#helaia

[insearchofstory]

Got some art to share for my Curse of Strahd character, Helaia Ashencrown (art by @/marduksstuff).

She's a funny, annoying girlie!

[elias-veturius-laia-of-serra]

Friendships: Laia Of Serra & Helene Aquilla

“No need to be nasty,” I say. “I’m aware that I’m not . . .” I gesture vaguely at her, curved in all the right places.

Laia only raises her eyebrows. “I mean it, Shrike,” she says. “You are very beautiful. It’s no wonder he cannot keep his eyes off you.”

A strange, warm feeling fills me, like after I’ve won a battle, or when I’m a half dozen cups into a keg.

“You—” You really think that? I want to say, because if Faris or Dex or even Elias told me I was beautiful, I’d stab them in the face. “You’re just saying that because you’re my—my—”

“Friend? Is it so hard to admit it?” Laia glances upward, ostentatiously shading her eyes. “A Scholar rebel and a Martial Blood Shrike are friends and the sky didn’t fall in. Whatever shall we do?” - A Sky Beyond The Storm

[zoomy-brain]

2014 vs 2021

I rediscovered my old deviantart from when I was 11 and if I felt like my art was meh lately... WELL THAT FEELING GONE NOW

This btw is a redraw of a lil drawing I made of @helaia when I was like 18, for some colour challenge. This was BEFORE I had a tablet with pen sensitivity, my GOHD

So let’s talk about the evolution of how-to-draw-gooder!

(if I’m going through my old digital art cringe-town, I’M TAKING YOU WITH ME)

2010 (age 13)

So my first shitty drawing tablet was one my dad had found somewhere in a closet at his work, which has nothing to do with graphic design or drawing or anything. It was old, the pen was falling apart and it didn’t have settings options or anything. I just plugged it in, hoped it worked, and then got working on GIMP. Photoshop was then too complicated and too expensive.

Most of the stuff you’ll see will have quite a few things in common: no control over the pen, no width variation in the lineart, ugly or saturated colours, no full grasp on anatomy, the same stupid brush everywhere and what I did for shading was just pick the colour i did for normal light, dragged it a little towards black and just did that on a different layer. At least I actually used layers!

It’s often said that the tools don’t make the artist and in some capacity that was true... but I was definitely working with a broken machine and it was showing. What I knew, I had learned from speedpaints on youtube. (I tried to look up the ones I learned most from but they’re no more :c)

Next I did was straight up figure out how the software worked, by using manga pages, put the layer on multiply, and colour the page in. I also tried to copy what my favourite digital artists were doing, by trying to figure out how they did what they did:

Next was just loads and loaaaads of practice and keeping it up. At this point, drawing, for me, was just a hobby. Something I did to waste time instead of doing homework. But just by doing it over and over again, and drawing my favourite characters over and over again, I started to get a subconscious grasp of how anatomy worked, especially in anime and mange.

But that was only when it came to characters and how to draw them.

I hadn’t even started to think about backgrounds, colours, composition, effects, texture! That was the next step: I learned about putting a layer on multiply helped with shading, I learned how to use different kinds of brushes, I learned textures are cool and funky! I also learned how to deal with the stupid pressure sensitivity. Not well, but still. I only learned pressure sensitivity was a thing when I was... 17 or something.

And at some point, you gotta make a choice in what works for you and what doesn’t. One can say that tools don’t make the artist but my tools were actively working against me, since I was still working with a tablet that had no smoothing or pen pressure.

(PART 2)

[oh-jail-for-mother]

i am very unhappy to announce that i have not read a single page of Sky today because uni is a bitch

[eliasveturiusfandom]

Laia: What are some gender neutral things to call your partner?

Helene, raising her fists: OPPONENT

Laia:...No

[aeitascholardom]

Laia: pick one. Between me, Helene, Faris, Dex, and Darin. If you had to -if you HAD to- who would you punch?

Elias: no one. They are my friends. I wouldn’t punch any of them.

Laia: Darin?

Elias: yeah. But I don’t know why.

[a-torch-against-the-hate]

[toga-arts]

hey guys remember like 400 years ago when I promised to finish that helaia piece.