The Grausamkeit's stories

Art blog with the occasional lore for the book I'm writing. Instagram: @gracelyn_grausamkeit

[gracelyngrausamkeit]

Man, I love drawing small evil trigger-happy gremlin-like characters with rabid faces and sadistic temperament.

This hussar is one of the villains serving the Unholy Reman Anarchy from the new role playing game I'm hosting. Once a young girl who died in tragic circumstances, she's become one of the front liners of the Devil himself, reborn by his blasphemous powers.

I did experiment a bit on this piece. I'm happy with some results and not so with others. But I'm especially happy with her villainous eyes!

[gracelyngrausamkeit]

The last few days have been very tiring, but I am happy to be drawing again, even if irregularly. This one is actually an enhanced rendition of an older inktober art of my character Styria that girlfriend loved. Or the sketch anyways, since the original inktober lineart failed to live up to the sketch. Because of that, I tried my best to redeem myself and better capture Styria's intensity in this newer piece.

Also, I feel like painting miniatures for the past three years has improved my relationship with color.

[gracelyngrausamkeit]

As I've previously mentioned, I am currently a JoJo-magic-system-inspired Ottoman-themed alt history TTRPG (jee, that's a mouthful) with a bunch of friends. The main setting is that they are aspiring officers in a military academy, so at around the 4th campaign, we had a sort of "sorting hat" ceremony. The idea was that four generals were interested in personally training the player characters, so they allowed players to decide which one to join via a lengthy multiple choice test.

The fun part was that the player characters were not really familiar with the personalities of the four generals, so they couldn't answer in a biased manner and they didn't really know what they were going to get.

In the end, they ended under the wing of Muammar (pictured), pasha of one of the major military divisions. With the looks of a youthful girl, Mua is the only one of the four generals who doesn't dress ostentatiously - on the contrary, her kit is always almost purely practical, oftentimes showing signs of wear and rust. Boasting a cold and distant character, she is rarely seen in the company of others and seems a woman of action and reason rather than emotion. Her bound demon (the basic magic system of this world revolves around bound demons) is said to be able to level entire armies.

However, purely meta-speaking, people on the same wavelength as me might guess what her pose references (my players certainly didn't!) and perhaps infer more about her personality and her demon's powers. And just in case - No AI whatsoever!

[gracelyngrausamkeit]

Wearing full armor at the peak of summer heat can be quite the unpleasant experience. However, any discomfort caused by the kit was offset by this amazing unscripted duel I had with a friend (the changing of weapons midway was scripted though). Despite performing decently in this fight, my sub-optimal fitness levels did end up showing as, after the event, my left should ended up strained and hurting for an entire month.

[blade-liger-4ever]

@frankthecherokee he shows his back near the end with that pivot.

[frankthecherokee]

And notice where he got caught?

[gracelyngrausamkeit]

@blade-liger-4ever @frankthecherokee bascinet knight from the vid here. Not sure which part you are talking about but if by pivot you mean the spinning attack I do before switcing weapons, I was kind of forced to do it because our weapons started getting stuck +we were very close which renders halberds less useful. It seemed like the easiest way to get out of the clutch at the moment lol

[gracelyngrausamkeit]

As it turns out, it is very hard for me to do blonde characters. As someone with incredibly strong biases toward brown hair, I find myself reverting to darker shades time and time again.

This NPC character for a TTRPG game in particular was created with the "17-18th century cat-themed French swashbuckler bimbo" premise in mind. At first, I imagined her blode-ish but once I got to drawing her, I quickly backtracked and reverted to light brown. My girlfriend, however, insisted that I make a recolor so she can see how the character was originally supposed to look like.

So, what do you think? Was blonde ok or is brownish better?

[gracelyngrausamkeit]

I've been making some steady progress on both my miniatures and my book. Unfortunately, the more productive I am, the less active I am on social media. However, I do have a bunch of new characters portraits I am working on and will share once they are finished.

[gracelyngrausamkeit]

Robespierre is a dealer of all kinds of treasures, magical artifacts and such. He never trades for money though, as money has little value to him. He enjoys bartering and is always happy to give away some of his own collection if you can bring him something he hasn’t yet seen.

[gracelyngrausamkeit]

Here's our holiday season game video!

[gracelyngrausamkeit]

Merry Christmas and happy holidays!

What better way to celebrate than with an atmospheric 40K game? To add to the festivities, we had Santa and his sleigh also play a part in the game, handing out extra movement and rerolls.

The Thousand Sons and the Death Guard both wanted all the presents for themselves. In the end, Mortarion prevailed, finally securing the gifts his two daddies never gave him. Magnus was once again a sad boy and caught a cold after a Lord of Contagion exploded in his face.

[gracelyngrausamkeit]

A clash of armies is what you'd expect to see in chess but how these armies look would vary greatly from set to set. There are marvelous ones – some featuring intricately carves knights, others boasting colorful anime figures or even… mushrooms!

And yet, some people love modern day chess for its simplicity which allows them to fully focus on the game.

How do you like your figures? Minimalistic or luxurious?

[gracelyngrausamkeit]

Chess debuts are more than a meme as staging your troops property could be the key to success. Occupying key positions and preventing your opponent from controlling them can make all the difference.

For example, if you’re playing with the black figures and your opponent moves the white pawn on e4, you can respond with the Sicilian defense - one of the most popular moves in Chess.

Employed by masters and beginners alike, the Sicilian Defense is a reputable and positionally sound opening. Still, it is an aggressive opening that tends to lead to dynamic and explosive games.

[gracelyngrausamkeit]

This here is the cover for a sex-ed pamphlet I did for a local child welfare charity (SOS Detski Selishta). The objective of the pamphlet was to advice educators and parents on how to teach children about sexual attraction, orientation, relationships, etc.

I really appreciate that the overall vision of the charity was very apolitical and non-preachy - something that is exceedingly rare in Bulgaria these days. I also appreciate that the overall illustration ideas were very non-graphic, allowing me to confidently share them.

[gracelyngrausamkeit]

Happy Halloween 🎃👻

This is our spooky Warhammer 40k terrain!

[gracelyngrausamkeit]

Spooky!

[gracelyngrausamkeit]

This is a more unusual and abstract piece I did for a project I will soon be sharing more stuff from. It was basically a limited edition booklet covering basic stuff about romance, growing up, sex ed, etc. Luckily, the guys I worked with envisioned a less graphic idea than I originally expected. For this one, if I am not mistaken, they wanted me to do an abstract silhouette of a loving couple. This is what I came up with.

[gracelyngrausamkeit]

A quick piece I did for a gift. Even though I knew I had little time to finish it, I was stupid enough to try out a pose I was entirely unfamiliar with and an angle I was also entirely unfamiliar with. It might be a bit janky in certain places but I am still fairly content with how it turned out.

[gracelyngrausamkeit]

When did you get your first chess board? I got my first personal one at around 8, I think. It had ceramic pieces that were shaped like Conquistadors and Indigenous Americans. I really enjoyed the colorful pieces and it motivated me to play and develop tactical thinking.

But while some people complain about the new generations' hobbies, I have to admit that I too would have enjoyed a Huggy-Wuggy when I was 8.