#Wyn now has to explain this to people and it will be hilarious

[wynilthyrii]

A letter to Anthus Steelshatter - 11 December

[This letter is written on good parchment in dark ink. It is sealed in charcoal gray wax bearing the seal of House Ilthyrii of Quel’thalas.]

Dear Anthus,

At the outset, I must apologize for my lack of communication, though I’m certain you understand.  A great deal has happened since we saw each other last, and hopefully this note will catch you up on some of the more important bits of that.  I don’t precisely have much opportunity to come to Dalaran as one might (or might not?) hope, but I do plan to be there in the next day or two, which of course brings me to the reason for this letter—beyond, of course, letting you know as much.

I plan to meet with your sister-in-law regarding the expedition she has been called upon to assemble.  I do not know if you or your wife have involvement in it, but it seems my son will.  Juden is fifteen now, nearly sixteen, and is well beyond his years when it comes to his studies thanks to some truly incredible teachers that he has been blessed to work with these past several years.  I do not know what ultimately made her think of him, but the invitation has been extended and I suspect that he would not forgive me if I told him he could not go.

In the old days, of course, I would have simply asked to come along, but my current duties in the Everlight, among other things, preclude that as an option.  I will be having some strong words with Commander Frost to ensure his safety.  A political consideration to such is that he is the last scion of House Riverwind and its lord and the kingdom can ill afford to lose him, though I think we both know that my concern is that of a mother for her son.  I am not asking that you attach yourself to whatever expedition she is organizing, I’m merely advising you of my position on the matter, should she approach you for your insight.  I do not know the shape of your relationship these days, though I certainly can recall in hindsight how insistent she was on your safety and treatment back all those years ago.  Tyr did mention to me in passing that he could not recall seeing you in Northrend more than once or twice in the near three years he spent there with the Crusade in her command, so I must imagine that retirement has actually stuck.  I am glad of it—you deserve to be settled and happy.

Clearly, I am most decidedly not retired these days, though I am relatively settled and quite happy. Overall, the family is well, and we have settled into the relative peace with more ease than I would have anticipated. I didn’t join Tyr in Northrend with the Crusade at first because I was newly wed and then caring for a newborn and that after that my duties with the Order and matters within the Everlight precluded my doing so.  All seems well enough these days, though, and quiet, and now we all are home.

I don’t know how long I will be in Dalaran, but I may call on you if there is time.  If not, I shall have to make arrangements for another time. It would be good to see your face.

Thank you.

Yours faithfully,

Wyn.

[Tagging @versusvices because I’m not sure where else to tag these days ;) ]

[mengswe-blog]

Sketch to lineart!

So this is how I tend to start off a drawing. It's a hot mess on layer 1. I also REALLY exagerate anatomy. It's easy to trim it down, but it helps me see things. (Quick note, I’m using Krita and an XP pen digital drawing tab.)

Next is step 2, and it DOES look a lot like step 1, lol. I start a new layer and use a different color. Tidy anatomy, move some stuff around. But now I can kinda see what I'm going to want to change, where I want to move with this.

For instance, now I can see that I'm going to want to pull the chest up and out, which will give the spine more of a curve. There's nothing wrong with this, but that'll give the image more motion. Still thinking about that bottom hand. Probably I'll rotate it so its more side-on.

Oh, I didn't really address this, but I use a big, chonky brush for this so I don't get hung up on details. When I paint using my oils irl, I squint so I can only see big shapes of value at first. (If you’re dehydrated, this has the hilarious side effect that it deforms your eyeballs so you think maybe you need to go to the emergency room for a couple hours after you’re done squinting. Drink your water.)

So, this is steps 3 - ? because it's the wierd middle bit. I have enough anatomy down to start building outfits and details on, but doing that reveals more anatomy issues and frequently composition issues. So this wiggles back and forth a lot. Literally because this is where I start really flipping the canvas back and forth.

All the layers turned on for funsies.

Okay, so next I have lines, and they are mostly correct. You can see where I was like, "oooh, these are entirely correct" and started weighting them. Alas, there are still tweaks needed. Also, I made Wyn smaller so there would be room for magic. I always seem to draw things too big for the canvas, so I’m in love with that tool that lets you smoosh stuff down. This was, haha, a huge problem for me in art school when I was just using traditional media.

List of tweaks: The hair is wrong, and I think it's actually because the back of the skull is too big. I need to soften the facial featurs, and probably lift the mouth a bit. The biggest one is that I think the chest part of the chest armor needs to stretch down more.

Okay, so this next bit gets a little tricky to explain with just snips (why I'm excited to figure out the record function in either Krita or on my graphics card eventually). To make the above adjustments, I take the layer I want to tweak down to about 50% opacity, and on top of it, draw the changes. Ruducing the opacity of the below layer helps me “ignore” it a little, and drawing on top, of course, keeps the changes separate in case I have to revert. (Don’t mind my weirdo little notes about process and lore.)

Once I have some adjustments made, if I'm confident, I'll take the eraser brush at like, 30% opacity, and erase under the adjustment layer (blue here). It lets me see even better without destroying the work if I need to revert. The skull and chest plates show this. (The black arrow is pointing to an erased portion and the green is pointing to one where all I did was lower the opacity.)

Quick note about why Wyn is where he is. People like threes. So if you bust up a canvas into thirds vertically and horizontally, it's always good to put points of interest at the intersections. Wyn’s face, and his lower hand are about spot on. His upper hand isn’t, quite, but it’s close enough. I also want to leave enough “low value” space here for magic effects.

The last step before I have what I call finished line art is just so much fiddling with the lines. Make this one darker, make that one lighter, smooth this, make that pointier etc. Just a bunch of small adjustments. But at the end, ta-dah!