Le Dungeon de Art, Design & Cool Stuff

My kid nephew helped me pick out a subject for my assignment on the Clothed Female Figure in Ink: Shanoa, heroine of the RPG game, Castlevania Order of Ecclesia.

Rendering metals & glossy materials has always been a challenge to me in the past but after inking 2 Castlevania characters, who are often decked out in satin, leather & armor, I think I’m getting the hang of it.

Drawing fan art instead of drawing assignments. I am a bad-ass that way. Mwahahaha!

I saw a small corner panel by David Finch in Top Cow’s Ascension & thought it was a very good composition so I tried it out for myself. The scene is basically the same, but I changed the vanishing point & eye level so that the figure looks as if he’s heading towards the viewer instead of upwards.

The shaded parts will be covered in solid black ink so I did not bother to draw an outfit on him.

Horned demons are cool. That’s all I can say about this page off my sketchbook.

Medusa, the drawing project I’m currently working on. I think I’ll have to rearrange the snakes on her head as I ink - so they’d somehow seem to be moving WITH Medusa, not AGAINST her.

Loki was the son of the giants Farbauti (father) & Laufey (mother). He was not an Aesir, but he lived in Asgard after Odin had taken him in & made Loki Thor’s blood brother.

Loki was quite a sorcerer - he had the ability to transform himself into other beings, including animals.

His time with the Aesir did not seem to influence Loki with their high regard for honor & benevelonce. Loki was just not to be trusted! He was full of mischief & as time went on, he became more & more crafty & scheming. Because of this, Loki often got the gods at Asgard in trouble, though he could also make amends on some occasions & make right what he had done wrong.

Did you know, Loki was described as being quite handsome!

• Others in this series: Thor

An idea came to me just this afternoon… I’ll be taking shots of my drawing table every other week. I move my things around a lot and I work on new drawing projects one after another - I want to record it somehow. Here’s my first capture.

Loki’s looking great! I’m very satisfied with how he turned out. This would be the final sketch before inking.

I designed Loki’s costume & weapons, then built background effects around his figure.I’m trying out a tilted bird’s eye view to make the overall picture interesting & dynamic.

In Norse Mythology, we all know Loki as the instigator of discord; He’s always in the midst of chaos. Whenever I encounter the word “chaos”, an image of a full-blown storm & crashing waves almost immediately come to my mind. So, I illustrated Loki on a pillar, enveloped by raging waves of - not water, but active plasma!

In Norse Mythology, Thor was the son of Odin (the chief god) & Fjorgyn (Earth). He was known to be temperamental like the storm & the strongest among all the gods in Asgard.

Thor owned a magical hammer, Mjolnir. Mjolnir could hit any target, afterwhich, it returned to Thor’s right hand all by itself. His brother, Loki caused a disturbance at the dwarves’ dwellling as they forged the hammer, which is why it had a short handle.

Thor wore a pair of iron gauntlets, which allowed him to wield Mjolnir. He also wore a magical belt, which doubled his strength!

I modified all of Thor’s costume & accessories, except his magic belt (not limiting myself to how he was known in Norse mythology - thank you, creative license!):

• Mjolnir has an ornate design with a long handle - Come on! It’s the dwarves who forged the hammer. Since they were such brilliant craftsmen (i.e. Brisingamen) , I figured they’d come up with an elaborated design rather than a utilitarian one.
• Instead of a pair of gauntlets, I gave Thor an iron armband;
• Thor wears a dragon-hide cloak - In some Norse tales, his cloak was spun from Sif’s (his wife) golden hair.