Fandom/Genre: Stargate: Atlantis / Avatar: The Last Airbender Fusion
Characters/Pairings: Teyla as Waterbender
Media: pencil, fine liner pen with waterproof indian ink, acrylic paint
Notes/comments: I did this for the prompt “SGA/Avatar the Last Airbender crossover” for the SGA fanart fest Painted Spires, as additional fanart for the Amnesty Week. This is more a fusion than a crossover, but I think it’s still within the prompt’s parameters. Originally this was supposed to be a series of portraits with each of the team matched with an element from Avatar (I thought after Teyla I’d do Rodney as Earthbender, Ronon as Firebender, and John as Airbender), but I only managed to finish Teyla in time to still post (just barely) during Amnesty Week.

Teyla as Waterbender, pencils — screen resolution (ca. 192k)
Teyla as Waterbender, inked lineart — screen resolution (ca. 160k)
Teyla as Waterbender, finished image — screen resolution (ca. 212k)
Teyla as Waterbender, detail — high resolution (ca. 152k)

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/Genre: Stargate: Atlantis Steampunk AU
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. The white border is a result of me having to tape my cheap, thin (and thus not ideally suited for wet colors) paper down securely to prevent warping, which worked surprisingly well. In RL it there’s still bits of tape stuck to the border, but I removed those from the scan. Otherwise I didn’t do any digital cleanup work on this though.

This was the first time I used acrylic paint to color a drawing (the only things I’ve done with it before was decorating wood), so there was a bit of trial and error involved, and it doesn’t quite look like I imagined, but it’s not too awful, and I quite like how some things turned out.

Anyway, first I inked the pencils I’ve posted with waterproof indian ink. I used two fine liners, and unfortunately my smallest one was a bit thicker than I’d have liked for some of the detail lines. I scanned the inks in case I’d totally mess up with the acrylic paint, if you want to look, they are here. I decided to apply the acrylic paint mostly in watery glazes, so I soaked the paper, stretched and taped it to a board and then applied the first background glazes completely wet in wet, more towards the burnt sienna on the lower half more yellowish in the upper, then when that dried I added more layers wet on dry and some texture with a sponge, and made the lower half more grey because by then I had decided to make the dragon brownish red and sienna background wouldn’t have had enough contrast. The grey is the result from adding glazes with blue and umbra, btw, not a grey from black. The general consensus seems to be that grey and black from colors are less flat than those from thinned black, so that’s what I went with.

Then I painted the dragon with various thin layers of reds, sienna, and purplish colors until I got the colors that I mostly liked. It was kind of fun to be able to just paint them over each other without the dry layers dissolving again as water colors do. The shadowed areas were made darker by adding umbra and below the dragon also blue. The spikes and claws were at this point still the background yellowish, so I painted those over with white with a bit of violet in it, and the eyes with a more intense yellow. I did a few highlights too, but that didn’t work so well for me.

Once the whole thing dried I inked some of the outlines again, because they had become a bit muddled with the glazes over them, and I like the clean look of lineart remaining even in the colored painting, and then added a few more highlights and some finicky stuff like some of the scales with colored pencils. It all took many hours, but then I don’t color fast on the computer either.

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)