Jenny Dolfen

Caleb and Molly (Critical Role commission)

In before Christmas! A commission of Caleb and Molly. Frumpkin was modelled by my Loki (pose) a well as the commissioner's own Frumpkin (coat and colour). 

I'm also done with all my marking for this year and am looking forward to that digital gold leaf piece I wanted to do! It'll be Galadriel or Glorfindel; they're still debating who it'll be. =D

End of term madness is in full swing and I can't wait for the holidays to start. My eyes are looking forward to that, too. There are so many Orym scenes that demand my attentio...

New pins and stickers are in my shop! =D

I'm so happy with these! Don't forget your coupon code (10OFFPAT). It goes for all pins and stickers. <3 

Also, a lot of old favourite pins are available again: Glorfindel is back with Asfaloth, FEANOR NO has returned, as has GOING ON AN ADVENTURE! Flowers and Rings are going fast and probably won't be back. Finrod is also going fast but is such a hot cake that he probably will be back. ;) The Silmarils will also be reordered a... fourth time? I think? 

Needless to say, orders will in all likelihood not be s...

So, getting retrospective about 2022, I guess.

It's the time of year when art vs artist memes are getting around again. 

2022 will forever be a crazy ride when I look back to it. The discovery of Critical Role. Getting headfirst into several D&D campaigns. Starting a D&D club at my school (probably one of my personal highlights). 

A great year for art. A dreadful year for art. Getting into the Tolkien Calendar. New techniques and media. Losing all of that again (for now?) with more eye problems. Ploughing on and really having a breakthrough with Procreate. T...

Little things

I haven't been able to do much art over the last two weeks - there's one Critical Role commission I'm currently working on, the gold leaf image is on the backburner (I definitely hope to get to all of it once the holidays start!) My eyes are getting better so slowly that my ophthalmologist didn't see much improvement when I was at the clinic yesterday. We're probably looking at a few more months of poor eyesight before the spot is healed (if it does, I'm still not allowing myself to fully believe it will). 

In the meantime, with s...

Morning, Dad

Orym's morning routine: doing his sword/dance moves on a skyship high above the clouds (with a rope tied to his ankle, just in case). Apparently, he identifies the sun with his deceased father in law (he had a tattoo much like Orym’s, but with a sun on the shoulder), and mumbles "Morning, Dad," as he steps out on the deck. 

I'm starting to get to a point with digital watercolour where I can’t just reproduce effects I used to, but actu...

*Sigh of relief*

My flower kids, Orym and Fearne. If you're three foot tall and the world is mean to you, hitch a ride on your 7 foot friend's handlebars. Sorry, horns.

Had my hospital appointment today, and the blind spot/injury/"event" on my retina is measurably getting smaller/healing over.
(My ophthalmologist always calls these things "events" because nobody knows what the hell they are. So I officially have an event retina. It's also scarred like nobody's business, but at least the scarring doesn't interfere with my vision too much.) 

Video post - more Procreate watercolour. Thranduil volunteered.

I asked around with my various muses who was up for a texture-heavy watercolour piece with Procreate, maybe with autumn leaves and flowing hair. Orym was fine with autumn leaves but flowing hair was a hard pass, so Thranduil stepped up. 😁 I almost feel as if I know what I'm doing by this point, so here's a quick process video without too much back and forth. 

I've finally done the homework I've been putting off for a year - I went thro...

A dream so real... and three new Dungeons&Dormice designs!

Dusk: "Do you ever have a dream so real you wake up and you're not sure you're still dreaming?"
Orym (softly and immediately): "Yeah." 

Or: Big Spoon, Little Spoon. Some halflings do indeed get all the luck. 

More Procreate watercolour! I now find it weird that it took me so long to find that this actually worked. Darkish skin could have been a breaking point (it's been hit and miss for me both in real watercolour and with all sorts of digital colouring), but it worked out fine here. 

I also started design...

More Procreate watercolour practice: Imogen

Imogen is one of the last characters from Critical Role campaign 3 who hasn’t got a proper portrait for herself! She always features heavily in the sketchalongs, so I obviously felt she was fine. ;) But I wanted to paint a soft portrait, and she very much volunteered. 

I always have to force myself to leave those lovely edges standing! That, too, is a clear parallel to my actual watercolours… 

Two (three) very cool things

Number 1: After yesterday’s sketch of quokka!Fearne with watercolour brushes, I decided to give Procreate watercolours another go. I'd never been happy with how they handled and how long it took, but there had to be a way to make them work. Yesterday I'd stumbled across a few (in my insane brush library) that had to work.
And they did!
This piece, with sketch, lineart and full (almost) colour around a blind spot in my vision took half the time the one with Orym and Ashton on the ship did. Maybe e...

