#kroven

P  e  n  u  m  b  r  a  l

Super-late piece for Inktober - yeah, am aware that I’m posting late but...

a) I’m in the final year of a medical degree so didn’t line until 30th Oct and didn’t start my shading until near midnight on 31st Oct, and

b) I had to move accommodation and pack my scanner away for a while.

(bottom version is fully grayscale and the top version is still showing the slight blue-colouration from the imperfect black of the pen - which do you guys prefer?)

Anyway, ballpoint pen (said pen is featured in the photo of the image, felt like doing one of those pictures too since everyone is doing them these days and I felt like trying out this bandwagon - don’t think it quite works with my art, but oh well) drawing of Reiker.

For those of you unfamiliar with him or his kind - Reiker is a male Krovendrakk - my own species of partly alien vertebrate apex-predator, of the North-Germanic Kårstatt clan ( “clan” is equivalent to “subspecies/race” in Krovens). If you’re curious - see my deviantArt gallery folder for more details on Krovens (I also plan on re-doing the species reference before too long and have the base-sketches done, also am re-making the 3D Kroven sculpt in Sculptris).

Damn, I’m so rusty with ballpoints (URGH, SO MESSY), also I virtually never do black fur in ballpoint, or short fur - so this was a big challenge indeed and I wanted to try to make it work, for Reiker... I fell short, rather a LOT, but I guess I hopefully learned a bit while making this. And thankfully I saved the original sketch before I shaded him so I still have that - if anyone’s interested I can link you the sketch. 

I’ve always deeply associated Reiker with dark nights and stars rising over bleak mountains - and especially eclipses, as some of you may have noticed. So here, I had the idea to draw him with a kind of inverted parhelion behind him, but I decided to leave out the sun behind in the centre of the image as I didn’t want it to clutter the drawing in ballpoint, also a bit like Reiker himself is the “black sun” here...

Also pictured in rough, stylised form behind him is the Dawnspear - “his” mountain. I’ve seen Reiker himself much more clearly recently in terms of smaller details of his features, and actually I see more of Adolphus in him than before, if only subtly. Also I’ve drawn him with a slight ridge of longer fur just at the front of his chest here - something I didn’t see him with until that time I saw him when on the way back from Tromsdalstinden... so here he’s drawn a bit like in that moment, quite some way in the future. I know Diira had a fringe of fur here, though more pronounced in her case, also I think his pointy manubrium is usually still typically visible through it since it’s not as dense as his mane - just here he’s kinda backlit and the fur is moving a bit in the wind. I don’t know if maybe he develops this fur-ridge later in life, I wonder even if it’s some kind of delayed-development that takes a long time to surface because of his earlier life, or maybe he just appeared with it that once in that one vision. Eh...

Also finally have his scars pretty much down - old version was way too fine and cluttered, now the scars are simpler but also thicker and a bit more jagged/harsh in appearance. His face is also a lot deeper than previous drawings (but still narrow! Reiker has a “hatchet head” 8′D), finally his pointy chin is clearer too - and his high and rather arched cheekbones (prominent and sturdy but fairly flat from the front - unlike Adi’s wiiiide cheekbones).

Still not happy with a lot of how his face turned out here, but I blame my shading and ballpoint rustiness - but as said, at least I still have the original sketch.

Also toying with the idea of turning this into a coloured and more detailed digital drawing in future too...

“This is the dumbest idea you’ve ever had.”

Ok, so I may have mentioned to a few people that I’m re-making the 3D Krovendrakk sculpt from scratch. Because I’m an art-masochist apparently, ha...

But anyway, in accordance with the updates to the species’ anatomy and my improved understanding, the old model irked me A LOT. Even at these very early stages I can see a big difference with this one.

Muscle details are still very basic here esp. on the hindlegs - but the major muscle groups are at least blocked out. His head is already sculpted as in a previous post, here he really just needs feet, a tail, and more details on his body - though the basic shape is correct and done.

Partly posting this to prove I’m not 100% dead...

So, just a random tiny WIP... have done something this week but can’t submit it since it’s part of a group thingie and I need to wait for everyone to finish first...

Anyway, in the meantime, here, have a small update - decided this afternoon to make feet for my Kroven sculpt - these are still very basic and don’t have the details added yet, but anyway, basic paw shape is done. (still needs dewclaws but not adding his thumbs/rear dew claws until I get more done on his metacarpal/metatarsal region - otherwise that would screw stuff up most likely. XD

So, long story short - as I’ve been too braindead to paint lately, I have still been working on some things - the Kroven animations for one, but I’ve also kinda dropped back into Sculpting a bit with Sculptris. ^^ Have decided, amongst a few other thingies, to re-do my Kroven model afterall, the old one was just TOO outdated and inaccurate, plus as my first sculpt, I had no real idea what I was doing then. XD 

(I still don’t, but my flailing is at least somewhat more competent 8′D)

Anyway, whilst I haven’t re-made the full-body model (YET), I have re-sculpted the head pretty much, using the old one as a base (though I sculpted over so much of it that I almost may as well have started again from scratch :’D).

