Pale Lights Book 3 Chapter 43 – Tolomontera Residents
At some point it had to happen. The non-student sheet (I ran out of rows I could add in Clip Studio Paint on the other file, and wanted to move the Orels. Turns out: You can only have 50000 pixels high files in CSP).
To celebrate, I added a couple of portraits. I planned to do more and edit some things, but then Real Life hit me.
Actual new art not reused from earlier art overviews collected at the top.
Nilan Achari: An argument was made for turning the headwear pickles coloured, but then I didn’t open the file Again, because real life hit me. It was kinda nice doing a portrait of someone old.
Ishanvi’s Friend: Art reuse. I’m not even ashamed. Also, have you all considered just how tiny a thumb-sized little creature is? Just, measure your own thumb, and then consider how much space that would take up on a picture including full sized humans.
Lady Knit: This one was fun. String textures. Amusingly, you can’t really see how elongated I made her, because she’s so far removed from average portraits.
Happy chapter day. I had summer vacation and used a bit of time on the overview.
I updated most the existing Scholomance students with some small edits. EE have decided to change all the regular uniform silver buttons to brass, so… Yeah… Also, some general edits on some of them to be updated.
Four new characters, that seems like they will be important, have been added. I considered also going for the last of 29th. But we don’t even have the gender of their last member yet.
This file is massive. it got split into so many sections for optimized Tumblr view.
Detailed descriptions under cut
Vivek got his facial expression adjusted to a smile.
Alejandra now is wearing the proper hat for grieving.
Emergency Rations got art, as anyone in 4th brigade probably will be relevant.
Musa got a scar, now.
Jayati is no longer a sketch. Finally. That one was driving me up a wall. We gar a gender and details about her and everything.
Maryam got some updated cloak details.
Tristan got an updated expression and gold flecks in his eyes. The last part might be hard to see in the small version, though.
Fortuna got her art switched to a dress that’s not Ancient Asphodelian fashion.
Hooks got a wardrobe update from that basic white kirtle.
Silumko now finally has a big impressive hat.
Shalini and Zenzele got a little love towards their skintones (I actually adjust these relatively often important characters. Angharad has had her skintone adjusted repeatedly over the three books)
Muchen got a skintone adjustment as well.
Yaotl got art done. Deciding how black the black stripes on her face should be is quite the balance act.
Nathi got art now as well. The fact that he has a round face just seems to go against his character type as shown up until now. He doesn’t seem like his face should be soft.
Ishanvi got art. I spent a lot of time trying to look into the net for her hair. Combined with a loose braid. There’s plenty of European renaissance hairnets. But the hair would not be in a loose braid, then. It’s be in an updo (that might also be braided). Indian fashion around that time however have examples of what is essentially beaded net shawls. And if looking at 17th century art, that can look like a hair net. So I figured that probably was it.
I filled out a couple of Brigades. 3rd and 9th are starting to seem more and more important.
Jeronimo: We got surprisingly little about what Jeronimo looks like. So, I pretty much just guessed. So many of my Lierganen portraits get mid-brown hair, just to add a bit of variation to all the super dark hair.
Andreu: This is my “EE better not kill this cutie” art. This fandom is keeping the chatty gay pirate, telling you all this now! He even canonically has a hat. Which amusingly is most of what we know about his looks besides curly hair.
Ruo Xuan: We actually got a bit of confirmation on the hairstyle from EE on the discord. I guess it makes sense that Song would either want to kill or marry this guy. I think he needs to add a design-element that’s slightly off. So she in theory easily could correct it.
Jingyi: Izel’s honey-voiced friend. We… Know he has glasses. But let’s be real, he’s almost part of Izel’s exponentially expanding harem. He gotta be cute.
Yaotl: Updated her art by removing the facepaint. Because something tells me she might not be wearing that for much longer.
Ishanvi: Updated the hairnet to something she can wear into battle. I liked the Indian-inspired shawl, but I’m guess we’re doing European Renaissance now instead.
I added a couple of antagonists. I planned to add some other characters as well, but life got n the way.
However: There’s now a background colour code for Hunters and Library Delvers.
Bad news for Tumblr users. I was too lazy to split this up into 9-10 seperate images for better Tumblr viewing. I hope you manage.
New characters:
Diego: I can never quite figure what the Akelarre special uniform is supposed to be. I think EE has retconned it from robes to a special tunic between book 2 and 3, but I have no idea how to not make it robes to give it a proper Renaissance Scholar look. XD
Anyway, it’s been suggested I should also add a fancy scarf to our mercenary fashion lover. But I never got around to make that add on. Might happen at some time.
