Literally Me And Husband @xx-k1tsun3-k1d-xx

I love the fantastic narratives Dorf Fort makes for us, this one in particular you could genuinely write into a story or rpg and it'd be a beloved character.

dwarf fortress fucks so hard. my current fort has an occasional patron who is an 86 year old owl lady named 'the frozen one' who spent the first couple of years just perching in trees and watching my dwarves. a two headed fire breathing ettin came to lay siege to the place before I had a proper military established, and while I was freaking out trying to lock doors she just. floated down and tore him in half. when I checked her inventory, all she had was a plain brown dress, socks, shoes, and a pair of gloves. she just ripped him down the middle like a phonebook with her bare talons.

later while checking out other visitors I discovered that almost every bard in the fortress had been her apprentice at some point. eventually she came inside to check out the taverns, and now she just sits around watching performances and getting into arguments about them, feeling nothing. I love her so much.

Thanks for replying! this is very useful and I'll try to convert the pen settings you use to one I can plug into Procreate at some point.

Yo! I love your drawing and colouring style and I humbly request to steal your brush settings and colour palettes please.

Answering this ask (with pictures!)

The program I use is IbisPaint X. I really like it because it's free, there are a lot of brushes that you need the full version for, but you can watch an ad to use them for a few hours. It's really good ^⁠_⁠^

I use the Felt Tip Pen (Hard) from sizes ranging from 4-7 depending on the canvas size and vibe

I get the breaks from just, breaking it. But I also sometimes go through and add them after, like if I use rulers.

The color pallet is my Octonauts colors + some other colors I commonly used in my art

Whenever I shade, I use a purple-blue on multiply with opacity at 20-30%, I use red (or blue if it's on blue or green) with an Air Brush around the edges, and highlight with yellow on add

Thanks for reading :⁠-⁠D

I really enjoyed making this and I hoped it helped someone out there (⁠✿⁠^⁠‿⁠^⁠)

Thanks for replying! I've always loved the way you can include so much personality and story into a single character image, it reminds me of the best examples in RPG books where they want to depict a character concept or a monster and they just nail it.

Yo! Whats one thing you love drawing and find hard to do, and one thing you hate drawing but can do easily?

Really great question!

I love designing characters and I never get tired of doing it, but it also never really gets easier. I agonize over every little detail, drawing and re-drawing things over and over and pulling up tons of reference images. A fully-inked and colored character usually takes me a whole workday. I'm generally pretty happy with the finished results but I never seem to get any quicker at it haha.

I don't know if there's anything I'm good at drawing that I also hate to draw. I find the act of drawing pleasurable in and of itself. I sometimes find it frustrating when I'm commissioned to do "generic" fantasy or sci-fi illustrations. Like something that's just a "knight" or just a "spaceman" and the client really doesn't want me to riff on the design. I chafe under those kinds of restraints. Not gonna post any example pics because I don't want to offend anyone but it happens lol. Most of my clients are great though and give me a pretty free rein!

Hope this answers your question. If you've got any other questions about art or how I draw or whatever, just send them my way!

Observers Guide to Kobolds #2

Art & Crafts, with Illustrations!

Fig 1:

Kobolds are a very kinestetic species; the sense of touch being very important to engage with their art & crafts. Colours are appreciated, but are not as important due to their poor eyesight. A lot of their wearable crafts also server dual function as a fidget toy; helping control the species natural high anxiety and energy when focus is desired.

Fig 2:

a) Statuary and self representation is mostly used in instructional art, and funeral markers. This piece is the latter, and a rare example of a hollow marker with a piece of the owners bones inside.

b) Assorted glass, gem and painted stone beads. Most kobolds will have at least a small collection of interesting small stones, and do not discern precious gems from common stones. As long as it catches the eye, it goes in the bag.

c) Decorated sling shot. Shot from slings will often be re-used if successful in their first conflict, and will be decorated with various iconography to convey their luck or battle prowess. This example depicts "bloody teeth" possibly depicting a kill.

Fig 3:

a) Common storage pot. Pottery is a well practiced skill in Kobold communitys, with labelling often being a primitive braille- allowing important vessels to be found even in the dark.

b) Drinking flute. Due to the misalignment of the top and bottom of this flute it seems that it was an early piece fault by the creator rather than an intentional design choice.

c) Eating plate/low bowl. Kobolds do not require cutlery, as their teeth and claws are often of utility enough during meals. plates and bowls will over time be worn down by a flurry of scratches, requiring new crockery to be made.

Back on the Beans Boys!

I love the soft textures on this, and the mix of warm tones and earthy ones.

I found this old study I forgot about saved on my phone. BEANS!

I got saffron ice cream!

What if when we were born we were each assigned a Wikipedia page like a social security number would that be fucked up or what

Love me some gulls!

Drew some gulls 🍟

My favourite thing about living on shitty Terf Island (tm) is all the shitty old men who look like boiled thumbs and throw their shitty beer cans everywhere every match day.

"Release Restraint: Level 1"

A "restrained" flesh-witch from the RPG Heart: The City Beneath. One of my favourite TTRPG's for both how its classes are all uniquely weird variants of common RPG classes and how the worldbuilding is dripping with origionality and flavour.

Also I tried a few visual abberation tricks with this one, hopefully to give it a more eldritch or mystical feeling.

Very correct!

To add to this, bandits could also be:

- desperate farmers during a bad harvest

- rebels funding their cause

- mercenaries between contracts

- soldiers on campaign, both ally and enemy

- noblemen’s thugs sending a message

- refugees who are completely out of options

Banditry in fantasy and fiction has unfortunately become a sort of shorthand for “low level humanoid enemies you don’t have to feel bad for killing” but it heartens me to see people investing creatively in their settings “bad guys” backstories.

An example of how bandits in fantasy are disconnected from the way real bandits worked is Marion du Faouët, a woman bandit from Brittany in the 18th century.

Bandits in a lot of fantasy are full time bandits. They have no other job, and usually live away from the rest of society.

Marion du Faouët, aside from being a highwaywoman, was a mercer, selling, selling fabrics & cloth.

Because yeah, turn out that there isn't a special group of people called criminals... there is no "criminal society VS honest society", the two are part of a whole.

And fantasy stories should work more on that : seasonal bandits that do crime when they can't do their job. Fishers who do some pirate stuff on the side. Thief guild member that have legitimate job on the side, not just cover.