glaciart

[glaciart]

A Trophy No More

Once upon a time, I was very, very angry...

...so I drew a picture with very disappointed people in it. This one took long, very very long to finish, and I channeled all of my own disappointment into it.

If I zoom further into the image, one person at a time, it actually looks really well and I can still see a pay-off of the effort that went into it. From the distance though, the composition is very lacking. I had been told as much by a friend to whom I had shown my progress pictures, but I didn't change it. Today I think, this is perfectly fitting for what the image is supposed to tell and what kind of thoughts went into it.

Of course it is most heavily inspired by Bat for Lashes "Trophy"-Song, which it also got it's title from. I listened to the Fur and Gold Album for hours at end during that time. The colors are mostly inspired by the synesthetic impressions I got from the song.

The little text carved into the right stone-pillar are lines from Pearl Jams Immortality demo-lyrics:

I could paint the moon I could reflect light into a room [...] I won't call the altar in the air

[glaciart]

Art Therapy

Have you ever been through puberty?

It was a stupid experience. A scary stupid one. It was also, unfortunaly, the time I drew the most. Some of the art really shows, and here's the collection of its worst!

I have a bunch of sketches in about this quality. This one really fits the mood of the time.

This was kind of related to dreams about losing teeth

Guess who had just read the wikipedia article about bdsm?

edggyyyyyyyy (but I still like the candle. And the hand!)

An unfinished piece about how well communication went in my first relationship

She's just sleeping!

This was actually done a bit later, but since it fits the title of the post well enough, I included it

After I did the last two shown here my art output significantly dropped, especially on the art-as-emotional-outlet front. The left one here is actually cropped from a bigger image, unfinished, not very good and also very, very personal.

And with these I conclude the journey into a troubled girls mind.

[glaciart]

From 2014 - 2016 I spent my days playing Ragnarok Online..

It was quite a ride.

Depression hit hard, but playing MMOs was still possible. I spent day and some nights on OriginsRO (now Arcadia Online), got to know people all around the world and even participated in some big PVP events (very unusual for me!). The first really fun guild I joined was the Cotton Shirt Crew. I drew the picture above as an inspirational piece for the crowd. My dancer Nepenthe wearing one of the iconic cotton shirts!

I didn't draw all too much during those days. But what I did draw I drew without any kind of reference. Just imagination and muscle memory.

I did try to draw a picture with more effort going into it, too, but never finished. Behold, my priest, who's character name I changed a few times around:

One reason I never finished the picture was, that the technique I used is exhausting for me. Color first, lines later. It works best for detailed spaces, not so well for big things like the robe. Also, the anatomy on the first draft was definetly terribly off (that's what you get from avoiding references!). After scrapping most of my progress away I never took it on again.

The last thing I drew in context of this game is this little lap-dance scene sketch, spontanously called into existence for my friend Kergal, which I met ingame. Good old times!

But eventually I batteled off the worst of the depression and found my way back into reality. Thanks to everyone who was around during that time. I miss you.

[glaciart]

And we dance 'til eternity ends

In the spirit of posting some OC stuff yesterday, here's the final (and slightly bigger) piece: My necromancer Lady and her favourite skull.

The image is heavily inspired by "To Tame the Temporal Shrew" from Rishloo.

As I race through the passage, I find you And we dance 'til eternity ends And the void is not full up, nor empty When the song of our empire begins

Just conjured up a key scene for her story, and in return I drew a picture in honor of the song.

I could have done much better than I did with this. The pose is heavily drawn from reference, and so are the bones. I struggled with the border a lot and lost all patience on the stupid tree eventually. Actually, lots of things in this picture are signs of impatience. I'm glad I finished it anyway.

The swirly/ribbon things show key elements of her story, starting from the top. If I would go into detail here I could actually just write down the whole story. Maybe one day I will, probably I won't. Until then, she'll exist in this image.

[glaciart]

A story that never will be..

ALRIGHT, let's do this.

So, since I had a very long and intense dream in 2008, there is a story, or rather a whole world of stories growing in my head which I tell myself from time to time in order to fall asleep..

The first of three stories, which I got the most artwork for, is basically three idiots from desert-town-utopia venturing out to save the world from fantasy zombie apocalype. In the little scribble, you can see my three idiots: Celia, Ev(elyn) and Salem.

Originally, I planned to put them into a neat RPG Maker based game. This is why I actually got some pixel art:

(Notice the third guy? That's Ranow, he joins in a bit later.)

All credits go to MS Paint. I never finished up Salem. Poor guy. I also don't have any other picture of him. He gave me trouble for being too insignificant in this story, but I grew on him. If I could find to courage to draw again, I would draw him!

For the other three, I also got little artworks which were meant for dialouge-scenes:

All faces look weird. All about them look weird. I don't like them too much anymore.

this small thing has poses stolen from Streetfighter - which I only know from the files title. Don't ask me which one it is. I don't think the above ones are stolen poses. Also - there's yet a new dude in the background! He's kind of the mini-boss of the first chapter. Ev's undead lover. Insufferable changeling-son prince before getting turned undead, useless regent being bossed around by his wife in his life after being undead. He never got a name though.

We still need a villain for this very basic fantasy story though, right?

Here we go:

Very very early sketch. She get's her own story and pictures. I think I already posted a scribble of her younger self here: https://glaciasm.tumblr.com/post/665408594123128832/still-trying-to-dig-my-lost-creativity-and-drawing

What else have I got? Not much. Two sketches of Celia and Ev many many years from here. After I noticed, that it makes a whole lot of sense for them to be far more tan when having lived in desert-town.

She really looks like how I imagine her in this one. Young, timid, insecure. Scrap all the other images, this is her.

