When I created this one, the sun had set on the last days of autumn and slowly made way for winter's attempt of entering the stage. Far from the last Huevember artwork, but the last one actually created in November 2022. When I was almost done I was wondering if I should add anything in the water. However, with the sky and the foreground both being coloured so bright, a very smooth water surface without any visual distractions added a calm mood in this otherwise busy picture. --- Alt text: Sunset ocean scene, viewed from ontop of a cliff with a big rock on the right and two small ones on the left. The ocean only shows very subtle smooth waves. The sky is full of small puffy clouds, but not entirely covered by them. The whole scene is very warm and calm, painted with strong warm colours ranging from the bright red of the fluffy grass on the cliff and pastel purple on the rocks to the bright orange at the horizon where the sun is disappearing and illuminating the bottom of the clouds. The ocean is a light blue but reflecting the light from the sky.

Last month I hosted my very first digital art event in Final Fantasy XIV: "Cosy Colours"! It's a "Draw and Greet" so to speak, an event in the Light DC for artists to meet each other. We painted and chatted about the topic but also art in general. I focused on gesture drawing, others on portraits or own projects. Join us next time on Twintania: 26. May 2024, 18:30 (UTC+2) Topic: "Mayqo'te" Location & rules: https://cosy-colours-ffxiv.carrd.co/ --- Shout out to the artists from Gochuumon Studio EU as well, who inspired me to take this leap and start with this event I was contemplating about for years. You rock! Check out their own carrd for more info and maybe a portrait at their own event every saturday: https://gochuumonineu.crd.co/ (Our events are not related or anything, we just happened to meet in the game.)

In this artwork I used the colours from day five to day nine. But please don't think I'm trying to hit two birds with one stone to rush ahead. I'm not that flighty. B) (Puns aside, this one was tougher than it might look, because just a slight change of colours in the background could make the difference between "colourful leaves and birds in autumn" and "forest wildfire with burning birds"... I assure you it's supposed to be a "beautiful autumn" thing!) --- Alt text: Abstract autumn picture of two birds flying up from the ground inside a forest. The birds are silhouettes in the foreground flying upwards, the background shows simplified branches and a subtle orange yellow pattern of big leaves. A similar but smaller leaf pattern is at the lower half of the image, like a floor, covered with leaves in motion, some leading to the birds like a trail. The birds are covered in a bright red pattern, too.

I'm going to repost a few things because of some changes I made. I'm trying to spread this out a little bit so I'm not flooding the gallery. Once I'm done adding all my Huevember stuff, I'll start uploading other new and old things as well, so my gallery gets a little bit more representative. :)

There were quite a few ups and downs with this Huevember artwork. It is very different from my usual work after all, but I like the result. Also, cats are pawsome! That's also my last artwork I finished with Photoshop. I was fed up with Adobe's politics for quite a while but struggled finding a proper substitute. Of course plenty of other art programs were out there, dabbled with many over the years, but after working with Photoshop for half my art life there were just some features I didn't want to miss. Someone on mastodon.art suggested Krita to me. Struggled with it ages ago but a lot has changed since then, so I made a change as well. Best art related decision ever. --- Alt text: Digital Art: Very simplistic artwork with four cats and a rat, they are all painted as silhouettes with only the ears and eyes in a different colour. Three cats are on a staircase going downwards in the front. The fourth cat is on another staircase going up slightly behind the others. From top to bottom and left to right: Cat sitting with the back to the viewer, head turned to the right, looking into the distance. Cat hanging on a step, trying to climb up. Cat curled up on a step, sleeping quietly. Cat seen from the side, being on top of the second staircase, trying to climb down one step. slightly below her, in the second staircase, is a whole. The rat is sitting in there, looking towards the cats.

Huevember 2022 - Colours 2 to 4: Golden Apples November is said to be the end of the harvest season for apples, but if you are lucky you might find one or two in unexpected places - though I doubt 3D prints of these apples would be edible. As you can see in the title I started grouping similar colours together. When I started that one I noticed fairly quickly it is tough to "stay in the lane" of your specific colour if you want to work with shading. So why not combine them intentionally? --- Alt text: A bunch of nine simplified apples with stems. They're painted in a small variety of yellow colours and high contrast in a very rough style. The background is a dark grass texture with big leaves.

