Because February wasn’t hectic enough to start with, you know. That’s why I figured I’d do this thing. Like with Inktober, the idea was to make art every day of February, sticking to the fandoms you love.

In the end, I failed to draw every day, but at least I had fun making those artworks that I did.

I’m planning to finish making odes to other fandoms I love, I just don’t know when. Will keep you updated either way. 🙂 There’s still a Snape portrait in the back of my head, and a Princess Leia, plus a few others.

Anyway, about the artworks I DID complete. Some of them spanned over a few days, particularly the portraits of Solas and Varric from Dragon Age. Varric took the most effort, and is also the piece I’m proudest of. I’d like to make similar artworks of some of the other Dragon Age characters’ profiles, and frame them for the space above my screen. Someday. My current setup doesn’t allow for this kind of thing. 🙂

And as a side note, you can no doubt tell from the wobbled edges of the images, I didn’t stretch a single paper before painting. Guess who’ll be ironing these at some stage. 🙂

My first painting was of Frodo Baggins, since it’s the fandom that had me squealing at the youngest age. Wait, that’s probably not accurate. I was a massive geek of the Arthurian legend long before I’d ever heard of LOTR and the first real fantasy I’d ever read was the Merlin trilogy by Mary Stewart. Still, I think LOTR impacted me more and remains my favourite story with the fondest memories.

I was also SUPER in love with Elijah Wood as a teen. 😀 There are two photos of Frodo in that pose, one where he looks at the camera and this one, where he stares at the ring. When I started out drawing, I must have sketched the photo where he looks at the camera around fourteen times. I could not get it right. I was about fifteen at the time, and I specifically remember getting the closest likeness of him yet, when – hands grey with lead – I ripped the page with a too sharp pencil. I cried, as you can imagine, but started again immediately.

This painting of him, fifteen years later, was almost an exercise of muscle memory. I smiled throughout the process of sketching him out and I’m especially happy the paper held out this time.

The second drawing was of the twelfth Doctor, Peter Capaldi. I’ve mentioned before that this guy has become my favourite Doctor during his run, and I was so sad to hear he’s leaving. I can’t wait for the new season of Doctor Who, but I’m also dreading it in a way. I seriously hope they get another great actor to play my favourite lunatic in a box.

As I recall, this was done with 4H, 2H and B pencils and I spent the least time on this sketch. I’m not thrilled with his eyes, but meh. I’ll do a painting of him sometime.

The next four days were dedicated to Varric – my favourite character of all time, besides Sam Gamgee. I used watercolour pencils on him, so it was a process of drawing him out, painting the first round, drying and reapplying colour for vibrance. I shared some of these steps on Instagram, if you want to see that. I really wanted to show his storyteller side in some way, hence the flying papers. Let’s call it the lost draft of his love story about Hawke and Fenris – lots of sweeping off feet in these pages.

Since I’d spent so much time on the V, I wanted my next painting to be quicker. So, Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock was a more experimental kind of painting. I loved playing with dark greens and blues for his coat (the photo does this no justice) and the speckling of his hair was really soothing.

I think I missed a day of two of art-making between Sherlock and Yoda. Let me tell you something about Yoda – he’s epic, even in his wrinklyness. I hadn’t planned on getting so swept up in this portrait of him, and I’m not totally convinced he’s finished. I might amp up some of the details, especially his lightsaber, because the hilt kind of gets lost in his hand. Though this admittedly looks better in real life than on the photo, but still.

Many other little details got lost in the photo too (all of the artworks, really). My lighting doesn’t work for this kind of thing, and I apologise. I’ll have all of these scanned at some point, hopefully the details will translate better then.

My last sketch was of the egg himself, Solas from Dragon Age. This portrait used a full range of pencils, and took three days to complete. People on tumblr have commented on the similarities between Benedict Cumberbatch and Solas before, but I’d never seen the truth until looking at so many reference photos of the two in such short succession. Folks, BC could well become Solas if he lost the hair and dressed in an ugly, colourless sweater.

Again, the lighting makes him disappear on the page, but IRL it’s better.

I’m definitely doing a painting of Solas again, as I said, I want to do some profiles for my wall. I’ll share them as they take shape.

Hope you have a good weekend. Thanks for stopping by.

Yolandie.