Deadnaiadd - Art and TTRPG stuff!

 2D toolkit- This year we did more life drawing which i found really beneficial to helping improve my overall gesture and anatomy skills, and i think the approach this year of trying new techniques like working with chalk, swapping hands, focusing on shapes and flow of gesture really helped me when i found myself stuck and unsure of how to improve. I actually found swapping my dominant hand to be a really useful exercise in not getting lost in the details and working more with the larger shapes and forms in a figure. I also did get some use out of working with chalk to identify values, but I don't think it is particularly a medium I would use again, mostly just because of the mess it makes. But i did take away a lot from life drawing this year and I think I've seen an overall improvement in my art because of it, even if just a little bit. We also looked at and improved new skills such as photobashing, tonal values, and new tricks to help with perspective. I thought that the ton...

Sketches - For the final session before we broke up for the summer, we took a trip to the Arboretum near the main NTU campus to do some life drawing and generally enjoy the nice weather. We were given a task to draw the cannons, a tree, some wildlife, and something manmade in our sketchbooks. Below i have included my sketches from this trip. I had a little trouble drawing the cannons, we were sat at a weird angle for the first one which made it look a little squat, and my tutor advised me for the second one to follow the rings of the cannon to figure out the angle at which i should have drawn the end. For the more organic shapes i think i did a little better, i tried to work quite quickly to capture their shapes which was definitely a challenge when trying to draw the squirrels. I also caught a quite cute moment of the birds preening one another's feathers, and i also managed to draw a little dog that i saw. On the last page of my sketchbook I drew some of my classmates stood by th...

 2D Toolkit - https://kennylycettgamesart.blogspot.com/2024/09/character-design.html https://kennylycettgamesart.blogspot.com/2024/10/practicing-perspective-tavern-task.html https://kennylycettgamesart.blogspot.com/2024/10/perspective-grids-in-photoshop.html https://kennylycettgamesart.blogspot.com/2024/10/anatomy-and-gesture-drawing.html https://kennylycettgamesart.blogspot.com/2024/10/anatomy.html https://kennylycettgamesart.blogspot.com/2024/10/personal-work-wip.html https://kennylycettgamesart.blogspot.com/2024/11/hands-recap.html https://kennylycettgamesart.blogspot.com/2024/11/observational-sketches-life-drawing.html https://kennylycettgamesart.blogspot.com/2024/11/photobashing-and-separating-values.html https://kennylycettgamesart.blogspot.com/2024/11/folds-and-gestural-work.html https://kennylycettgamesart.blogspot.com/2025/03/lineless-illustration.html https://kennylycettgamesart.blogspot.com/2025/03/analysing-compositions.html https://kennylycettgamesart.blogspot.com/2025...

On the second to last toolkit session of this year, we took a trip to the Bonington gallery to look at their Weird Hope Engines exhibit. Me and Francis went to the exhibit a few weeks ago but didn't get a full look at everything as the Zine fair was on. It was really inspiring to see the different displays relating to TTRPGs, i especially enjoyed the slide projector with images from  Gackling Moon   which left me feeling really inspired to draw things for my own project in a similar style. I think it was really interesting to see a more artistic approach to TTRPGs, stepping away from traditional D&D, I also saw some work from the creator of Mouth Brood, a zine I bought from the Zine fair a few months ago that explores a lot of body horror and biological themes.  Photograph from the Bonington Gallery website One of the tables in the exhibit was a table with a bunch of prompts on it which you roll to determine what your environment would be like, from there you cou...

 In this lesson we learnt how to rotate a cube in 1 point perspective by both 45 degrees and 22.5 degrees, this proves to be a very useful method to find new vanishing points for all objects in the new perspective. To do this, first draw your cube in one point perspective, then on the bottom face of your cube, find the center by connecting the diagonals, the from there, draw a line through the vertical and horizontal to split your cube into sections. Then, from the four lines [north, south, east, west] move one point either left or right and place a dot, once joined together, you should have a diamond shape. Repeating this step on the top, then joining the lines, gives you a 45 degree rotated cube in perspective. By doubling the cross sections, you can shift the cube 22.5 degrees. It is to note however that this process does reduce the size of the cube slightly. Personally i found this technique a little tricky to grasp at first but once i had a few tries i found it much easier to ...

Brief : During the Easter break, me and my friend Francis decided to put together a little mock brief of sorts to make our own Tabletop roleplaying game. This is something we have done in the past, however this project is a lot more formally set out, for me I requested to do this so that I can work on my skills of working with a client. I have done some commission work in the past but I've been really struggling to find clients as of late, and this also gives me the chance to work towards something i want to do in the future. This project [for now, we haven't fully settled on a name] is called Looks to Windward, and will be a colony building game in the same sort of vibe as the videogame Rimworld. As Francis is the one developing the mechanics of this game, He put together some information that i would need that explains what this project is about and what he would like from me as the concept artist and illustrator. Here is a general synopsis of what the game will be about and ...

 Clothing studies - This week we looked at some clothing studies from life, we did a 3 minute and a 5 minute pose drawing our classmates with a variety of props. Of my 3 subjects, i really like how i captured the pose in the 3 minute Nathan drawing, especially where the fabric falls over the leg that is lifted up slightly, I feel i could have done better to capture the jean material on Francis's trousers especially on the 3 minute one, and for Sean i was overall really happy with how i drew the folds of the jacket tied around his waist, but i think i could have done better at drawing his arms on the 5 minute pose as the bent arm looks a little shorter than the raised arm. Drawing from memory - For these two drawings, the aim was to draw the subject from the opposite side to where they were sitting, for example, we were sat on the side of Lydia where the phone was raised, we could not see the other side of her and so we had to fill in the gaps from memory. This task helps to strengt...

On Saturday the 22nd of March, me and my friend Francis attended the Critical Hits Zine fair in the Bonington gallery on the NTU campus. The exhibition included an artists alley of Zine and TTRPG writers, the Weird hope machines art exhibit, talks with people involved in the TTRPG industry and a small film showcase. As me and Francis are extremely passionate about TTRPGs this was such a cool event to attend to get to network and talk with people in this industry. On top of this, we brought along some of our own zines that we make under the HearthValley name, we were suggested by Sam to find an individual by the name of David Blandy who is quite an important figure attending the exhibition, Sam told us to give him some of our zines to have a look at and to make some good connections. I found this event not only really interesting and cool, but also very informative. We picked up some really vital information from people in this industry that has really inspired us to carry on making zin...