eller

...or: Two people draw the same scene. Independently of each other, two artists decided to draw me ATCs with Koh (and some fire). :D It's funny, really: like, 50% of Kolthainn fanart (the part of it that's not random tetrahedra, anyway) happens to be of Koh; he's by far the most popular character, and people who look at my ATC folder without knowing any of the stories inevitably conclude he's "the main character". (This is technically not the case. Since Kolthainn ist not one story but rather this conglomerate of stories and art set in the same world, different stories have different protagonists.) I mean, I don't mind - Koh is the oldest character of the whole project (he popped up in my comments on some program code when I was 12, stupid, and writing a weird rotating tetrahedron simulation) and probably the most complex one (as in, he has a distinct personality that I as the storyteller don't have much control over - he's a person). It's just funny. XD Anyway.

Lumelievm drew this wonderful picture: Koh in the air! FIRE! So cute!!! :D :D :D (Also, I kind of love the color scheme...)

Simultaneously (because the pictures were mailed at the same time), Lethean drew this (and it has glitter and neon colors, too):

I'm so impressed! :D Both pictures are, of course, impeccable on the technical level. (I mean... It's just really, really awesome art, and I appreciate it a lot!) They also show exactly the same thing, which is a really funny coincidence. (I did not put them up to this, and to the best of my knowledge, they were not talking to eack other during the creation, either.) It's just that the styles are extremely different from each other, and the ways they treat character and scene are absolutely fascinating. (There's a lot of freedom for "fanartists" because for all that I like to draw, I don't draw Kolthainn stuff very often. Because I don't have much of a visual imagination, the characters started out without fixed visual designs, too. I mean, I draw them sometimes, but embarrassingly, some other people are much better at drawing them than I am. I can only draw flowers... People, not so much. Yes, yes, I should practice...) Also, probably unsurprisingly, I just went WHEEEEEEE when I opened those letters. I mean. I get all the BEST artwork! YAY!!!

So, shadow theater is a thing again! :D I haven't done this at all for over a year (and I never did this very often, anyway), so I'm seriously out of practice, but I got an invitation to an event (amazing this person remembered my existence at all), and I have kind of missed this, so... Yeah. I'm accepting though the conditions are not ideal. And, since a shadow theater performance like the one I'm going to do ideally looks spontaneous but is, in fact, very carefully prepared, I'm taking this opportunity to write down the process.

( Behind a cut because I guess not everybody is interested in the specifics of preparing a shadow theater performance. )

....okay, wall of text again. Whatever. I expect no one to read this. LOL

OC questionaire meme, found in the journal of

yhlee. I decided to answer the questions for my characters Dev, Deeyan and Koh (because they appear most often in my stories) as well as Ruon (because he's in the story I'm currently working on, so I should think about his characterization more). ( Behind a cut because not many people will care. XD )

This time, it's super awesome fanart by

yhlee that I had in my mailbox a few days ago. YAY!!!

Click here to see the wonderful ATC

The ultimate chessmaster and Shadow Queen! :D (I'm the luckiest person in the world to receive super nice fanart!)

This is Mirainn, an alchemist in the world of Kolthainn. Yes, she wears lab equipment as jewelry - here with scale earrings and hourglass around her neck.

This is a shaker ATC with four windows!

- In the fireplace is glow-in-the-dark glitter in yellow as well as a scroll (cut out of paper) that Mirainn must have just decided to burn.

- On top of the fireplace, a bottle of suspicious liquid is being heated and vapors are billowing up! In it there is glow-in-the-dark glitter in green.

- The bottles on Mirainn's belt are filled with pink glow-in-the-dark glitter.

- And in the background, it's snowing over the mountains! (Transparent glow-in-the-dark glitter.) A second raven is there too - cut out of paper, even though it doesn't shake so well.

If you're interested in the process of making it..
( A full step-by-step can be found behind the cut. )

And here is the finished artwork!

09-Mirainn-finished

Just realized there's a significant backlog in photos of the AWESOME Advent calendar that Ismael made for me! So... I'm going to change that now. I had already posted the awesome little room in a shoebox with the Dev cardboard stand. During the course of December, more awesomeness like that followed...

