Alex's Illustration Blog

@ ezombieart’s DTIYS of their tiefling!

Older drawings of some of my D&D characters! Lots of exploring costumes and poorly drawn swords lol.

The top one is Istli Firedancer, a level 15 yuan-ti pureblood artificer. She’s incredibly impulsive, always on the go, and an absolute genius when it comes to tinkering. 

The last two are of Piper Asterales, a firbolg forge cleric for a campaign that’s over now. The setting was part fantasy, part sci-fi, all post-apocalyptic. She grew up pre-apocalypse and was a blacksmith for her community, managed to engineer a mask that kept the plague at bay for herself, but failed to save any of her loved ones. She managed to retain the heart of gold as she ran into our party in one of the last standing cities, but her good nature gets strained as the party tries to survive on top of dealing with each other’s baggage.

Here’s my usual ~character design process~!

I start with the character description and lots of reference. I pulled a lot of runway looks for this since this character is sophisticated woman & wears robes with lots of jewelry. Anything goes at this stage--I grabbed lots of pieces that she might not necessarily wear, but had interesting design elements that could work.

Once I feel good about the reference I’ve gathered, I move to thumbnails. I do tons of costume thumbnails, focusing on different silhouettes, shape language, and value patterns. Thumbnails that don’t meet the character’s requirements (in this case, bare arms to show off the tattoos) get the axe. Any thumbnails that represent the character’s vibe the best get a second pass for detail. The client sees the best 3-5 of these and gives their feedback. I also sent a quick sketch of the pose I had in mind for approval.

My client was happy with #2, but preferred hairstyle #1 and had very little other feedback, so I got combined them and got to work drawing! The process is pretty straightforward from here on out: working in layers (hot tip: give each element, like the dress or jewelry, its own layer for easy selections later on), blocking in big shapes first, and then moving to detail. I also like to keep a layer on top of everything that’s pure black, set it to color, and turn it on and off as needed to check values! It’s a lot more accurate than a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. Here it helped me see how squished my values were. I used a couple curves layers to fix it before finishing the piece.

another character painting commission.... !!!

some more finished commissions + a portrait of an old D&D char i’m still fond of :3 first char belongs to @/flyonadog--it’s his Moon Elf Bladesinger!

hi y'all, i'm opening commissions!

please email ([email protected]) or DM me if you're interested. be sure to include descriptions or ref of your idea :) i'll let you know if i pick yours & give an expected turnaround time (typically 1-2 weeks).

here’s a collection of my work from senior portfolio/thesis!! it’s mostly my own IP stuff, not sure if I’ll continue working on it but it’s a fun world to explore and draw for. i also illustrated my own versions of some MTG cards, like Assassinate and Waylay.

have some paintings

second one is an underpainting for a master copy of the grape picker by bouguereau