Cai Wei: I actually really like her overall look. Figures I waste it on a character that probably only is around this book. There’s a version of her without the ghost tones. Which I was blatantly inspired from by Zhaomeng’s cool scene art.
Oh hey, the Orels are real people now. Let’s celebrate.
I placed them in the student sheet even if they are not students. Then I made a “Thirteenth and close associates” sheet. Such underdogs. No support at all. XD
Anyway, the five Borels are wrecking even more havoc on the skintones on my sheets. They are paler than the average North European. While everyone else tends to be more tan. Just to really mess with everyone, I guess. Haha
(Fortuna actually got a pretty standard North European skin tone, but… Alas…)
Orel Bolic: I redid the hat three times. Also, this is the art where I’ll be reminding everyone about his horseshoe moustache. You’re welcome. Now remember that Tristan only wishes he could have a fancy moustache like this. Yeah, you’re double welcome.
Orel Poltava: I had fun tying up her hair with traditional feminine headwear. While putting her in men’s clothing otherwise. For real, though, this would work pretty well protecting long hair from working in a smithy.
Orel Koval (Senior): This is your friendly artist here to remind you Koval got twin scars under his eyes. I really do wonder what they are about. We only heard about them once.
Orel Koval (Junior): If you let Tristan and Junior hang out for long enough time, will both of them get even messier hair? Or will it somehow make them both look less disorderly? Also, Tristan, Koval the Younger is a literal child. What is your excuse?
Orel Holvat: I’m starting to feel bad for giving him all muted tones. Also, the pure white moustache combined with raven black hair certainly is a look on an old man.
Updated this with art of what I feel like was some of the most emotionally impactful characters still missing portraits. And did a couple of minor updates on 13th as well.
(I' not going to do art of every single student)
First Brigade
Amaru now has art. I must admit, I’m not quite sure how to handle a description that goes “pretty but not beautiful”. But hey, she got a cute hat, at the least.
Second Brigade
Guadalupe got art. Gotta admit, I had fun with this one. I think she’s my personal fave of this batch.
Alizia got some rather belated art. Because she deserves it.
Twelfth Brigade
Helena has charmed herself to art. She’s a tinker Queen and fully capable of giving the skiritai Princess a real challenge.
Thirteenth Brigade
Angharad keeps losing her hat. But she gets to wear one now for the art. Because: Hat!
Izel got an art update to better catch his overall body shape.
Twenty-Ninth Brigade
Emeni got an art update. She manages to both have four big malani knots making wearing a hat impossible (even says so in the text), and then wear a hat a few weeks later. Maybe she changes hairstyle every few weeks?
Yaq now got art. I was reminded something took a bite out of his neck while doing this. Might be why he rarely speaks. Not sure about his hair, though. My original reasons for this style was to be nice to Ishanvi and give her something fun to play with.
Cemelli got art. I tried to hit the ambiguous zone between Aztlan and Tianxi with her design.
Forty-Ninth Brigade (Try Two)
Bingwen got art. Might end up redesigning this at some point. Not sure I hit it right.
Just for fun, I tried collecting the four art overviews I’ve been using throughout Book 2 into one big picture. It looks so small with all of them set up like this.
I do wonder how this will work with Tumblr. i can't really separate it out into smaller bits.
There’s a total of 129 different characters with finished portraits. Some of them are there twice (I’ve only counted them once), and some of them has had their art/outfits redone extensively. Sometimes more than once. Although, trying to document that would be quite the mess.
I plan on doing a non-fanart project for the rest of 2025, so the current plan is not to do new art overviews for Book 3. Here’s hoping I can stay strong with that resolve, once EE throws us the next 10+ important characters introduced in one chapter batch in book 3.
Doing the art overviews has been a journey. And a nice practice in differentiating character looks while using a simple artstyle, hitting nice skin tones, and defining ethnicities with relatively few features. Also, I’ve made so many beards, which has been a nice practice in its own. And that’s not even getting into the many research hours spent on the fashion. I did not expect five years ago, that I once again would be buying physical books for art references. I had been moving away from that over the years with increasingly nice image searches. Not impressed by AI art slowly creeping into historical research places it really has no place to be.
Ending the rant, if you are actually still reading, I hope you have enjoyed my art overviews over the last three years or so. Keep being wonderful nerds.
No new art - Pale Lights Book 3 Chapter 11 Student Overview
I'm not doing new art. This is all reused. Which I feel is justified because we have had a lot of new students.
But I did add all the new people to the overview to help myself keep track. I'm too lazy to try optimizing the file and make it less tall. And frankly, i won't upload here as much as I do on the Discord, because I'm also too lazy to split the file into eight new images every chapter.
But I hope a couple of you at least will find this useful. Check the discord if you want regular non-art overview updates. :P