Comfort zone art: Quokka!Fearne, digital watercolours, and Will/Orym shnuggles

So, my eyes are not better and cortisone's a beast. :(

BUT since I don't have much else to do and am determined to create some warm and fuzzy times (and since I'm just re-listening to the relevant episodes), I felt compelled to draw that time when Fearne was infiltrating an armed-to-the-teeth mercenary outpost and wildshaped into a quokka. This resulted in a lot of hilarity as every battle-hardened mercenary she met was instantly reduced to a gooey puddle of "OH MY GOD, ARE YOU CUTE!" (You can give it a listen here: 2022-11-17 08:00:43 +0000 UTC View Post

"I know you're not okay"

It's been a bad week. Last Wednesday, I surprised a burglar in the hall at 4 am. Luckily, he'd stumbled over my son's backpack noisily enough to wake me, so he fled at once without taking anything. The stress of it all may have been what caused another massive eye episode two days later, so drawing is hard even though the scenes last week were many. Now I have blind spots in both my eyes, both fairly central. I'm still hoping the recent one will go away in time. 

I spent the day at the eye clinic in Aachen again, finished the piec...

Sketchalong episode 40

Weretigers, wolves, bugbear cooks, and Imodna pyjama parties, oh my!

This one definitely picked up quality towards the bottom! There were a lot of cool and fun and cute scenes in here. One is absent from this sketchalong but will get a picture of its own - Orym and Ashton bonding was just wonderful. (But I'd just started to sketch the scene with the sending stone, not anticipating it was going to get even better in thirty seconds.)

There was one really fun one here, where the sketchalong format came in very handy: The one at the ...

Ashton Greymoore

I took a long time to really warm to Ashton, longer than any other of the Third Campaign crew. I think I'm just not very fond of barbarians. But there's been so much interesting stuff going on with Ashton in recent episodes that I've now definitely and fully warmed to them. They demanded a bit of a change in style - bolder than usual, but then, it's Ashton! 

For those not familiar with Critical Role: Ashton's an earth genasi that's been through some hard times and been repaired with a sort of kintsugi, which is just such an incred...

Mithlond... and new pins!

I can't believe how long this took. The last landscapes were okay but unrefined, so I thought, I'll just refine it a bit, right? So I refined... and refined... and refined... and at some point I just had to call it done though I could have added more indefinitely. O_o 

I'm in love with the light and the whole scene looks like something I didn't think I could do. On the other hand, it's weird to work on something for... ten days? Every day for several hours? It's a very new experience, but I guess this is how landscapes work. ...

Sketchalong for Episode 39 (spoilers)

Another episode, another sketchalong! It was a lot of conversations and shopping trips in the beginning, so I sketched a lot of NPCs... and then of course, towards the end, things just started to get absolutely crazy and I had to leave sketches abandoned to do the next one. Chetney fighting Fearne and Orym? OMG!

(Funny thought: Orym gets himself into as much trouble as Vax ever did, but at least Orym does it to actually keep trouble away from others - and he has the hit points to survive it!) 

These sketchalongs als...

I feel like a Twitter celebrity now. =O

Imagine drawing Tolkien stuff all your life, characters of an author who died three years before you were born, and still you agonise over each piece: Is this what the author intended? Would he like the way you portray them? ... at the same time knowing you will never know.

And then imagine you get comments and likes from Matt Mercer (Critical Role's DM) and Travis Willingham (player of Chetney and CEO of Critical Role), and a FOLLOW FROM MATT.

When I told my husband, he broke out the champagne. He did not do that for the Tolkien...

Pony trecking in Cornwall with Elladan and Elrohir

This is taking ages, but I really love how it’s coming along (slow as it is!) I decided to have Elladan and Elrohir in there, because I've hardly ever drawn them and it’s just more impact that way. This will be the first ever landscape I’ve liked enough to make prints of. At least that’s the plan. ;)

Another little Critical Role character art on the side: Chetney Pock O'Pea, gnome, bloodhunter, grumpy old man, rogue, werewolf, and wood carver. He has a very soft side, and the art I've seen of him almost never reflects ...

Progress on the Grey Havens, boyfriend chic, and INPRNT sale!

I'm starting to think this piece might look REALLY nice when it's done! The main change compared to the last landscapes was simple: fewer brushes. Do stuff on foot rather than chose the nifty "waves" brush that looks great at a distance but fake when you look more closely. Takes ages but is much more satisfying. As always. 

INPRNT is having a 15% off sale all week, and I rounded it off to a nice 20%! It's got a lot of my older art as well as a greater variety of sizes than the ones in my Etsy shop. =)

2022-11-01 07:15:42 +0000 UTC View Post

A friend is a fuzzy blanket

Sleeping arrangements for Bells Hells: Orym never gets a bed/inn room for himself but sleeps curled up against Fearne's fuzzy lower half. 

Actual footage of me and my cats in the early morning hours. XD 

The colours turned out very Mucha here, which was not intentional but very welcome!

