eller

There's a reason this bridge is crumbling: it's being demolished by mermaids.



...unfortunately, the third mermaid is so small she's almost invisible in the sized down picture.

...or rather, Maximal Navigational Failure. This is probably both the most cynical and the most German way to answer the prompt.



I took some artistic license with the geology: in reality, that particular rock is even higher, but if I'd drawn it correctly, no one could see the lady sitting up there, combing her hair. (Except maybe as a blob.) I also added a very classical watery horse for good measure.

Still not quite up to date, but at least I didn't fall any further behind...

No sketchbook of mine is complete without begonias! Those are my favorite flowers because... because... because of their leaves, which are mathematically fascinating. (Yes, mathematical interest also features in my appreciation of flora...) This one is distorted (and flipped upside down) by the water droplet hanging from a leaf. Obviously, I wasn't going for realism here (as also evidenced by the huge negative begonia-leaf shape in the background, LOL), I was just having fun. Also, I'm sloooowly trying to catch up.

...a fast one... I'll do my best to catch up!

With a prompt like that, what else could I draw but a mermaid in a tropical reef? This tiny mermaid is surprised and amazed to find an icy landscape in a bottle thrown from a ship. Also, I wonder what will happen to that ecosystem if she opens the bottle...

Quick and dirty. Also, I had fun with the composition. XD Phoenix lady has a braid because I can, and so I didn't do that practice tutorial thingy for nothing. My grey marker is mainly pushing ink around by now. Still, I'll use it until no more color comes out or until the replacement arrives, whichever happens first.

Still a day behind, but whatever... ^^ I actually had a lot of fun with this - I drew it this morning just before our group meeting at work, so I had to be very fast. The character is from one of my stories, she's called Mirainn (pronounced Mee-run) and she's actually an alchemist, so it was kind of obvious I'd draw her for this prompt.

I noticed something interesting: when I mix the white and the black ink, I get a cold (!) grey - I didn't expect that because it's a warm white and a warm black, but obviously, particle shapes and their interactions with light ware a complex topic. Anyway, I tried to use this to portray cold, almost blue-ish light on a warm background...

This one, I drew on the train. Not very inspired, a bit wobbly, but whatever. :) All that white ink was a bit too much for the thin paper, so it's also appropriately wavy and everything.

So this is day 1, using my own prompt list.



That was fun! Actually, my first idea for the prompt was something NSFW but I decided against drawing it (too many RL contacts, including family members, read this...) so I'm really glad aliax_alexandre did that instead! :D I went for slightly more conventional fantasy stuff: a tree with leaves that are ominously arranged like piano keys... I wonder what that sounds like?

Also, here's the material I used:



The Cappuccino Book (and its twin, the Grey Book) and I are old friends - I really like the slightly toned paper that's not quite as dark (or as yellowish) as Kraft paper but allows the use of white highlights. With 120 gsm (55 lbs), it's a bit thin for large-area ink washes, but it's the only toned paper I know with a surface sizing optimized for fountain pens, so I just have to live with that. (I'd LOVE a paper with identical surface but three times as thick. Unfortunately, no one manufactures that kind of thing.)

For drawing, I again used the Duke Confucius fountain pen with Fude nib, which I've discussed here at length.

The pen is filled with Noodler's "bulletproof" black, an ink I don't like much for writing (I prefer non-waterproof inks for that, they're easier to remove in case a pen dries out), but which works extremely well for artistic purposes. It's a light, warm black that dries with a matte finish, which makes it easier to scan or to take photos of. It's also archival, so it doesn't smudge once dry, and I don't have to worry about fading. Useful stuff.

For shading, I picked up a Faber Castell watercolor marker with pigment ink in Warm Grey III. These pens are a fairly new launch so this is the first time I have one. I found the shade a pleasant tone for shading in the book, cooler than the paper itself (which is appropriate for shadows, anyway) but not too contrasting. I have not used the watercoloring option of that pen yet, so I'm probably wasting good material here, but whatever. (EDIT: I have now, later, tried this: the watercolor effect works just fine, but as expected, only on watercolor paper. In the Cappuccino Book, watercoloring it gets a bit blotchy.)

The white ink was an emergency buy because I discovered my old bottle had dried out... This is a brand I haven't used before, Kuretake White Ink 30, which so far does what it's supposed to do, and (nice!) is waterproof after drying. A good product, and one that (unless it does something horrible in the meantime) I'll probably buy again. I'm using the ink with a waterbrush (Pentel).

The white highlighter pen, Neopiko Line White, is a bit too transparent for my taste. Whatever. It works. And to be fair, I haven't found a white pen that's actually, really, opaque anywhere yet, so at least it's not worse than all the rest. ^^ It's not perfect but the best one I've found so far.

Not in the picture are a mechanical pencil (Pentel Energize in 0.7; my favorite sketching tool, very old and very worn, broken clip and everything) and an eraser (perfectly generic; I don't remember the brand) for preliminary sketching.

I didn't have much time for drawing, so yesterday's (flame) and today's (writing) prompts turned out to become five-minute sketches.