Hey there---I have been hunting for your blog forever! A classmate of mine brought thumbnails of your work to a drawing session, and we have been obsessing over your people. I find the way you illustrate long noses and sort of androgynous-looking faces and big hands really refreshing, and your werewolf druid Vaara is super charming! They really make me want to know more about your campaign world.

I hope you don't mind sharing, but I was curious what software(s) you used for the comic you made, A Dream with Rain. Do you have any general tips for people trying to draw better? Sorry for bamboozling you with questions. Delighted again to have found your blog!

OOof thank you! ❤❤❤ This was a delightful message to get! So cool to know my art exists outside my own little circle (it's sometimes difficult to realize that there are actually so many people behind all the notes my art gets). And also an encouraging ask because I've been struggling with my art style a bit lately (feeling like finally slowly getting there and out of art block now tho). But one of my goals has been to use bolder shapes and lines (like larger features and other than snub noses), glad that you like them as well! And if you read my tags I do have many non-binary characters & I like to play around with masculine and feminine features anyway so ough it's cool that it shows through the art as well ❤ (And oh check out my sis/sibling's art blog @artist-rat as well, they also have a very funky style and draw so expressive faces!!)

This is getting long, so here's a quick doodle of Vaara for you and rest of the answers under the cut!

The campaign Vaara is in is still in the beginning, so I don't know yet either what's to come! My friend @iijadraws (who is the DM) knows more about the lore if you want to know (and if she will spill). So far Vaara's archdruid Aalis noticed something bad was happening to their forest in the north and south. Vaara's dear friend Kiilo gave Vaara a precious key/amulet for luck and went north, Vaara gave Kiilo their stone knife for protection and went south. After a day's travel, she found forest stripped of life, and an old empty stone hut/house. Then strange things started happening, like giant unrecognizable beast coming out of the forest and Vaara's own empty eyed doppelganger staring at them from the empty forest. Vaara freaked out, hid into the stone hut, was cornered, and used her now faintly glowing key to open a door within it. The door became portal, and led them to a mysterious house where they are now stranded with Knell (artist-rat's character). Vaara is still mostly freaking out and attempting to run back home (not happening).

Mmm I want to illustrate more scenes and ramble more about both of the DnDs I'm currently playing (Rhiam's and Vaara's). I have one Rhiam background info & illustration coming up and will hopefully get it posted tomorrow, and I'd like to do more of those for both of them!

THEN What software I used: I've been using Krita for years now and I really like it! It's free and constantly developing (there have been a couple of hiccups in the past, but I haven't had any issues with the latest versions). If you want to know more about some specific feature I used (like brushes, effects, settings in general) feel free to send me another ask/message!

And general art tips: "Practice" is kind of a old and empty answer, so, here's some bit more specific stuff I learned from my art teachers (keep in mind that my art education isn't university level, but I went to a really great upper secondary school (high school?) that had special emphasis on visual arts so it's something).

Try to avoid using eraser or blurring. Especially the latter. One of the first lessons our class learned was not to blur pencil lines with our fingers/paper when shading our works. It was forbidden and it caused outrage, but was really helpful in the end. Airbrush tools have their place, but learn to shade and mix colours without it first (add or lessen pressure, select in-between color manually, cross-hatching). Personally I’ve been really digging using really sharp edged brush to colour my works lately (for paintings I use softer tools, but sharp coloring works really well with my softer line art I think!)

Studies are a great way to improve whether it’s anatomy or colours. I had weekly classes with model for a couple of months back in school but now I’m mostly using images from Unsplash (they are free to use) for color and painting practice. If you want to improve fast, try to do many sketches as fast as you can: we started with 3 minute sketch and then lessened the time so that in the end we were doing 10 second sketches of the model. I think there are sites specifically for this purpose where images/models change with timer? Here big paper & pen/brush might also help (no time to dwell in details, get the overall shape).

Try different mediums and methods: before my art school, I mostly drew with a pencil on A4 or smaller paper, and my art was kind of faint, careful, full of little details, stiff. Then in school I was forced to use watercolours, and acrylic and oil paints, try digital art, use big canvases, sclupt things out of clay and whatnot. It gave me a better sense of how shapes and colours work, but also helped me get bolder with my art (that is still a process, but I developed a LOT). I had drawn my entire life before that but I was shy to change my art and methods. And I know materials can be expensive, but work with what you have. My teacher once made a still life composition out of cleaning cart and other random stuff and made us draw it on a really big paper with big chunky chalks that were taped on long sturdy sticks found from forest. Relatively cheap but forced to draw big shapes and use your entire body rather than just wrist. It looked kinda like this and it’s still one of my favourite classes:

Again, feel free to send ask about specific art (or other) things you'd like to know if any come to mind! And thanks again for the message! Have a great day/evening/whatever time you have there!