I'm fighting with the sketch stage of another landscape painting right now, which is probably going to be the Havens. I've found that...

Stealing from your own character

That hilarious scene from last episode, done properly. The heroes of campaign three meet the heroes of campaign one, resulting in a lot of touching as well as funny scenes. Here Fearne, Ashley's chaos faun, meets Pike Trickfoot, Ashley's sweet gnome cleric from campaign one, now played by the DM as an NPC. 

Fearne: "Miss Trickfoot? Can I give you a hug?“
All: Aaaaaw.
Fearne: "Aaaaand I'm gonna swipe her holy symbol."
All: Whaaaaaaa——

The funniest thing about Fearne stealing anything that’s not bolted down is...

Guess what Patreon has finally got!

… Video uploads!!!

I've been dying to show you process videos without going through YouTube everytime. Here’s a little teaser.

Can't wait to play! 

Landscape practice III: Rivendell

Okay, the most ambitious landscape yet. I'm leaving them rough around the edges on purpose, to force myself to think in shapes, not in lines and detail. I nearly abandoned this during the "ugly stage", which was long and very ugly indeed, but it's great to see that pushing through is actually worth it. If I do this a few hundred more times, maybe I'll start to see the ugly state as potential rather than ugly. I can only imagine that's how oil painters do it! 

Quick colour sketch: Pâté gets an upgrade

Fun little colour sketch in between marking Latin exams! Pâté, Laudna's stuffed rat-cum-birdskull familiar, has just sprouted wings AND a cockney accent in one of the best and most ridiculous Critical Role moments yet.

Matt: "He nestles in your hair and just vanishes beneath it."
Marisha: "Oooh, can he sit on top? Like a fascinator?"
Liam: "Poppy petals just flying everywhere."

One thing I wanted to do with this sketch is capture the weird childish energy Laudna displays. In almost all fanart, she always looks dark and me...

"Can't let go"

Some heartbreak to start off your Sunday. Orym and Will.

I'm sure I've said this here before, but this reminded me again - in a class on Edgar Alan Poe during my English literature studies, I came across this sentence his Philosophy of Composition: "The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world." And I realised why I loved the Silmarillion so much - it's probably difficult to find a work of literature with more deaths of beautiful men!
Of course, for Tolkien it wou...

Sketchalong for Critical Role 3 Ep 38 (spoilers) - and give me landscape suggestions!

These sketchalongs are addictive. And I think I'm getting better with them. Just one colour this time, and considerably more Orym, because screw it - he's the best. <3 

I nearly died laughing when Fearne tried and failed to steal Pike's holy symbol, and Orym, once again behaving like the only adult in the room, dragged her away like a child dragging his totally embarrassing parent. XD That HAD to be drawn. 

And: I need landscape suggestions! Anything goes. If it tickles my fancy, I'll give it a go! =D <...

More landscape practice, more Orym tragedy

... in two different ones this time. ;) 

First off, landscape practice! I tried to convey a windy Cornish seaside and I think I halfway succeeded. This is still a rough stage that I probably won't pursue further, but it was a bit of an exercise that went really well and gave me a lot of new landscape insight. I used a lot of very different brush tips here and still need to find some balance between smooth and texture, rough and refined, but at least I know.

Aaand a lineart for a commission I'm very happy about - the sort of ...

My first (?) landscape - channelling some Bob Ross here)

Leaving Zephrah
"It's easier to leave than to be left behind" - R. E. M. 

I think it's not too bad for a first attempt at landscapes, I have to say. And of course I put in an Orym, leaving Zephrah after the death of his husband. 

Fun fact: I've known my husband for 26 years and he has NEVER been interested in ANYTHING I've ever drawn. But for this one, he kept looking over my shoulder, oohing and aaahing. XD 

I learned a lot from Bob Ross (even though neither the tree nor the halfling have a little friend)...

Shifting rooftops - colour. And maybe some landscapey stuff next?

"Go, go, go, go, GO!"
Orym clambering across rearranging rooftops.
Yes, I swear I'll do some non-Orym at some point. XD 

I'm going to try out something radical next: landscapes! Landscapes with blocked-in colours always look so easy in the timelapses I see in Instagram... and it might be a great way to relax my eyes with larger shapes that are still pleasing and effective. I'll see if I can do them. The very, very few times I tried doing digital landscapes (or at least backgrounds) I was pretty happy with them. 

P...

Shifting rooftops

Holidays are almost over, but I'm pretty happy with how I spent them. I managed to break into the CR fandom in a pretty big way - I have four of my images now featured on the Wiki, Liam (Orym's player) shared my image with his gadzillion followers for  his "It's Thursday!" post, I've done some major steps in digital art and sketching fast, and the Etsy shop is nicely restocked! It's got all my current prints now, and they're included in your cou...