(all credits go to adorkastock)

this, on the other hand, doesn't look like Ev. Probably the hair, which I never got around to work on. I do like these clothes more. Tried to get her away from the bikini-amor. Though preferring too little clothes in too cold weather is still just a thing she does. Hotpants all the way.

We're getting to the last one now.

This is Evro, protagonist of the last of the three stories, the necormancers son. This picture haunts me. I drew it on a whim, and it matched my vision perfectly. Since then, I have never been able to draw him again. Not even remotely. He refuses to be caputed. Stupid boy.

[glaciart]

I ran a trail of fire through the meadow paths

Drawn in 2012, this still remains my personal favourite work.

So what exactly is this picture?

Obviously, it's a tribute to Oceansizes' Song 'Trail of Fire'. It's also an attempt to prove to myself, that I can actually create art that's not entirely bad.

Drawing this picture and listening to Frames also happened during a time where I went through a big break-up. The lyrics of the song also reflect quite nicely on this ("Are all our summers at one with the ground? And everything I loved you for, A trail of fire from the door"; "And all our engraved memories are unsuccessful remedies"). The motive isn't very inspried by the lyrics though, it mostly reflects on what I perceive by synesthesia while listening to it (which is a lot here! Rarely have I heard music where it gets this extreme).

I also experienced a few migraine attacks with aura (probably caused by the break-up stress, even got me a hospital visit), it's not an entirely uninspiring experience. People who know them will easily spot the reference.

The weed reference came in last. I worked quite a while on this (I suppose it was months actually, I remember being very unhappy about the slow process). I'm not quite happy I did that - but well, this is what it is now.

This is a rare case of a picture, where I sketched on paper first and moved to digital later on:

The woman had quite a different face on the sketches. I wasn't very happy with it once I got to coloring and dramatically changed it last minute. Her looking more far off into the distance just fits the theme better.

[glaciart]

King's Quest VII Fanart #2

Since I had so much fun with the Boogeyman Kings Quest art, I did a second picture in 2009, which I didn't finish until 2014:

The reference sprite for this one actually is used ingame, but passes over so fast in animation that it's barely visible.

They look so happy in this one.

I don't remember much about the process of drawing this one, aside from that I didn't know what to do with the background. I still didn't do in 2014, I just finished what was there and considered it done.

[glaciart]

King's Quest VII Fanart #1

Let's set the bar low for reposting my older art.

Back in my childhood days I, like so many others, encountered the videogame Kings Quest VII. It looked like a sweet disneyesque video game for children. Easy to play and fully voice acted. Little did we know, that some of the people working on the game were working on a horror video game at the same time and *some* of the vibe carried over.

I battled my little childhood trauma in 2009 after moving out from home, by replaying and actually beating the game. Afterwards, I worked on two little artworks:

Rosella and the boogeyman. The pose is taken from a unused animation fom the game (it has tons of those!) and can currently be seen here: https://tcrf.net/File:Kq7-boogeymanrosella.gif

I knew nothing about using color gradients in light to design a background landscape and I still don't know a lot about it, but this picture taught me to be far more daring with them.

[glaciart]

Sketches - Musicians

Among my unfinished practice sketches were also those two:

This one actually is not traced, but drawn from a reference screenshot from Oceansize Unfamiliar music video. This actually is quite old, I gave up when I simply got too frustrated over the microphone

Yet another trace. This time I wanted to practice fold lightning (and I did!) and also, this hair (which I didn't :( ) It's Eddie Vedder from my all-time favourite live performance from Pearl Jam 1992.

[glaciart]

Unfinished Landscape

Not too long ago I decided I wanted to try drawing a landscape and put some effort in it. As if 'I will put effort in this' isn't a phrase to doom the process before it even started.

This is as far as I got :(

as is clearly visible, the trees didn't turn out well at all. I didn't know what to do with them, looked up references, but it still didn't make things go better. Eventually I considered this failed. It's a shame. I really like parts of it:

of course it's a little boring like this, but here it comes out quite as I imagined it.

First draft of the flooded fields. This images file name is 'meh'. I probably used it to show it to someone to complain about the progress. Reworking the fields did wonders.

[glaciart]

Sketches - CQL Traces

Sometimes I trace screencaps to learn a bit about.. well, whatever the process of digital drawing is aside from placing lines.

In 2021 and 2022 I took a few screens from CQL. People familiar with the yi city arc surely will recognize them.

I discontinue the roof top scene because the building annoyed the hell out of me. The base-picture had a rather low quality and it was becoming increasingly hard to see what I was supposed to do. It also annoyed me to see that very few well placed forms can create such a defined image. I wouldn't be able to do that without tracing - it is still a long way to go for me.

The SL one was used for practicing faces and hairlines. I'm not too pleased with how it turned out.

I did the XXC one when I tried out a few new photoshop brushes. They didn't quite do what I wanted them to do. Also, catching Song Yijangs infamous smile didn't quite succeed.

[glaciart]

Yesterday I was looking for a way to show one of my older artworks to someone on the internet. I wasn't being pleased with realizing that the only way to currently do so was to use the old uploads on deviant art. Since I'm not feeling too comfortable with the site anymore I'll upload some of my older stuff here.

As I was browsing throught the art of my past, I found so much stuff that will forever remain unfinished. I'll take it as an opportunity to post some of it here, too!

[glaciart]

A net-spiral pattern jacket I crocheted a while ago

Thanks to Yice for taking a picture!

[glaciart]

Fiber Art

Photographed by Yice

[glaciart]

Comfort me with apples

[glaciart]

Finally got a proper frame that’s big enough for my project!

[glaciart]

Can you see the danger within my eyes? Everyone's a stranger wearing disguise

Lucidity - Soen

Here’s just the background, I think it looks nice by itself, too :)

wenzhou close-up:

(yes, I did mess up the layers a bit in the end u_u’)

and this was my palette: