Sciuridae

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I'm speachless!

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In a good way, I hope.

Glad you enjoyed it!

No, I hadn't forgotten about my promise to put together a portrait of an undead heroine. I was just a little pressed for time recently, is all.
Here's Gamma.Girl's murdered masked avenger.

It IS a little dark, so depending on your monitor settings you may have to up the gamma to see the details.

I'll be putting together a portrait of Chibi Widow in the near future.

It's a really fun costume!

Thanks to all who posted.

Congrats on the clean bill of health. I know just what a relief that can be, and wish you well on the celebration of your joy.

I'm sure there are plenty of undead villains out there, but how many undead heroes haunt Paragon city?

I'd love to see different takes on the concept.

Edit: Let's sweeten the deal. I'll make a portrait of one of the undead heroes whose screenies and history are posted here in the next few days - mine is not eligible, of course.

My own latest is Glitterdoom, who I'll admit to creating because I wanted to use the name. She's a hero who woke from a shotgun blast to the head to find herself heartbeat-challenged and living-impaired. Now she feeds on the brains of evildoers and spends her reward money on perfume and formaldehyde.

I kept the costume as stereotypical and pastel as possible, while giving her a zombified face and greenish-gray hair palette. She's a bit of a tribute character - a (gloom?) cookie to anyone who can figure out who it's a tribute TO.

DA reference pic here

So... that's mine. What about yours?

Nice work! I especially liked the lighting in 'Jane Flame'.

Ack! I'd completely forgotten about this.

But hey, still 17 minutes left in the day, right? ^_^;;

Here's Lockheed

Happy birthday!

Sciuridae is the Latin family name for squirrels.

On the pronunciation, I tend to pronounce it 'Skeh-ree-deh' for sentimental reasons, despite its being an incorrect pronunciation.

About twelve years ago, I wrote a fanfic series featuring a character I named Skeride. (Fanart for my series, by Mike Koos). She was loosely inspired by Marvel's Squirrel Girl, who at that point in time had only been seen in a one-off winter special.

Even after the series ended, I used the character names as online aliases. One, Reiraku, was taken on the CoH boards. Surprisingly, so was Skeride - I settled on the original word that her name was derived from.

Thanks again to all the well-wishers.

A slice of cake has been eaten, and it was good. And... well... um, I guess I have to concede that it IS cake. Since the DVD I watched while having it reminded me that Pete the Purple Pieman is the implacable foe of Strawberry Shortcake.

Thanks for the birthday wishes.

On the pie vs cake debate, I'm actually having strawberry shortcake tonight - tempted to eat it while watching one of the DVDs.

And really, strawberry shortcake is kind of a cross between pie and cake, isn't it?

Wow! Lovely pictures!

And fast. o.o

I really like the way your shading combines with your line work - would you consider putting together a painting tutorial?

Hilarious. They made my morning.

Lovely art for it, too.

*jaw drop*

A beautiful piece of work. And disturbing in a fun way.

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Too bad you're no on Argent Dawn...I'd come hang out with you

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I have a character on Argent Dawn. Alas, only a 6 orc from waaay back when.

Nowadays, most of my characters are on Virtue.

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The mob did nothing but spin in place, and then die. It rocked.

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That IS pretty funny.

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Oversaturated Disney Filtered chopsockey!

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Then again, so is that. It needs to be a villain epic power!

I saw Turbo-Ski once at Wentworth's about a week ago on Virtue. Does that count?

I just bought the expansion and re-subbed to WoW.

I doubt I'll be staying past the first month. I'd forgotten just how mind-numbing most of that game is, and how difficult it is to find a team to do anything except dungeons.

What gets me most is the lack of options. There's one right way to do everything, and you're punished for straying from that.

I much prefer CoX, which encourages experimentation and faciliatates off-the-wall creative approaches.

Glad you liked it!

Not a full piece - just a back-of-the-napkin sketch.

I love DB's costume design, and couldn't help myself.

(I think her Volcanis Rex is even more awesomelicious, but I didn't think a sketch of mine could do that design justice.)

JPEG compression did unspeakable things to the original's texture work. Ah, well.

In any case, here's my tribute to Mantid's catboy:

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/59258247/

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Your style will be what you like to look at in the first place.

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I'll jump in and disagree with this. My style is NOT my favourite thing to look at. (Just take a look at my favourites in DA...)

Accept the unexpected. More often than not, what ends up on the page will bear little relation to the picture you had in your mind - that can be disappointing, but it can also be an opportunity.

As my second-grade art teacher told me, 'if you're trying to draw a bush, and it doesn't turn out right, then just turn it into a lion's mane.' (Though Gamma Girl taking that advice literally might lead to a rather grotesque result.)

I like my own pictures, yes, but part of the fun is that I never really know what I'll end up with until I'm done. I envy other artists who seem to be able to translate their thoughts to paper without much loss... but it's just as valid to be the the kind of artist that embraces accident.

Realism is the basis for everything else. Once you're comfortable sketching reality, it becomes much, much easier to deviate from that norm into whatever style you wish.

This is true in music, as well, where before you write a rhapsody it's best to learn the scales, and practice tried (and trite?) but true pieces.

I find that 'your' style has a better chance of finding you while you're busy trying to master conventional depictions. You are creating the blank slate on which it can assert itself. Your style is the paint, and realism is the canvas.

I know I sounded very sure of myself in the above paragraphs, but I reserve the right to change my opinion at any moment. Chances are that tomorrow I'll believe something entirely different.

But in any case...

Before I was able to create a portrait in 'my style', such as this one: http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/53466531/

I spent my time with very traditional pencil and charcoal sketches, such as this one: http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/55476816/ (possibly NSFW)

Eventually the traditional bits just didn't satisfy me anymore, so I layered other more stylised things on top of them, bending rules to suit my taste - but always conscious of the rules.

(I cook the same way, too. I start out with a recipe, but then make it my own, and the end product is often scarcely recognizable as the original... latest creation? A slow-cooking vegetable stew that started life as a quick lentil ragout to serve over pasta.)

Edit: As for *practicing* realism... what worked for me was buying some soft art pencils, a sharpener, a good eraser, and a notebook of paper that was kind to smudging. (I love smudging pencil to do shadows/texture.) Then I'd sit down with a magazine that had an interesting photograph, and I'd sketch the photograph - not as I perceived it, but as I *saw* it. Instead of drawing 'an arm' or 'a hand', I'd draw 'a trapezoid in outline bordering a darker rectangle' or 'a curve intersected by a horizontal line'. I'd break down the image into its component shapes, in other words, and draw *those*, and the relationships between them.

Thanks to all the replies. I'll try my hand at Mantid's character(s) for now. His are all male, plus it'll make a nice little 'thank you' for the animated emote guide of his which I have bookmarked.

Lots of very interesting characters here, though, so I'll probably end up painting at least one of them after I'm done with Mantid's.

Interesting style. I like the effect.