[1098 words, 6 min estimated read time]
Despite being really sick during the month, and going on vacation, I ended up still making a bunch of art! I focused on drawing my newer characters in prep for Artfight.
New Character: Imogen Valencia
I created a new character and started a new playthrough of Oblivion, focused on the dark brotherhood questline.
First I came up with some concept artwork for her design.
Once I finished her concept art, I made her in the videogame, and started thinking about her backstory more. It’s been a while since I’ve created a new character thats tied to a videogames setting, rather than taking a pre-existing character of mine and shoving them into the videogame setting. So I got to work more with the actual lore of the Elder Scrolls!
I made a Toyhouse Page for her, linked here, where I’ve posted the art of her and shared her backstory, but I’ll add it here too.
By day, Imogen forages for alchemical ingredients and writes guides to foraging in Cyrodiil. By night, she is an assassin of the Dark Brotherhood. Imogen grew up in Skingrad, Cyrodiil, as part of a wealthy family. She was married off to an Imperial Legion Commander, and the two moved to Skyrim for his work. Imogen hated living in the cold, and hated her stupid husband more. After being embarrassed by her husband at a party, Imogen decided to murder him. She was sent to the Imperial City Prison in Cyrodiil, but didn’t stay in her cell long, as fate had other plans for her.
I wanted to draw a base for her that I could then draw clothing on top of, kind of like a paper doll style, but digital. So once I got the base done, it was a lot easier to work on the clothes without worrying about the base drawing. If I needed to make any changes to the base, it would be consistent across the full set of drawings.
I started by drawing her in the black & burgundy outfit (which for some reason in the remaster is purple and burgundy but whatever). The jewelry she’s wearing is from the Dark Brotherhood, her Black Band ring and the Cruelty’s Heart necklace.
This would be the outfit she wears going into the Imperial City to trade goods. The black & burgundy outfit she has has an enchantment that boosts the mercantile skill, so she can get better deals from the shopkeeps.
Next I drew her in her green silk outfit (it’s the green brocade doublet, green silk garment, and green velvet shoes from the game). And I kept the black band for jewelry. I changed up her hair, I think she would switch up hairstyles pretty frequently.
Despite it still being kinda fancy, this is her “casual” everyday outfit, and what she would wear when she goes out foraging.
And lastly I drew her in her Dark Brotherhood armor, which she wears on missions. I also drew her with her Cruelty’s Heart necklace, and she would wear the Black Band under her gloves.
I put them all in a lineup, here’s the finished piece!
Before I’d made any finalized artwork of her, I started writing a series called “A Forager’s Guide to Cyrodiil” from the perspective of Imogen writing this series as she travels around the different regions and collects alchemical ingredients. I’ve had a lot of fun writing them! I’ve been going back through to add little botanical illustrations of some of the plants from the game. For now I’ve been posting them under my Written Stories tab on my website, and will add them on ao3 as I get the flower illustrations added. Here’s a link to the first series guide on a03, “A Forager’s Guide to Cyrodiil: The West Weald”.
Also, here are the first few flower illustrations!
I also made a portrait of her. I wanted to be able to add it to the foraging guides she writes, as an authors portrait. Also I’ve added her on Artfight, here’s the Link to Her Page.
New Character: Grendle
I’ve been working on armor designs for a new character for a while now, but finally got around to making a final reference sheet!
I mostly based the armor off of 15th century English armor, but changed up some things here and there for the sake of the character design (mostly with the helmet plume and the hanging banner)
I also kept a version with just the lineart to be able to reference the shapes more easily (I know it’s hard to read with all of the dark colors haha)
I made this character as a character for a Pathfinder campaign (Guardian, fleshwarp). Heres a bit of the backstory I made for them.
Grendle is a fleshwarp, a biological experiment designed to serve as a bodguard and soldier. It attaches itself to the inner lining of armor as a defense, and cannot live comfortably outside of the armor, similar to a hermit crab. Since it’s creation, Grendle has been trained to follow commands, and it still struggles to make decisions for itself and embrace self determination.
I’ve also fiddled around with Grendle as a character set in the Elder Scrolls games. I’ve started a new playthrough in Oblivion and done the Fighters Guild and Arena questlines, and I’ll probably explore the Daedric side quests next. I may draw Grendle in some armor from the game later on, it would prefer heavy armor sets with helmets that completely cover the face, with daedric armor being its favorite.
I’ve made a character profile page for Grendle on Artfight and Toyhouse if you wanna check it out! They’re still a work in progress but mostly done.
Drawing my character Niessus
It’s been a while since I’ve done a full illustration with a background and stuff, the last one being in fall last year. So I was a bit intimidated to work on the idea I had in mind, but I’m really pleasantly surprised with how it turned out!
Another one of my Oblivion playthrough characters found his way to the Shivering Isles, a realm of the god of chaos and madness. I had the idea for a postcard-style illustration, with a text greeting welcoming and showing Niessus in the Shivering Isles.
It took me a long time to get it to a place where I liked it, but I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I think my favorite part is still probably the floating pose I did with Niessus, and the mushroom trees in the background.
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