He doesn’t have ears yet - I took them off the old one since they were distracting and got in the way of re-sculpting the head, and it wouldn’t take much effort just to make a new set of ears. Also, I think this could be kinda useful to, to see without ears and get a clearer view of the headshape maybe. So yeah, given the updated anatomy drawings I’ve been doing lately, I figured now was as good a time as any to remake the face - neck still needs work and this isn’t 100% finished, but the head is pretty much accurate now (and actually has freakin’ facial muscles that are correct, unlike the old blobby rough sculpt which also had fail-proportions/balance... like way too much difference between the forehead depth and muzzle depth.) Also hopefully now the not-a-dog status will be clearer. XD

So have some WIPs of the new head, compared to the head of the old model... the full-body will be redone eventually as well. This is a fairly standard Kroven, not of a particular clan... sorta Rheinon-y with a hint of Renvor perhaps but good for facial structure example of the species in general. 

Time for another Krovendrakk gait animation! Well, another WIP at least - and a rough one at that. *for those unfamiliar with Krovens - my species, see the Kroven folder in my deviantArt gallery for more info. And NOPE, these guys are NOT canids - much as I like canids I don’t like Krovens being mistaken for them.*

This one gave me a fair bit of bother plus I didn’t have my tablet over the last few days and won’t have it for another week since I’m at home now. So had to do some of the last parts and tweaking etc. with a mouse - so not exactly the neatest. ^^’ Will clean up later anyway... and make the proportions more consistent and correct etc.

Still, here is the animation of right and left lead double-suspension rotary gallop - one of the faster gaits though in this case still not sprinting - that will come later - and is basically the same gait but faster and more extreme in extension and contraction.

Though even here when not sprinting fully, you can get an idea of the stride-length and ground-cover here, the legs may not be “swinging” that fast but you can follow the paws and stride going rather quickly indeed...

Ha, not going to be a big rant about that bastard or anything - at least not this time. And granted a lot of you guys may not know much about him at all. But anyway, this is more just a small physical thing about him that I’ve been thinking about lately...

Aaaaanyway, so, in Valke’s original drawings, he had one glowing blue biomechanical eye. I always saw him with something funny going on with the right eye - indeed in the very first time I saw him, I thought that the eye was missing and that he in fact wore a kind of leather eye-patch - but when it came to later drawings, I saw him with this vivid blue eye with metal around it, and, in the fashion of Krovens at the time having more odd and complex metallic parts, interpreted this as a glowing biomech eye.

Granted it looked cool, indeed I still think it DOES look cool - but in light of more recent understandings of Kroven metallic parts, it didn’t quite seem feasible anymore.

However, with some slight tweaking when I thought on it more, I came upon an explanation for his eye that makes complete sense and actually fits far better than before.

Rather than having a biomech eye, Valke exhibits the marble-eye gene (which can have variable penetrance) in his right eye, and also happens to be odd-eyed with the right eye being blue. So THIS odd-eyed colouration in combination with the marble-eye gene gives him the bright yellow-green left eye with the piercing, pupilless-looking bright blue right eye - which doesn’t glow anymore, haha, but sometimes looks a bit as if it does due to the reflective appearance and intense light blue colour. (the marble-eye mutation results in the cornea having a reflective protein that works something like a one-way mirror where the individual can see just fine, but those looking at the eye see the reflective surface as having no pupil).

This also makes a hell of a lot more sense too, because - REIKER is both odd-eyed AND exhibits marble-eye (albeit in both eyes), plus Valke’s father Azariel had the marble-eye gene (and Azariel’s brother, Adler, has it - which manifests partially in him in the form of reflective pale rims around each the edge of each iris). I thought before it was a bit odd if Valke didn’t exhibit the gene (not entirely sure of the inheritance pattern yet, whether recessive or dominant - or something else weird and unique to Krovens) but his father and his son did - so now that fits. Also fits even more with how Reiker’s blue right eye reminded Diira of his father... O.o

As for the rest, Krovens typically have symmetrical metallic parts but not always, so it’s perfectly possible for him to have scale-like metallic plates and deposits around his eyelid and socket region, but integrated with the skin and connective tissue rather than being biomech as before.