( Pictures behind the cut. )

I'm sooooooo happy! :D

And another Dev fanart, this time by Ismael. It's Dev on the search for minerals, and in a lovely b/w style with gold accents. (Looks even better on the original ATC, I assure you!)

I feel very lucky that I get the bestest fanart from the bestest people! :D

Look at this! I received absolutely wonderful fanart again, this time from Sockenzombie, who drew an ATC featuring Dev, some very large and very suspicious translucent chess pieces, and... an ocean.

Title of this masterpiece is "The Ocean Edge" and is, of course, a little joke about the fact that my characters believe they live on a tetrahedron. (This is not the case, but gives me the opportunity to include really weird math into my stories. It makes navigation so much more fun!) Basically, poor Dev has to assume that somewhere in the distance the ocean is dropping over an edge. :D

Maybe interesting for the artists among you: Sockenzombie wrote a detailed blog post with WIP steps and explanations.

Anyway, I'm suuuper happy!

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

I've been quiet over the holidays, but no worries: that was because life has been the good kind of busy! :D

- Christmas. No actual celebration, and indeed, my dad had managed to forget about Christmas. Again. (No, it's not his age; it's that he's a mathematician. He's excused from mundane things like birthdays, holidays, or, for that matter, societally acceptable childcare. LOL) My mom remembered, which is why she handed me two bars of spiced chocolate. (I love that stuff; good of her to remember.)

- Music! I suggest you go and listen to that awesome piece of music immediately:

yhlee wrote a musical Scarlatti fanart for me!
https://yhlee.dreamwidth.org/3525130.html
He was nice enough to provide the sheet music as well, which means I got to spend a pleasant evening at the piano. :D No access to a harpsichord at the moment, but I will find out what that sounds like, too! :D
(The background of this: I'm the tiniest bit obsessed with Domenico Scarlatti's sonatas. Nothing weird about that, right? Anyway - I'm SUPER SUPER HAPPY!)

- New chess set! Also from

yhlee. I actually mnaged to wait until Christmas with opening the mysterious House of Staunton package... And, I mean, I sort of knew what was inside, what with a perfectly square package from a chess supplier (LOL), so I wasn't actually surprised, but... SO!!! PRETTY!!! I didn't get around to actually using the set, but... Next training session. Oh, and I'll take that opportunity to post photos, too. I wanted a non-foldable travel-sized set without the annoying middle line so badly, and now I have one! YAY!!! :D

- Kolthainn fanart! From serenity025 again - and she not only drew another ATC for me

but also MADE ME A SUNDIAL.
A completely nonfunctional sundial, that is - it's black (best color for something that's supposed to, you know, show shadows) and it has rocks instead of hours. :D As serenity025 pointed out in her Christmas letter to me, malfunctioning sundials are a Kolthainn plot point. She's correct, of course: it's all my own fault. And anyway, while Kolthainn so far didn't have a black sundial yet... now it exists. Totally. It's just weird enough! I'll also take photos tomorrow! :D

- Art! I also drew an ATC, for FireCave.

That's her OC Luna. Lesbian angel mail carrier? I read the character description and knew I absolutely had to draw her.

- Mail! I received holiday mail from sooooo many nice people - I think I wrote you all private messages to thank you... WHEEE. Super happy about all! the! lovely! holiday! cards!

...life's great. :D

Today's art is not by me, but by the wonderful serenity025 who is the nice soul responsible for my advent calendar of this year! :D She drew a wonderful ATC featuring Dev!

Aaaaannnnd... Not only is this an AWESOME drawing (featuring lovely details like a fountain pen, crystals, and a math-y chart), but she also wrote me she wanted to contribute a book title! That's a Kolthainn thing: it's canon that Dev has some really weird titles on his color-sorted bookshelf. See the (in)famous "50 Stones of Grey" in the background? XDD (Also, nice detail that Dev's erotica are right next to "Minerals", which is likely something his fellow students will want to borrow occasionally. LOL this is VERY much in the spirit of things!)

