Dillerkind's Image Pool - Next Chapter

[Dillerkind]

A random girl...

[Dillerkind]

Small and simple piece...

[Dillerkind]

Next one... a shaman on a flying piece of rock.

[Moini]

He seems to have a lot of psi powers ;-)

[Dillerkind]

Yes, I would think so. Years and years of meditating have lead to a massive increase in cranial capacity, which is probably where all the power is stored ;D

[Dillerkind]

Skeleton thingie...

[Dillerkind]

Yay for floating hair... oh, and girls with blades of course!

[brynn]

Yay for floating hair...

Yeah, yay!

Sigh, I wish I could be a real artist.  That floating hair is really inspiring!  While this girl's hair seems quite thin (or maybe it's just cut short in a lot of places) I'm imagining an image which is a face, and very, very thick, floating, curling, red/auburn hair, which fills almost the whole image, except for the face, almost like the face floating in an ocean of hair.

Also your skill for creating different kinds of characters and facial expressions is super inspiring!  So many artists, it seems like they get stuck, and always the portraits they draw look like either the same person every time, or the subjects are all from the same family, and look a lot alike (like a lot of alliteration).  But your range is amazing!

Great work, as always 

[Dillerkind]

Thank you! Her hair is... well.. *cough* styled individually. It's short on top, except for that bit that covers the forehead, the sides are partly shaved and then there are the thin, twirly braids. A professional hairstylist might get nightmares from this.. I don't know :D

The other point you mentioned... Some people stick to a certain format, e.g. portraits or busts. Many create OCs (original characters) and then go on drawing these in all sorts of situations. For some reason I can't do that. I've tried time and time again to come up with a character design that I like and want to keep drawing, like in a comic or something. But so far I've had little success. Therefore I have to come up with different characters every time. However, even though I rarely draw the exact same character more than once, there are certain subjects that pop up quite regularly. I think there's a lot of room for improvement in the variety department. On the other hand, as long as I'm not getting bored I guess all is well ^^;

Btw what makes a person "a real artist"?

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Speaking of variety... here's something new. Angry Beards - viking raid from above. Take cover! :D

[Moini]

He's mighty angry! (and I think he's also had some mead before onboarding his flying dragon boat ;-))

What's that thing on his left wrist, Dillerkind?

[Dillerkind]

Mighty angry, yeah you might say so. Gotta have your berserker mode on when doing this sort of freefall raid ;) As for the mead, I'm afraid that's true too. Normally I'd say he's old and reasonable enough to not drink and driv.... erm fly. But then again I guess the old vikings weren't known as the most reasonable people in history.

That thing on his wrist is just some piece of metal. I like to add such plates randomly, on hats/helmets, body armor, with or without stuff engraved (Naruto headband style :D)

[Moini]

LOL :-) You should visit Haithabu sometime, if you ever come to Schleswig-Holstein ;-) (wth is Naruto...?)

[k-drive]

First time looking at this thread.
Wow! Really nice stuff!
I am going to look at the blog, too.

[Dillerkind]

Moini
Do you live in S-H? Thanks for the tip; I don't know if I'll get there anytime soon (I rarely get out of my village :D) but I shall keep this in mind.

Naruto is a popular anime series about ninjas.

k-drive
Thank you! Hope you'll enjoy future works as well.

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And here's the latest piece. Back to my classic girl-with-sword subject.

[Moini]

Wow. this one is so detailed! The stripes on the cuff, the 'pattern' on the vest, the tiny spiky bits of leather on the handle of the sword, the scratches on the leather, the folds, the depth of field. Amazing! (and it looks as if she'd be very fast with her sword... ;-) ).

Yes, I live in S-H, near Kiel (but haven't visited Haithabu / Hedeby for quite some time - I think they've built a small village for reenactment outside since I've last been there. Oh, they've got an Easter market...! If it doesn't rain, then perhaps... But, oh, their exhibition is closed until next year :-/)

[brynn]

Is that the first girl with tattoo?  Or is that henna (which I know is usually on the hands or arms, but the reddish brown color makes me wonder)?

Oh, I almost missed the scar on eyebrow!  Tough customer 

[Dillerkind]

Moini
Thank you. I wanted to try a padded look on the vest to add some detail and break up the large uni-colored shape. Normally I would just use Inkscape's onboard patterns but here I wanted to do something manual (though I did use the wavy pattern on the blue cloth). Far from perfect but for a first attempt I'm happy enough with the result. Only problem is that it can be very time-consuming to add details manually (without using bitmap elements/textures) and with a mouse :D

brynn
I like to add little scars, scratches and other such things. They can help make things look less clean and sterile, which I feel is both a strength and a problem of vector graphics. Tattoos, no it's not the first one. I've drawn tattooed characters before and I often stick to this formula: simple shapes and lines, non-symmetrical design, red or pink color. In real life tattoos I think a combination of red and black looks great but in my drawings I usually go with red only. The ones I draw aren't complex and detailed enough to add a second color ^^

Here's one example. There are more in my blog but most of them are older pencil drawings (in the 2009/10 gallery) and some contain nudity. Surprisingly I haven't done that many vector pieces with tattoos.

[Dillerkind]

Here's a new one...

[Dillerkind]

A fashionable little bird... A plain version without the clothes is in the linked blog post.

[Moini]

I think I'd have liked to have a teacher who would do something like this with the kids

[brynn]

Winged train conductor, or engineer?  The hat reminds me of a train engineer's cap, but the watch would be more reminiscent of the conductor.  Maybe the switchman would have both?

[Dillerkind]

Moini
I think the kids would like to have the image, too. But they'd rather just copy it from me than make it themselves. I've had more than one moment when a conversation with them reminded me of the famous instant-masterpiece-button. You press it and there's the super duper artwork, no sweat, no effort, no nothing :D

An update to my small rant in the blog post: there are a few kids left who actually didn't quit and still want to go on with the workshop. They just didn't bother to let me know that they couldn't take part in the last few sessions which led me to the conclusion that they had given up. The same ol' evil: a lack of communication between people ;)

brynn
I never thought of anything like that. Years ago a friend gave me a book with works by some graffiti artist (http://www.wonabc.com/). The guy does lots of characters, rather than letters/styles, which of course appealed to me. Many of his characters wore caps/hats like this. This has influenced me and hasn't gone away since. The entire hip hop culture (music, graffiti, etc) has had quite an impact on my style as well as the subjects of my drawings.

[Moini]

Hey, that's cool (well, lack of communication is not so cool, but going on with a fun activity that might give them some skills to express themselves is )

[brynn]

Yeah, hip-hop culture is outside my realm of experience.  Obviously, I can't recognize when it's right in front of me.

Kids are often more interested in social interaction than learning.  Teaching can be very frustrating that way.  But as the old teachers' mantra goes, something like 'if we can reach/teach just one child, our effort has not been wasted - some day that child might be the one candle in the darkness, and one light is all it takes to push back the darkness'.

[Dillerkind]

brynn, don't sweat it. He doesn't look very hip-hop-ish in general, what with the sleeveless vest, wristwatch, the beard and everything. I was just explaining where I'm coming from.

I like that mantra. I have strong doubts if one of my kids is going to be that one light (in terms of creating artworks, digital or otherwise) or that I'll be able to make them shine but it's a nice thought nonetheless. We'll see :)