[2,581 words, 14 min estimated read time]
This month I made my own art challenge as an excuse to draw selkies, practiced an art style study of Mike Mignola the creator of Hellboy, and made a lot of art of my characters!
Selkie Summer
Mermay is an art challenge that runs throughout May, and for a little bit I thought about joining but eventually decided not to. Instead I’d lately been in the mood to draw selkies and seals, so I decided to do ‘Selkie Summer’ instead, mostly so I could just draw selkies instead but also to not limit myself to trying to draw them all in one month.
Also for those that don’t know, selkies are a creature from Celtic and Norse mythology. They’re typically depicted as women who are able to transform between a seal and human form by removing their seal fur coat.
I wanted to make a selkie character design based on each type of seal within the family Phocidae, also known as the ‘true seals’ and ‘earless seals’. Phocidae is just one of the three main families of seals, the other two families being Odobenidae, the walruses, and Otariidae, known as the ‘eared seals’ and including sea lions and fur seals.
I went through each of the ‘true seals’ and wrote down some basic information about them- they’re average height and weights, any distinguishing characteristics, and where I could I grabbed a fun fact about them to share! I took their average heights and did my best to convert them to human heights within a range of 4 1/2 feet tall and 7 1/2 feet tall. That way if I decided to do a lineup I would have an easier time, and it also helped to figure out general proportions early on. After that I just put them in alphabetical order and started getting to work!
The first selkie design I drew is based on the Baikal seal. These seals are only found at Lake Baikal, the oldest and deepest lake in the world. They’re also the only exclusively freshwater seal.
One of the first things that stood out to me was how big Baikal seal’s eyes are, so I knew straight away she was gonna have some big ol eyes with big shiny spots. Also Baikal seals, Caspian seals, and Ringed seals are the smallest of the true seals, so I knew I was starting out with one of the shortest of the selkies.
While I wasn’t really able to work with clothing I decided to at least try to look up hairstyles of women living in the area for the selkies. At Lake Baikal it seemed like people mostly wore pretty tightly bound braids, which makes sense for how cold and windy it must be, so I gave her two twin braids going down either shoulder.
Overall I was pretty happy with how she turned out, it was kinda difficult starting at the extremes for some things, particularly for the height and her expression, but at least I had a clearer vision going in for what she would look like.
Next was the bearded seal! Bearded seals get their name from the long whiskers they have, which curl when they dry.
One thing that came up while researching was bearded seals seem to have a smaller head proportionally to the rest of their body, so I kept that in mind going in. Hopefully if I make a lineup of all the characters it’ll be easier to tell. I also had to make the namesake bearded whiskers more dramatic. Rather than starting from her cheeks I tried to have them come more from around her nose to give more of the impression of a mustache sort of look with them, but keep them long like the whiskers on the seals. I also noticed a lot of rectangular and square shape language in comparison to other seals, so I tried to make her head a bit more rectangular.
Bearded seals are one of the kinds that can get a kind of rusty coloration due to feeding along the sea bed and digging along the mud which has iron-oxide, or rust! It’s harmless to them, just turns their fur orange. I figured there may not be many seals that have this so I made the whole thing a bit more orange and red with colors for the fur and hair.
For her hairstyle I was looking up references of people living in Svalbard which made it tricky, since everyone there has to stay bundled up with how cold it is. I found a couple photos though of people indoors just with their hair down so I decided not to do anything fancy with it!
Next in line was the Caspian seal! Like the Baikal seal, Caspian seals are only found in one place in the world, the Caspian Sea, and are also one of the smallest seals!
I knew going in that I would have a ton of fun with the mottled fur pattern. Caspian seals come in so many color variations it was hard to pick, so I ended up trying to go with a a range of more yellow lighter tan colors and darker grey browns. Overall I tried to sway more towards brown tones to help distinguish all the selkies from each other, since from a quick glance it seemed like a lot of seals tend to have grey fur colors.
I had less of a clear idea going in for what she would look like, so I started looking into towns around the Caspian Sea as a starting place for research. I started by looking at Baku, Azerbaijan, and Tehran, Iran, and browsing through the notable people listed on wikipedia and sketching profiles as I went. It was also helpful for noticing features that might be more common that I could incorporate into the design, but honestly was also just a good excuse to practice more realistic drawings of people since I realized by this point I was feeling rusty haha. When drawing so many characters for a lineup like this I want to be sure to avoid same-face syndrome, so especially looking at the nose, eyes, and jawline can be really good features to focus on to help differentiate characters.
After I spent time sketching faces over and over I picked out some of the features to start exploring with for her design, and in the end I’m really happy with how she turned out! I still think my favorite part is the mottled fur pattern though haha, it was just so fun to draw and figure out the colors for.
Next was the selkie design for the crabeater seal! After looking at photos of crabeater seals I knew I’d want to give her a soft smile and eyes to match the expressions. I also noticed in some of the photos that the seals had scars across their bodies. I hadn’t considered to add scars to the designs yet, so I figured now was as good a time as any to include it!
Crabeater seals are one of the bigger seal species, so I knew she would be tall, but beyond that didn’t have much to go on. I decided to look up areas crabeater seals live around as a starting point for research. It was trickier since they live across such a wide range, found across Antartica and pretty much the southern edges of any continent close enough to the south pole, found in places like New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, and Argentina. It came down to just picking an area, so I decided to go with New Zealand. While searching through notable people I looked into the Māori in particular, since I just happened to already know they’re an indigenous group of New Zealand, and also came across the women’s rugby team players who became my main focus for portrait drawing practice.
