Category: Roleplaying

Not sure about these. I didn’t like the bark while I was doing it, but it is growing on me the longer I look at it. The others don’t look very convincing, but they didn’t on the videos we were watching either.

I am not drawing any icons today. I am just not feeling very creative. It is an early night and a good book sort of day today.

The reference hand used for this lesson looked like an artist’s hands, not sure what an artist’s hand looks like but that was one of them. My hand looks like Dorian Gray’s hand from the picture in the attic. Is it the evil looking oversized thumb? It could be.

The icons for today are Fancy and Teeth. The images are by Lorc and Delapouite.

My attempts today are disappointing. My understanding is improving. That monster skull, I think I could create that in a graphics programme, or even Word using basic shape tools. I can see the cheekbones as black ellipses over a white skull. That I understand. Drawing it freehand is another matter altogether.

One skull is scary, one is pathetically funny.

A donut was one of the first exercises. The point of today was taking stock of progress. I think I did this myself naturally over the past couple of days. I don’t think I could have done the game icons without having done the basic forms practice at the start of the month.

Today we have blade and rodent. Like yesterday, I am going to grab a couple of icons and then try and not copy, but draw them freehand. Blade is by Lorc and The Rat is by Delapouite.

I think the more geometric images are easier. The game icon rat looks quite cute, mine just looks angry 🙁

Today’s drawing lesson was trees. I created two trees, one is a Mark Kistler tree, the other was more cartoonish. I quite liked the end result of the soft pencil tree.

Today, I am going to try and draw a variation of the Bulk and Prey key words.

I am looking at Mr Bulky here and seeing a big ellipse around the arms. I think there are probably about 10 ellipses just above the waist. The feet are triangles, the legs are probably squares, and body is a something else, not sure what.

The way I am doing this is writing about it now. In a minute I will start drawing and upload it. I haven’t drawn this yet. It is as close to ‘live’ as I am going to get.

The next keyword was Prey. I picked an more predatory icon, because I can.

I tried to draw the predator claws without looking at the game icon. It didn’t quite work, did it?

(Both game icons here were created by Lorc, at game-icons.net)

I will start with today’s lesson. I really like cross contours. I get them, they make perfect sense. I may not be very good at them yet, but I get them.

And the other stuff

Anyone who reads this blog normally, knows that I never just have one thing going on at a time. So this is my train of thought. The ‘real’ #inktober has word prompts. When I saw it/them I thought I couldn’t possibly complete that. But now I have already suitably embarrassed myself with some terrible public drawing, there is no reason not to share other terrible drawing.

But, also…

When I wrote Trials for One, the solo rules for Index Card RPG, I really wanted to include some of the art by the writer, Hank. This is forbidden, Hank makes his money selling his art, so I totally get that.

In the ICRPG rules, there is this diagram for planning an adventure.

Which you take and add image prompts to to create the adventure, like this.

You will need to check the ICRPG core rules for the key to the numbers, but that is a great way of planning an adventure. It is pretty much a 5-Room Dungeon format.

When I wrote Trials for One, I couldn’t use the ICRPG art, so I used Game Icons in its place. So, my adventure plan ended up looking like this…

It works, don’t get me wrong, but it is not as stylish as Hank’s art.

I quite like the scribbly, sharpie drawn art style.

Continuing my train of thought. Those icons are pretty simplistic in style. Given my obvious talent level, even I should be able to create something like a game icon. If I could make my own, I wouldn’t be limited to the available game icons.

The first prompt in the #inktober list was Fish.

So, I went to game-icons.net and look for fish icons and got this one.

I don’t need two fish, so I thought I would try and draw one fish, and got this.

So technically, I have drawn the day one image of ‘fish’ for the real.

The second prompt was Wisp. My first thought was Fog, probably because of where I live.

There is a game icon for Fog.

Given my new and obviously profound understanding of art, what I am seeing here is a load of foreshortened squares all overlapping. I thought I could do that. I could also try out some of the other pencils.

So this is my #inktober Day 2 Wisp, being wisps of fog.

There is enough time for me to continue with the daily lessons, and at two a day, get the genuine inkober drawings done. What I am trying to practice is not so much realistic 3-d drawing but being spontaneous and actually creating stuff.

If I can create my own game-icon style images, and develop a house style, I really could use theses in a book. That was an impossible thought 15 days ago.

Mind you, it could be still impossible in two weeks time, but we will see.