Hello everyone! A few years ago I discovered the "Huevember" challenge on Twitter. Contrary to events like Inktober your prompt list isn't a bunch of words but the colour wheel! Or rather a colour wheel cut into 30 pieces assigned with numbers from 1-30, clockwise. Coming up with anything for a specific word or word combination didn't always work out for me in other challenges, so I thought I'd give it a try. Back then real life circumstances prevented me from taking part in earnest (although I will upload the one artwork I did eventually, it's cute.) So last year I decided to give it a go and use the opportunity to explore different styles and techniques. I hope you'll enjoy peaking into my "sandbox"! :) For now, I hope this little landscape will brighten your evening! ------ Alt text: Simplified landscape painted with a bright yellow on a dark grizzled background. In the back is a mountain ridge, a big hill on the right a bit further in the front and plain grassland in the middle. In the foreground is a lake. Its surface is illuminated by the moon and stars in the sky. The brush strokes are mostly very broad and of varying opacity.

I streamed spontaneously on Twitch today and created this little cutie. It's mostly based on the version of carbuncle from Final Fantasy XIV but with a gem similar to FF VIII on its head. If you are interested in seeing more streams from me, check out my Twitch channel. (I don't have a specific schedule atm.) www.twitch.tv/sketchblopp --- Alt text: Digital Art: Painting of a carbuncle running from left to right. (Carbuncles are fennek like fantasy creatures from the Final Fantasy franchise. They have three tails, long ears and in this case a red gem on the forehead.) It has a slight glow and little magic sparkles are floating around it. The background is a single colour with a grainy texture.

Some artwork starts with an emotion, an idea for a composition, a fondness for certain colours or simply the wish to create anything. This artwork started with a tree in a park nearby. Or rather its bark. --- Alt-text for the final artwork: Digital Art: Night scene of a beach with a broadleaf forest in the background, seen from the ocean. Big glowing yellow orbs are moving in a row toward a small path into the forest. They illuminate the blue and purple churning waters below, creating a slightly fog-like trail. (Alt texts for the other 7 images at the bottom of the post, in chronological order.) --- In 2017 I visited said park in search of patterns I could use as base for textures. This tree and the sadly rather unhealthy looking trunk provided me with one. At home I altered it into something more "even" in terms of value and surface structure and created a seamless pattern. I dabbled around with it a bit with filters, various brushes etc. once in a while. When I started my Huevember drawings, I erased the base "colour", so just the rough edged would remain. It reminded me a lot of rain... or waves? First idea with rain running down a window didn't really work out, so I moved on to "ocean". But "just water" seemed a bit dull. Maybe a scene in the ocean with the pattern as surface on the top? Maybe the river Styx with Charon on it, guiding souls as little lamps or orbs...? I worked on the Charon version for some while but it seemed a bit off and I felt I would need another photographic pattern for the boat as well, so they truly look like one single scene, not an art collage. I felt stuck. I set this project aside for a while. When I picked it up again after november had passed, I decided to focus less on a super fancy deep meaningful composition and more on the ocean itself. I took a step back and examined what the pattern was offering me, and then went from there. The boat was trashed but I kept the shiny orb concept. What to do with the background though? I still had no idea for that. I liked the thought of the orbs floating into a spooky cave, but I wanted to utilize that cloudy pattern in the back a bit more. This worked better with trees - and a beach. I was considering adding more detailed leaves to the trees or rocks at the beach, but I was concerned having details everywhere would come at a loss of depth, and distract too much from the orbs, so I went with a more subtle and simple design. And there you have it, this is how this piece of art came into existence. It's amazing how much an artwork can change in the process of creation, isn't it? Thanks for your inspirational pattern, tree! --- Btw, if you want to know how to make shiny orbs like this (or rather shiny creatures), have a look at this tutorial from Devin Elle Kurtz! Although I didn't follow it entirely, many steps still helped me make my floating orbs shine and look a bit more interesting. https://www.instagram.com/p/CoIkW3HDCMk/ --- Alt Texts for the remaining images in chronological order: 1) Photo: Tree with a broad tree trunk and several big branches. The trunk looks very unhealthy and slightly deformed, the bark is flaking off. 2) Photo: Closer look at the flaky tree bark with some bumps here and there, especially a big one at the bottom. 3) Altered grayscale version of the photo of the trunk, transformed into a seamless pattern. 4) Core pattern of the bark after reducing it to all the rough edges and scratches and delete all the midtones. 5) Pattern rotated by 90 degres and in light blue, on a mid blue background. It resembles churning waves. 6) Dark night scene with a dark blue and black "cloudy" filter pattern as base. The tree bark pattern was squeezed and added as foreground surface. On it is a very rough bland shape of an old wavy elegant row boat without passenger or paddle. 7) Digital artwork WIP: Water is like in the finished version, the floating orbs are still missing a part of their glow. In the back are the rough beginnings of cliffs with a cave.