In the end I was pretty happy with the character’s design, even though the fur coat on the crabeater seal may not stand out very much I think I did a good job balancing the design with interesting elements like the scars. I also really like how her facial features and expression turned out, I think I captured the soft easygoing look I was going for.
Art Style Study: Mike Mignola
While browsing through the comics section of a bookstore I saw some issues of Hellboy, and started to think about how nice of a style that would be to learn from for a webcomic I’ve had on the backburner for a while now. The way the artwork is stylized almost gives the impression the images are cut out from a black canvas, using harsh shadows of pure black rather than additional layers of shading or highlights. This allows for one layer for lineart and all the shading, and one layer underneath for flat colors. I’d been in the mood to do another art style study anyway, so I figured I’d give it a shot and see what I could learn!
Hellboy has had a lot of different artists but I wanted to focus on the style of the creator, Mike Mignola. When emulating the style it took me a couple tries to figure out how I could replicate the appearance of the shapes being cut out from the black, but after a few tries I found a method I liked. I put one layer as white, the layer on top as black, my sketch overtop the black, then made cut outs from the black layer underneath the sketch.
I ended up making two drawings, one of my character Morrigan, the other of my character Finnigan. As I’ve written about in previous blog posts, Morrigan tends to be my starting point for just about any art style study. They’re one of my oldest characters and I understand drawing them the best- what their main shapes are, the color palette to use, etc.
I was feeling okay with the result, but still saw some areas for improvement. I almost felt like I went a little too messy in some places, especially with the tendrils in the background, but I’m glad for once it wasn’t my usual problem of being too perfectionistic. I do like how the hair turned out since I was wondering how to go about it, as I couldn’t find many references for a hairstyle like theirs. I also like how the flame in their hand turned out, and the general color palette I picked out. Overall wasn’t my proudest work, but I felt it was a strong start!
My next drawing was of my character Finnigan, and I went in feeling confident about this one. By this point I’d figured out how to order the layers in a way that worked well for me, and had a clearer vision of what I was going for. I knew I wanted him posed with his bow, with rocks in the bottom corner and tree branches in the top. I noticed a lot of Mike Mignola’s pieces had this sort of composition that stretched diagonally across the canvas, so I tried pushing it more.
Side by side I like how these two turned out, and I definitely learned a lot along the way. One of the early limitations I noticed with this style is loosing the expressiveness I’ve been pushing for in my art lately. Most of the characters seemed to have a fairly static expression, which works great for Hellboy, but wouldn’t be something I’d want to carry over into my own work. The biggest strength of the style again is with the use of harsh shadows to not need additional cell shading or highlights. Especially for a comic being able to cut out these steps altogether is such a massive time-saver, and I’m so glad I was able to learn from it. I don’t know how much I’ll end up taking this into my own webcomic I’d like to work on, but I definitely want to keep learning as much as I can.
Character Drawing: Isaac Pumpkinhead
In preparation for artfight I wanted to draw one of my characters again, Isaac Pumpkinhead. (By the way, here’s a link to my Artfight Page!) Overall I was happy with it, I felt like I got to play around with a fun pose and bright saturated colors.
I’d originally made him for a dungeons & dragons one-shot game as a swashbuckler rogue and warforged. For his backstory he’d been an adventurer who was tricked by a hag and his soul was stolen. The hag transformed him into his current form, a scarecrow’s body of straw and wood with a pumpkin for a head, and he became one of the hag’s many minions that served her. Years later another group of adventurers came along and killed the hag, freeing him from her control. His memories are scattered, the only thing he could initially vaguely remember being a sword found amongst the hag’s trinkets and treasures. It had been his, a dragonslayer sword from his time as an adventurer, and with this he headed out and joined the adventuring party that saved him!
Misc Doodles and Drawings
When I was a kid I was a big fan of the show Generator Rex, and recently I decided to start rewatching it. I’m only a few episodes in but, man I forgot how cool some of the character designs are. So I decided to draw one of the characters, Breach! For the background I used the same black and red colors as the portals she creates and I had a lot of fun drawing the swirls for it.
I made a reference sheet for my character Finnigan as prep for Artfight!
This started out as a simple doodle of my character Jericho, but then I went kinda crazy with it haha. I couldn’t quite figure out what to do with the background so I just kept the original grid I’d put down. I still notice some stuff with the anatomy that bothers me, but I think the lighting turned out really nice, and overall I’m pretty happy with it!
A silly doodle of my Bloodborne hunter oc’s Rowan and Tamisen with the ‘Excuse me he asked for no pickles’ meme.
I drew Gaith’s characters Moose and Weasel (They’re @gaith on Bluesky, here’s a link!)
I wanted an excuse to do some fun poses of my character Sylvie, so I did some quick doodles of her!
Finishing my Second Sketchbook
In October 2023 I started keeping a physical sketchbook again after feeling burn out with digital art. I made a rule for myself that I wouldn’t share anything from it- it was just a space for me to try out new ideas, be as messy with the art as I want, and experiment with my art. It took me a full year to finish that first sketchbook, and it was the first time I ever actually completed a sketchbook front to back. After that I started up a new one, and I managed to finish it after seven months this time!
I’ve really really enjoyed keeping a physical sketchbook again, and I’ve started a third sketchbook. I’d really recommend keeping a sketchbook like that, especially if you’re used to posting your art online. It’s been really nice to have a space where I can experiment without worrying about what other people will think of it.
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