Anyway - Dev is reading something called "Game of Stones". Which is AWESOME. Up to now, this book did not exist in Kolthainn, but now it does. (And it's a huge bestseller, too.) I have to write it. (Yes, Kolthainn works a bit like that: if it were a commercial project something like "fanfic for fanart for origfic" would be an intellectual property nightmare, but hey, it's all fandom, so no one minds. Also, going by what serenity025 wrote, I can safely assume she wants "her" book title to become canon.) Game of Stones... She did not provide me with any additional info about this masterpiece, but in my mind it's a crossover between geology textbook (simply because Dev owns mostly geology textbooks ~~and porn~~), Go book (you play that with stones, right? Right. XD) and, well, Game of Thrones. I did not watch that series, which is actually good: any fic I produce is very unlikely to infringe on anyone's intellectual property there; I'll just add boobs, dragons and gratuitous violence?!? (That's what I got from the trailers, anyway.)

...heh, I even have an idea of how to write the beginning. :D

Sooooo I received this lovely little sketchbook from

yhlee. (Thank you sooooo much!!!) It's really tiny: 5x5cm (that's 2''x2''), blue, and it has watercolor paper. Niiiiice! It's just the kind of thing that makes me immediately want to start drawing! Also, the paper is so rough that I can't work with too much detail, which is an actual relief.

00-The-Book-kl

...but what to do with it? I decided to make it a personal thing and draw the characters from my own story/project/software/thingy (it's complicated LOL), Kolthainn. And while I haven't done any actual watercoloring yet, here's already the first five sketches! ~~I just took a relatively broad ink pen and scribbled.~~

sketches-1-to-5-Kopie

So, uh, what do we see here?
- Deeyan, of course, is working on her telescope. Not visible in the (bad) photo, but she's actually holding a screw-wrench, and I'm sure interesting things are going to happen to that telescope!
- Dev looks at some crystals rather sceptically. That's all right: I'd be sceptical, too. I just scribbled something without paying attention to symmetries or angles or anything, so these crystals are highly dubious! Dev, of course, knows enough about crystals to see everything that's wrong with them.
- Yora wins at chess. What else?
- Ruon is playing the lute. That's an instrument I wish I could play (I love the sound!) but I'll never be able to: my hands are too small. The neck of these lute thingies is really broad. Fortunately, Ruon doesn't have any problems like that.
- Koh ~~does what he does best~~ cuddles a cat. He does that sometimes. XD (I think I've mentioned how Koh pictures ended up involving cats? It stuck.) He may be a demon, but he's all cute and cuddly! Really! XD

...and there's 18 more pages to fill! And then I get to color everything! :D

This is FUN.

I colored the picture! As you can see, I was in the mood for some hardcore kitsch. (But then, kitsch suits Innis: canonically, she happens to have a fondness for elaborate hairstyles, a collection of very nice dresses, and a magical harp, so it's her own fault if she ends up being painted like this! LOL) A larger version of the picture, where you can see all the detail (like the harp strings made of water), can be found on deviantart where I collect my OC related stuff.

Innis-Harpmini

It's fineliner (Staedtler, my favorite) and watercolor (I used my QOR colors this time; they're lovely) on paper, postcard-sized. I regret choosing the paper I did: it buckled and the surface dissolved in some places. Usually, I use those watercolor pads that are glued on all four sides to avoid buckling. But since that's a bit expensive when you paint a lot, I bought very cheap loose watercolor paper in A6. It's wonderful for making postcards and fast drawings but doesn't survive several layers of color.

Sooooo here's the lineart of the sketch I posted yesterday! I changed the position of the left dragon and added some water lilies, just because.

Innis-Harp-Lineart-KL

Not sure yet how I am going to color this: Innis has fair skin, dark blonde hair and blue-green eyes, and I suppose the water will need some blue, but otherwise...? I haven't really been thinking about the composition. I haven't even thought about the light source yet! Oh well.

Larger version of this drawing can be found at my Kolthainn deviantart account where I post stuff involving my own characters.

