Amdall Gallery

My habits when it comes to artwork typically involve sporadic bursts of motivation. I often tackle one drawing at a time, spending a couple of hours on the project before I move on to something fresh. Sometimes though, I become so inspired about a topic that I work on multiple pieces concurrently or in succession. There are quite a few examples of this: The Fifth Element (Leeloo and Zorg), Stranger Things (Steve/Dustin/Robin and Hopper/Joyce), The Princess Bride (Fireswamp and Castle Walls), and even previously on the topic of The Witcher (Geralt/Vesemir, Geralt/Triss, Ciri fighting, and Ciri chatting).

Well, once again I am back at it regarding the Witcher, and have come up with another series related to this fantasy series. Previously, my drawings were based on the third video game. But this time, I’ve done a couple inspired by season two of the Netflix show. I won’t talk about the show itself in depth again, but you can read my post from last week if you want more on the show itself. Adding to my four previous drawing, this is now a six piece series, which is surely one of my highest totals (outside of family portraits)! I still may not even be done with this topic, because I haven’t yet drawn Yennifer of Vengerberg. Anya Chalotra’s performance in the show is excellent, particularly in the first season with her backstory. Definitely a character I’ve wanted to try to capture.

After finishing these related drawings, I came to a crossroads I’ve faced a fair number of times at this point. That is, do I share the artwork together in one post, or do I create separate posts for each one? It seems like a trivial matter, but it’s actually a very tough decision for me. On the one hand, it is definitely easier to just push both out together. And it makes sense – they are both ready to be shared and I can write on the topic in one self-contained area. For someone like me, who draws as a hobby in whatever free time I have, the efficiency of time spent is also a nice bonus. When I sketched some antagonists from the Dark Tower series, I followed this path of sharing the artwork all together in one write-up. Likewise when I tried to put together some rough versions of Warcraft characters.

More often though, I have split those drawings up into multiple posts. The big challenge here is simply coming up with something to write about that makes sense. If one post is about the show/movie/game itself, what in the world do I write about for the second one? Usually, I’ll dedicate the second post to any random tangents that comes to mind during the writing process (just like this post), or try to integrate another future idea if they can natural fit together. As you might have guessed, since I follow this path most often, in my mind the benefits usually make the extra work worth it. Some sections on my website are shuffled in random order, and I like having both drawings show up separately. If I combine them, only one drawing gets to be featured in the post thumbnail, so I have to pick a favorite, which is sometimes impossible. Or try to squish them both together in a header image, which doesn’t always look right.

I am to the point now where I have so many old posts, it’s fun for me to come across them and see where my head was at the time. I don’t want to deprive myself of another trip down memory lane later! Anyhow, you can see the path I took for this second Witcher post. So on to discussion of the second drawing, which I’ve shared above. With the first one, I went for something in my wheelhouse; the usual close perspective, upper torso view that allows for a decent amount of facial detail. For this drawing, I attempted something a bit different. I think side views are fun, so I tried to capture a conversation scene that wasn’t just straight ahead. For bonus points, I also decided to get some of the forest background into the piece.

Maybe I was inspired by whatever episode of the Joy of Painting I was watching at the time or something, but I also jumped into the scenery here. I’m still pretty weak when it comes to that aspect, but in relative terms, it’s not a bad effort. The trees do add something to the overall drawing, even though they don’t achieve any sense of realism. It makes the drawing a bit more interesting, which is nice.

With this Witcher drawing, I just wasn’t feeling the whole video recording process. I had recorded a video for the first one, and really wanted the freedom to move my head into frame. For finer details, I like getting my face close to the paper, which obviously doesn’t work for videos. So, I attempted to get back to my old progression .gif image process. I guess I need practice, because it didn’t turn out great; there are some significant color balance issues with my photography. Fortunately, putting the image file together is still fairly easy. But my camera skills have never been great, and I took some bad progression shots on this one. Maybe I need to finally invest in an actual camera, rather than always using my smartphone?

In terms of planning ahead, I have another “two drawing” series still on tap to share. I am also currently working on a larger portrait scene that I’m tentatively hoping to enter into an art show (although I’m not completely committed to doing it). This “possible art show” drawing also found me skipping the video process, which I want to talk about a bit more. So, more to come there. And now that I’ve put it into words that I’ve wanted to do a Yennifer portrait, I feel like that is something tugging at me too. In fact, this morning I found myself combining through the Netflix Witcher series again looking for ideas. I wonder which of these projects is going to jump to the head of the line!