fiammazzurra's art

oh ya and here’s this year’s artfight card ;)

morgan’s new ref sheet for artfight!!! I have tentatively signed on for team tragedy, and will be praying that I’m not dooming my active characters by doing so ✨

POV: you are about to die <3

i felt the need to make yet another party portrait, since morgan and co have finally retaken the wizard of the wines! it only took us, uhhh, checks notes, 20 fucking sessions to get around to it. sorry mr. martikov but it was critically important that we spend a week and a half yelling at each other and screwing around first 😭 (in our defense we got firmly derailed by our dinner at ravenloft and things spiraled a bit out of control….)

cacophonous shield is a great spell, you guys. 10/10 no notes, there is no power trip like running through two dozen twig blights smashing them to bits like a living lawnmower, the winery was one of THE most exciting and memorable fights from my first cos playthrough and i think it qualifies for top tier this time around too!

working on my first ref sheet update in vague anticipation of this year’s artfight! featuring cal morgan crane, in all her many outfit variants ✨

some minor details here: cal/morgan’s horns do actually grow a bit longer over the course of the campaign, you can spot that difference if you squint between her first and second designs. the growth is a reaction to her sudden increase in power, which drew out more of her fiendish heritage and caused a minor growth spurt. she’s kind of mad that she still didn’t get a tail out of the deal. she also has more green to her eyes—she’s always had a vivid neon green eyeshine, but as she gets stronger, the effect gets more visible and obvious, enough that by level 6-7 (latter 3 outfits) the green flash of her pupils is visible even in broad daylight from the right angles!

I’ve posted versions of this purple coat before, I’ve been wrestling with it for a while - I want this new design to feel like the character is self-actualizing, coming into her own as a hero and a leader, which means the design has to feel like her and I’ve struggled to hit that mark with the last couple versions. BUT I think this take might be the one! or at least closer than the last few. the full-length cloak from her ravenloft outfit gives her a sturdy, powerful silhouette, imposing in the right conditions, but I needed to add that gold inner lining to get it to click. this is one of those times where the secret sauce was putting the ipad in greyscale mode, because as it turns out, there was like ZERO value contrast between the purple coat and the blood red cloak liner, and turning it gold solved the problem instantly. it’s a fun bonus that the gold looks significantly less villainous!

this latest look invokes the heraldic shield I designed for morgan a few months ago, which I have recently updated with a slight change to the charges in the black section—

—in this version, I’ve removed the small charges from the bend sinister to make it cleaner, and instead of a moon under the bow in the black half we have these three droplets. the idea with those is to invoke/represent the idea of “blood sweat and tears” that undergirds morgan’s character—she is someone who has gotten to where she is only because of her work ethic and dedication and diligence, and every accolade in her name is one she’s earned after fighting tooth and nail for it. in the droplets on the coat, we have red and blue alternating, but the shield version sticks with red to keep the color scheme tighter.

new slash updated designs for the curse of strahd gang! this was originally an exercise in colors, and trying to make them look like a matched set—my previous designs had different palettes and they just didn’t feel connected to each other. I went off the rails when I made Morgan purple on impulse, but in my defense, she looks pretty… I also wanted to get Alden into the correct type of armor finally, I’ve been drawing the man in the default chain shirt from BG3 for months because that’s the ref image the player gave me, but he actually uses studded leather, and it’s been bothering me.

Morgan’s character arc continues to spiral, and I continue to try and show her growth as a person in her outfits. Morgan-as-Cal adopted her blue jacket after declaring herself party leader in Vallaki, because the blue jacket was a costume—she had no clue what she was doing, so she did the next best thing and played a role, mimicking the most heroic character she’d played on stage in a while to try and compensate. After dinner at Ravenloft and the ensuing party conflict, she started gaining a little more assertiveness and self esteem. She finally changed her name, and started wearing the jacket as more of a cape, turning it into something of her own and not just an imitation of someone else’s story! but she’s still been on emotionally shaky ground for a while—one step forward, two steps back, fighting tooth and nail for the party to actually treat her with the respect she’s tried to claim and butting heads with her allies’ ongoing refusal to fully take her seriously.

the current strahd party, as of session 33! i’ve been working at this painting for almost two weeks now and while i’m not 100% satisfied, i’m overall fairly happy with it <3 we have officially acquired our first tarokka objective (the holy symbol), probably halfway or more into the campaign, and i am hoping we’ll get another soon because cal-who-is-now-morgan has been gunning for the tome since day 1

strahdposting from this week, i’ve finally had the spoons to draw shitposts again and i love it ✨

another cool outfit for the gal!! in which we take the blue jacket and jazz it up a little, loosen the laces, have a bit of fun 💖

the red version is because she just looks really really good in red

a new doll for a new look!!! this post belongs on the art blog, this is art, lol. I got the itch to craft a second Cal amigurumi, since the first one was made in her original outfit (which was destroyed in-session like a week after I finished making the doll……) and I’ve since gotten a little better at designing and constructing these guys. I also decided to experiment with needle felting to add some small details, and I think it looks decent enough! Cal really isn’t herself without that pinkish flush around her eyes and eartips, it’s a fairly small detail but without it her face has a very different vibe. the work on the ears could be better, but this was the best I could achieve without stabbing my own finger, my felting mat is CHUNKY.

since I've been filling this blog with art from my current curse of strahd campaign, I figured I should repost some of my work from the OG too!!! so here's the party from my first playthrough, finished a couple years ago. the first drawing is from August 2021, and the second from January 2023... the gang went through a lot! and so did my art style! that finale portrait is still one of the best paintings I've ever done, in my own opinion, I am really proud of how it came out.

my character from this campaign was Zahde the Unbreaking, a redemption paladin of Ilmater doing her best to solve the Dread Domains through love and friendship and being nice to people for once. (...and maybe a teeeeeny bit of smiting...) she was my second-ever D&D character and I had a lot of stress while playing her, but I still love her character concept, and she had a nice arc <3