to base my drawing of that catalog on and referenced bits from a couple of other photos via a google image search but only the catalog cover is directly traced as a whole, though the skull is close to this skull image. Oh and the Harlequin romance titles are real too, though I can’t actually remember whether I matched the right authors with their titles as I created the book spines.

Bob, finished image — screen resolution (ca. 168k)
Bob, finished image — high resolution (ca. 1325k)

I’ve also written some commentary on drawing this picture.

Fandom: DC Comics
Characters/Pairings: Tim Drake (Robin III)/Kon-El (Superboy), vaguely during their Young Justice era
Media: Wacom tablet and GIMP
Notes/comments: I tried drawing completely with a tablet for the first time, which turned out to be much harder than expected, so for practice I started drawing with a photo as guide for posture and then added costumes, changing hair and faces a bit and such, rather than sketching directly without tracing anything. The underlying photo base I started from was this gay wallpaper.

Tim and Kon kissing — screen resolution (ca. 76k)