Ranarh's Art Blog

Because challenges are so much fun, I tried a new one in 2018 by testing Mermay for myself; it turned out that the theme wasn't really for me, but I still dutifully followed the official prompt list and did get fun out of it. There were some small drawings in my A5 sketchbook in a grotesque style I had been admiring (and would love to do more often), and one large drawing I was very proud of (and even sold shortly after, when it was still a small miracle for me every time someone bought an original from me). It's charcoal and chalk on 43×61cm, and with that also one of the larger drawings I had done then. The dusty medium wasn't ideal to get all the fine detail in, the pieces by other artists are typically done in graphite, which again I do not like very much. I blame those rotten office pencils I had to start doing art with because my grown-ups couldn't care less about proper pencils and there was nothing else in the house. I managed to create another large drawing lik...

I almost never do anything that's funny out of my own volition. Which is weird. But I have the theory that cool images, impactful images, the kind I want to put into the world, are not typically the funny kind. Obviously funny memes and images are memorable, but they're not what I seek out. That doesn't mean I can't do funny! A D&D game master asked me in 2018 to illustrate a bunch of weird beholders, not with the classic dozens of eyestalks but with ears or mouths, and here we are. They are absolutely disgusting. Following those, we also created a bunch of other illustrations for the role-playing campaign the client was mastering at the time where the mechanical pet mouse Hubert of one character ran off with some psychopomp named Jim, and sent the player postcards of their exploits as they stole on parties or met the gods. I used a rather different style with selections and layers effects rather than my usual painterly way of making images for this to speed things ...

 When I try new things - new materials, a new medium or technique - as probably many artists, I often draw and paint human portraits. Just as often though, I do birds. They are great for trying something; they have simple shapes, are often colourful, and many are cute. There is a surprising (or maybe shocking, given the quality of some) amount of materials around my studio that are nearly worthless, or at least no longer wanted, and whose mere presence irks me sometimes. I want to get rid of them, but I can't make myself throw them away, so the goal is to use them up; productively, if possible. The papers I bought for small charcoal drawings, the kind I do on conventions, are nice but some are better and some less so, and the less-so ones had to go. At the same time I had water-soluble oil pastels that were not quite so convincing, but I hadn't worked with them often, and fortunately also had a box of nice Faber-Castell oil pastels to supplement the former. The oil pastels draw...

Another test how to create textures I like with a tad of graphic elements or abstraction. I rummage through my drawers and find these three sheets of paper that were left from who knows when. I quickly create a few drawings on them by putting them up to monitor as a makeshift lightbox, and tape them down with gummed tape after wetting them. I start with washes in watercolour, and it turns out the paper isn't just bad, it's AWFUL. It soaks like a sponge and is very easily bruised, so there's nothing to do but push through. My subjects are a simple portrait of an elderly woman, playing with the idea of autumn (of life), medusa (for which I created a ten-minute model in Blender), and cluster headaches (because I have a morbid fascination with illnesses, they are described as the worst pain there is, often centring around one eye and temple). My tools are everyday brushes, #6, #12, and #14 rounds (although being from different brands, the #14 is much larger than the twelve), an...

The Smaugust challenge asks to draw one dragon per day during August. I've long wanted to participate - for some reason, despite being mainly a fantasy painter, I have almost zero dragons in my body of work - but with Inktober coming up the following month I was usually busy doing things for that. When AI became a huge thing last year I fiddled with it for a bit and created my Smaugust pieces by overpainting AI renders from different models. I am interested to see where the law debate about AI in general and generative image creation in particular leads. There are GIFs for many of them to show what I used and how, but I think many are outdated already; if not detailing technicalities about the models, I'll make another post with the process GIFs. The high seas wyrm The protector Snapdragon Red rising Desert swimmer Fire of creation Master of the fiery serpents Stranded Westward Into the fire Dragonriders Primordial Roadtrip with Mom First fire On a pile of gold Curled A god com...