May 2024

digital fanart of Essek Thelyss from Critical Role, with only his head and hands fully rendered while the rest of his body is covered in nondescript dark clothes.

he is depicted as a young-looking slender drow, with light gray-purple skin, short wavy blond hair, periwinkle eyes and small pointed ears. he appears to be sitting down in an armchair, leaning his left elbow on the armrest and touching his lips with the fingers of his left hand, right hand resting on his knee. he is looking off-screen with an attentive expression and a soft amused smile.

the painting employs a limited palette of beige, mauve, dusty purple and light blue.ALT

a little study i did to try to depict Essek looking as realistic (within my style) as possible. you can tell i was serious by the fact that i blacked out his clothes so as not to get distracted from the task at hand /j

i encounter a few persistent issues when i draw Essek; it’s not only in him not being a real person that i can’t look at to then draw accurately as far as his facial features are concerned, but also in the fact that purple people don’t exist. i can’t study, from pictures or real life, how skin of that color would behave in different lighting, how the blood vessels would appear from underneath it, what shade the sebum would highlight the nose and forehead with, and on and on and on. i can only make an educated guess, and it takes a lot of mental math each time 🤭 so here i tried paying special attention to the realism of it all, to see if i’ll learn something! my art is somewhat (semi-)realistic as is, but there still is a fair amount of stylizing going on, and i wanted to have a bit of fun figuring out where it happens. so far noticed that i tend to exaggerate facial features and make them larger than they would probably be on a real person (noses and eyes in particular), and my art could benefit from more different hues when i’m doing skin, especially green.

very excited to try doing Caleb next \o/

detail!

a close-up of the above picture, showing Essek's face and hand.ALT

tip jar!