Synas (Hi-Res)

Synas, a Leonin Druid of the Circle of Stars (at least, in spirit), that I'm playing in Draeneth's campaign he's running with some other friends. c: I'm still figuring out some of his personality and such, but this quiet, somewhat awkward, older dude has traveled a long ways from home across Faerun, helping various communities and caravans as needed. With seemingly no destination in mind, using only a weathered star map and a set of cards to guide him, he's managed to find himself in Neverwinter, working for a Dwarf named Gundren Rockseeker alongside some other adventurers and mercenaries seeking work.

Partially inspired by Runar from FFXIV: Shadowbringers, partially a challenge to myself on playing a Druid without going too much into Wild Shape (a mechanic that has never felt like it really works -with- the class despite all the editions I've tried), and partially a challenge on painting another D&D character to the best of some of my abilities.

We'll be streaming it over on Draeneth's Twitch Channel - https://www.twitch.tv/draeneth/ - in the future. (He also is just a good dude in general, and is a chill streamer who just likes to share gameplay. You should check him out, and maybe throw something at his head when he's live.) Big thanks to Draeneth as well for commissioning me and allowing me to just... Sit and paint my guy and be paid for it. ; ; brb gonna cry a little just for that immense kindness

Thanks, ya'll! Enjoy.

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Weeeee more art!

As mentioned above, giant shoutout to Draeneth for letting me just sit and paint this guy and be paid for it. I wanted to get to it, but with the recent life changes with me and the husband, I figured I wouldn't be getting to this for a few weeks at best, maybe further. Chalked it up to being a project that might gather dust, instead. So it was incredibly kind of him to offer me some funds to be able to just sit and paint something for me. Of course, next is painting a D&D character of -his-, but I'm not going to complain about that. Especially with the design that he's shown me!

I'm very proud of this otherwise. It solidified that I think I've finally figured out a workflow from grayscale up to a finished piece, so no more jumping around trying to remember the order of things, or how to fix one thing or another. Can spend more time cleaning my sketch, and then just rendering, which is nice. Still need to work on my drawing part as a whole but. I would say, given how inconsistent my process has been in the past, this is a big jump forward for me. The only thing I think I wish I had nailed down as much is my brushwork. Still taking me a while to render things out, and with less texture and still a bit more muddy at times than I'd wish.

Things on the RL end outside of work haven't been too bad. Work actually accepted a short leave for the husband as of... Two? days ago, so we have a little more breathing room on him making any big decisions right away without doing proper research first. And, more importantly, health insurance works through that leave, aha. I thought we were going to have to be leaping into the unknown sooner rather than later, so even though it's only about a month-ish of extra time, that's still better than zero. I will take what we can get! Gives me some time to build up a bit more savings as well, get us a bit more buffer.

Outside of that, not much to say. Work work work. I should be back soon again with more to share, if things go well. Much love, ya'll. Thank you so much for the continued support. We really, really appreciate it. I know I say it every time but seriously, I can't understate it. Stay safe out there. Love you all.