I guess it's getting to be that time for my bi-annual check-in. I'm doing a lot of art regularly, so maybe my updates are going to become more frequent. (I think I say that at least once a year-- it's obligatory, right?)

Winter Moon: a portrait of the manifestation of, if I ever finish it.

This time I really mean it about the doing art regularly, though. I got a Surface Book over Christmas to replace my old dying laptop-- and though it doesn't have nearly the same computing power under the hood, it allows me to draw just about anywhere, with all the familiar tools of Photoshop at my fingertips. There's a lot to be said about Microsoft's immensely popular Surface products. The touch sensitivity is still nowhere near the standard set by Wacom, but for the first time in a long time, Wacom finally has a little competition. The Surface-- though a bit clunky for intensive art projects-- is at least an acceptable alternative, and for half the price.

Anyway, enough with the product pitch. I've got a new computer, I love it, and now I can draw on my couch. Huge selling point, that.

I can draw on my couch, OR I can draw other places. Which is exactly what I've been doing since January. I've got a few friends who started getting together last March to learn to build armor for cosplay. That was abandoned at the end of 2016 when we realized we were doing lots of cosplay and not a lot of art, so instead we turned the armor parties into art jams. Now every Friday night we get together, cook dinner, and draw our hearts out.

Flynn Blackrune: a smiley, wily bastard and also a pirate and a wizard.

At the very least, it keeps us all productive when we'd rather be at home playing video games. (I've been consumed by Dragon Age: Inquisition-- Zelda: Breath of the Wild has McKenna hooked and Amanda's quietly salivating over Mass Effect: Andromeda. Lots of colons in that sentence.)

At the bottom of this post I've added a few of my recent projects in a little carousel. A couple pieces of my pirate wizard D&D character, a Winter Moon portrait, a smiley painting of my favorite fantasy character, a gnome, and a water goddess.

But in addition to all this digital art, I've picked up oil painting again too. Now-- oil painting is something I haven't really done since college, but back then I loved it. I've been looking for a way to get back into it for years now. The problem is space: oil painting takes a lot of space to set up, to store, and to let your paint dry. It's not ideal for working in an apartment. Fortunately, I've got friends with houses now.

So naturally, in one of those houses we've set up a makeshift oil painting studio. Oh, it's nothing fancy-- and it shares a space with a home theater and a makeshift wood shop. But compared to an apartment, it's heaven, and it gives us all that we really need.

I've been commissioned by my mom (one of the few people I'll actually accept commissions from) to paint a series of her three national parks in oils. I'm going to be doing a landscape from Bryce Canyon, from Zion National Park, and from Monument Valley. It's been a long process of gathering references and trying to figure out the perfect three-- we're coming in the home stretch, though, and it's just about time to start painting. A week ago I even did a small 5x7 study of one of the Monument Valley reference photos, to test my skill and to see how the picture would look in oil. I was pleasantly surprised with the results.

Llothira Lavellan: Dalish elf, warrior, badass.

Outside of all the oils and the art jams-- as I mentioned a few paragraphs up, I've been consumed by Dragon Age: Inquisition. It's a gorgeous game from an artistic standpoint, and the story's a lot of fun. It's a huge world, full of rich history and politics, and it throws you right into the middle of all of them. It's probably best known for its distinctive use of stylized tarot cards throughout the game-- cards are used to represent your party for party selection, to represent race, class, and difficulty options during character creation, and in your codex and quest log, they're used to represent entries. There's a staggering amount of art in this game, and I love it all. I love it so much I went out and bought a couple of decks of playing cards printed with the art. By no means is it a comprehensive collection, but it's enough for me to appreciate the amount of work that went into Inquisition's production.

It's also enough for me to take inspiration from. My latest piece-- which is right on the cusp of being finished-- is a portrait of my Inquisitor in Inquisition's tarot style. I'm really happy with how this illustration has come out, and I think trying to imitate that style has taught me a lot. I'm looking forward to doing more.

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