Veridicus!

I have once again not been able to do any of the things I *wanted* to do this evening, but I don't want to wait any longer to share this:

Veridicus, all coloured!

Nout, a.k.a. the Comics Expert, gave me the little gem on Saturday. It seems that he keeps putting subtle (?) pressure on a real colour artist to make my lines look a bit more presentable... The great colours gracing my modest pencils are the work of Bartel Bruneel, whose art you can find on his blogspot Willborough, and the same artist who did the colours on Comm here.

Thanks a million, Bartel :D! This is absolutely wonderful - Veridicus looks alive! It's incredible how this colour art gives him substance. In my picture he was simply flat. I would never have believed that he could look so real, and the skin tones and facial muscles are gorgeous...

*swoons*

I told you, didn't I, that Veridicus was handsome? Well, you have the proof now! :P

la la la lalala la la la la lala lala la la la la laaaaaaaaaaa...

G'night!

Two exciting pictures!

...Okay, maybe they are not that exciting to you, but they certainly are to me :D!

Yesterday the comics expert and his dazzling Elfie came over for coffee and cake, and apart from a pile of yummy comics (Courtney Crumrin Tales! Scott Pilgrim! Castle Waiting! Wonderland!) he also brought me a picture. Actually, it was my own picture - but a friend of his (I don't even know his name! - Nout?! What's his name? Linkie to his blog? plz? thx!) had been playing around with it - and given it digital colouring.

I was astonished when I saw the result. My first thought was, "Wow, he's real! He's, like, not flat anymore!" :D I am really surprised to find that this realistic way of colouring is not at odds with my simple line art. It gives me an entirely new perspective of what the finished product could look like, and it sort of reassures me that my kind of linework does not automatically disqualify the art from getting a look that is perhaps more appropriate to the war story it is supposed to tell than my rather cutesy cartoon-like style might possibly be. Drawback is that I am not capable of achieving this kind of colouring myself, and as far as I understand, the Hitherto Anonymous Artist is not looking for a long-time War in Gaul engagement. (And, to be honest, long-time always means looooooooong-time if I am involved :/.)

As you can see in the next picture, I am still more comfortable with monochrome myself... This is watercolour paint on sketchbook paper that is actually a little too light for it :-). Anyway, if it is exciting, it is not so because it is particularly brilliant, but because it is my first picture of a War in Gaul character that is not a development sketch or a kind of study, but a pure picture picture that is not meant to be anything but pretty. It's a shy start, but it is a start none the less.

It is, as you can see, a totally spontaneous, unstudied speed painting, done for no better reason than that I had a leftover of paint in what I thought was a nice hue. I had added quite a lot (I think) of Gum Arabic to make it more transparent. You can't see it on the scan, but the real picture actually has a vaguely glittery quality to it because of the gum, and is rather appropriate for something supposed to look cold and snowy.

My confidence with and enjoyment of watercolour is slowly growing. The results are not great, but at least I am figuring out a thing or two. In this picture I had fun playing with water and the wonderful stains it can make. So yes, those stains are deliberate :P.