Just to show I'm still alive, a work in progress: a late-night sketch of my OC Innis. (Postcard sized.) With her magical harp, she conjures water dragons.

WIP-Innis

Uh, these dragons still need a lot of work, so far I've only defined their position in the overall composition, LOL! I have a very scribbly style of sketching. Most of the detail is drawn directly with the fineliner. I'm very bad at the whole "sketch" thing.

I just lined her head and one hand because I felt like it, and because it's motivating to have something done already. It ensures I don't accidentally throw the sketch away. (Her hair almost killed me.)

I'm also simultaneously working on an ATC (I'll show that when it's ready; in its current state it's quite ugly but that's normal for my style of coloring...) and a commission. I just sometimes simply have to draw my own characters to relax.

Civilization is collapsing and life, surprisingly, is still busy. I'm currently working from home - fortunately, my job can be done using my own laptop computer, I'm just writing papers anyway... I don't have access to some programs I'd use at uni but I'll just have to improvise. Actually, working from home is surprisingly nice: less distractions. I like my colleagues, I really do, but my work goes better when I'm not interrupted by social things like conversations, obligatory coffee breaks and stuff. XD Also, fortunately, everyone here is healthy.

Germany, of course, is in a state of panic and chaos. We have over 12000 confirmed coronavirus cases now (over 400 here in Hamburg), and I suspect the real case number is much higher: due to lack of testing capacities, only those who display symptoms and had close contact with a confirmed case - which means that those who caught the virus, say, on public transport or in a café or whatever don't show up in the statistic. Which is... nice for the statistic, I suppose, but catastrophic from an epidemiological standpoint. At least there's no shortage of food. People are buying canned goods like crazy but the supermarkets are re-stocking every day so it's all good. Only flour, yeast, toilet paper and disinfectants are out, and of those, only the latter is a serious problem - not for me (I don't need disinfectant, I'm planning to stay at home for a while) but for the hospitals that are also out of disinfectant. I read that people are stealing disinfectant from hospitals now, and while I'm not a religious person I hope there's a special hell for people doing shit like that. Seriously, WTF?

But as I mentioned: I, personally, am fine. I'm holed up with a computer, good food, good tea and enough art supplies to last me a few months at the very least. Also, on a happy note, I received reeeeeaaaaalllllly wonderful mail from someone on the German site where I swap ATCs. :)

She sent me a hand-bound sketch book, some hand-made watercolors and a lovely ATC featuring a character from my story/project/thingy. I have to show you this wonder-wonder-wonderful drawing of Deeyan - the character is an astronomer and that painting, that, mood, wow. Also, the sketch book is very special!

It's YELLOW!!! :D There's a story behind that... As some of you might already have noticed, I love to draw on toned paper. A while ago, I was sort of complaining in our forum that all the toned sketchbooks with artist quality paper (that is, acid-free, lightfast and thick enough to withstand watercolor) are grey or brown, and I was like: I want bright colors! Why don't they make that in bright yellow, because I'd totally buy that... Heh, and apparently this nice person read that and, since it's impossible to buy sketch books with good quality yellow paper, she decided to make one for me. And it's PERFECT.

The yellow paper is Canson Mi-Teintes, which is a very good brand - I once had a pad of Mi-Teintes in different shades of grey and I was very happy with that. The book has a cover with a nice geometric pattern in gold on black, and it's bound with coptic stitch, which means it lies very flat when it's opened. :) I'm going to use it for drawing my own characters because it's simply too awesome to waste it on anything else.

Aaaaaaand the watercolors! They're also wonderful - most of them have a bit of a shimmer, which unfortunately doesn't show up in the photo... But the copper is really shimmery copper, and I think my favorite is "Cleopatra", which is a lovely rich leaf green with tiny flecks of gold, and it's so pretty! :3

...yeah. I'm trying to stay positive, here. If anyone wants to receive cheery mail with a flower drawing or something, just leave a comment here or PM me. Coronavirus doesn't survive long on paper or cardboard so that should be safe...

