July 2023

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digital fanart of Caleb Widogast and Essek Thelyss, drawn from waist-up. Caleb is a light-skinned human with long red hair and a beard, and Essek is a drow with light lavender skin and short white hair with curly bangs. Essek is reclining on loosely sketched pillows, while Caleb is lying down on his stomach and resting his head on Essek's chest. Essek's face is partially hidden behind the crown of Caleb's head, and his right hand is resting on Caleb's neck and cheek; both Caleb's and Essek's eyes are closed. Caleb has a white shirt on with the sleeves rolled up, and Essek is wearing a loose dark robe. the picture employs a warm color scheme with soft orange lighting, as if coming from a fireplace.ALT

life has been hard and busy but the wizards are still soft and sleeping soundly in my noggin

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digital sketch of Caleb Widogast, drawn from waist-up. he's hunched with his arms crossed, and is wearing an exaggeratedly pouty and frustrated expression with his brows drawn together and mouth twisted.ALT
digital sketch of Essek Thelyss. he is sitting with his legs crossed, facing somewhat away from the viewer, his hands resting on his knee with the fingers intertwined. his shoulders are rounded and he's looking away with a pouting expression.ALT

i just wanted to do a couple of screencap studies of some pouting wizards. like we all do

personally i love that Caleb’s pouting expression is ‘angry wile e coyote’, while Essek’s is 'William-Adolphe Bouguereau. The Song of the Nightingale. 1895, oil on canvas’

i mean.

a screenshot of Liam roleplaying Caleb in episode 30 of Critical Role Campaign 2, which the first sketch was referenced from.ALT
a picture of a frustrated-looking Wile E Coyote.ALT
a screenshot of Matt roleplaying Essek in episode 5 of 4-Sided Dive, which the second sketch was referenced from.ALT
The Song of the Nightingale by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, depicting a young woman sitting with her hands linked and resting on her lap closer to her knees. she's looking away from the viewer with a plaintive expression.ALT

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commission for @tiddiechamp, her half-elf bard Dahlia! i have a soft spot the size of siberia for bards so i was very happy to draw her 💙💛 thank you for commissioning me!

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digital fanart of Essek Thelyss standing with one of his hands raised to chest level, casting a spell. he is a drow with white hair with long curly bangs swept to one side, white eyes and dark blue skin with white freckles. he is dressed in a tunic and oversized cloak with loose sleeves and a big fur collar, held together in the front with chain clasps. the picture is relatively dark and employs a cool palette of blues, purples and browns, with cool light blue glow coming from Essek's hand.ALT

i bullied @ionomycin into doing an art trade with me, in which they drew my Essek design and i drew theirs. i was beyond ecstatic to draw io’s Essek, his white eyes and white freckles and big cute ears and floppy sleeves have bewitched me. we also align on our white nails!Essek opinions, which is a delight. and the medieval scandinavian vibes are irresistible okay.

i tried my best to do him justice in my art, but you should definitely look at the way io draws their Essek! and please check out io’s part of the trade or i will break into your house at night and rearrange all of your furniture

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digital fanart of Caleb Widogast and Essek Thelyss from critical role, cropped to only show their hands. Caleb's hand is drawn palm up, with nine imperfect white pearls lying in the center of it; Essek's left hand is cupping Caleb's from below, and his right is curled at the edge of Caleb's palm, as if he's just poured the pearls into his hand. the painting employs a limited palette of shades of teal, purple, and orange.ALT

for how much Caleb has changed Essek, i can never stop thinking about how much Essek has changed Caleb. Caleb looked at Essek and thought, this is a man whose knowledge i might be able to use to change my past. but when Caleb convinces him to share that knowledge, the first thing Essek teaches him is how to control his future

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zmeess:

digital fanart of Caleb Widogast and Essek Thelyss from critical role, cropped to only show their hands. Caleb's hand is drawn palm up, with nine imperfect white pearls lying in the center of it; Essek's left hand is cupping Caleb's from below, and his right is curled at the edge of Caleb's palm, as if he's just poured the pearls into his hand. the painting employs a limited palette of shades of teal, purple, and orange.ALT

for how much Caleb has changed Essek, i can never stop thinking about how much Essek has changed Caleb. Caleb looked at Essek and thought, this is a man whose knowledge i might be able to use to change my past. but when Caleb convinces him to share that knowledge, the first thing Essek teaches him is how to control his future

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and here are the progress shots for this picture!

i had a lot of notes on this one, but tumblr ate my draft and now i’m too angry with it to type the entire thing up again. the only thing i will mention:

as i was compiling the above image, i noticed that the final painting appeared quite a bit more saturated and high-contrast than the previous progress shot when put next to each other, even though i didn’t touch up or color correct it at all. i thought that some might be curious as to what the heck had happened, so here’s an explanation:

  1. i added an off-white vignette; the only other things in the painting that are as light as it are the highlights on the pearls and Essek’s rings and nails, and the vignette made them pop by providing a point of reference for the eye
  2. i added a brighter orange highlight to Caleb’s thumb and the lower part of his palm below it (a quick internet search has informed me that that part is called the thenar eminence, and i was like damn, good to know). the reason i did that is because that plane is almost perpendicular to the direction of the main light source, but the whole endeavor also had a nice little bonus in the form of brightening up the overall picture
  3. i added some small patches of shadow to Essek’s right hand that were a more saturated purple than the colors around it

these were very small additions, but imo they made a big difference in how the colors appear to the viewer. i find it awesome how sometimes you don’t need to color correct the whole picture to give it a more nuanced and impactful feel, because adding a few small contrasting elements (or similarly colored, depending on what you want to achieve) might be enough. the takeaway here is that color is always relative and heavily depends on the surroundings, which i honestly find very sexy of her