Okay, I had promised to show the awesome piece of modelling paste art I received in my advent calendar from the awesome Nil! :D (Thankyouthankyouthankyou!!!!)

Isn't it awesome? It's this huge metal frame (with five-fold symmetry; bonus points for that, it's a nice crystallography in-joke) with a whole modelled landscape inside! Cave, tree, leaves and characters are all FIMO, I believe (modelling paste that's very popular around here), the "water" is actually transparent so it's probably resin or acrylic paste, and inside the cave there's an actual rock. :D The characters are, of course, from my story/art/project thingy. The young lady relaxing on the water is Deeyan. The guy dangling his feet in the water is Koh. The guy in the background, ignoring everything else but the rock, is Dev. :D

Here's a view from above. Isn't all the detail amazing? One leaf and one tree unfortunately fell off in the mail (the whole thing was packaged really well, but, ahem, German mail services...) but I'll glue them back on; the positions where they were are really obvious by the indentions in the ground. And I do own acrylic paste, so... no problem.

This is my dad holding the whole thing in the air, the way this piece of art should be installed. Unfortunately, I still don't have a technical solution for that yet: due to solid metal, solid resin and solid rock the whole thing is really, really heavy. I don't want it to fall off the ceiling. I mean, I care more about potential damage to this piece of art than about any potential hole in the ceiling but the landlord might feel otherwise. Maybe I'll install hooks and put chains between them in pentagram shape - that would be very much in style but would also prevent me from ever having "generally normal" visitors again. (My personal version of "normal visitor" won't mind.)

And oh yes, transparent water is awesome. So is backlighting. This is so... AWWWWWW. Like, one of the coolest pieces of "fanart" (if it can be considered that; it's not as if there's something like a fandom for my commented program code, except it looks as if there is...) I've ever received. :D Anyway, THIS IS AWESOME.

With the prompt "A Game Begins", it was clear I'd draw something involving chess! Here, two characters from one of my stories are just starting one of their games. Anhai, my favorite demon general, is losing against his sort-of-girlfriend Yora. I mean, they've only played one move so far, but Anhai is totally losing. :D I've just noticed that I draw Yora-playing-chess a lot (here's another pic of her) and that most other pics I have of her are NSFW stuff involving her and Anhai. (And no, I haven't posted that anywhere, and I don't intend to.) Anyway... This was fun. I like how the light turned out.

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...

I absolutely HAVE to show you what the wonderful Q-ni made for me! :D (Q-ni, in case you read this, thank you so so sooooo much - I have already told you how much I appreciate this but I can't say it often enough!

Not only did Q-ni draw a wonderful ATC of my favorite autistic ~~dark mage~~ geologist who happens to be the protagonist of ~~a piece of program code that went awry~~ my story - I really love the picture - but... She did the same picture as a sculpture!

A tiny sculpture!

Made of FIMO!

Mounted on a lovely tiny piece of crystal!

...come on, isn't that cute? :D I can tell you this totally made my day! Also, I love the medium - the whole story is whimsical enough to be not quite "serious" enough for illustration, so I personally usually portray my characters in collage pieces - but of course FIMO sculpture is also perfect for the mood of the thing.

And I couldn't resist, I simply had to make an icon featuring him. I mean, he's not quite my alter ego, but... I can totally identify. Ehehe.

Current Mood: ecstatic

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Entries tagged with kolthainn

Awesome Fanart

Shadow theater: the process

OC Questionaire Meme

Still More Awesome Kolthainn Fanart

Mirainn shaker ATC

More Awesome Kolthainn Fanart

Moar Awesome Dev Fanart

Awesome Kolthainn Fanart WHEEEE

Advent Calendar Awesomeness: Kolthainn Fanart Extreme!

Life, Christmas Gifts, and so on

Game of Stones - Kolthainn fanart

A little Kolthainn picture book :)

OC Innis: colored version

OC Innis: Lineart

WIP: my OC Innis

Life in quarantine, art, lovely mail

Awesome modelling paste art

Inktober day 13 A Game Begins

Inktober day 7 Alchemy

Dev the geologist - the ultimate fanart! <3