Daeron's Troll Cave

I started from a sketch, I saw a nice smiling reference and I thought it would be good for my boy. A friend then asked me to try doing the portrait in two styles.

So I started inking the sketch (expanded by a bit more of body) and put some flats, as I would usually do.

It looked pretty cute but my experience taught me that it is better when profile pic is looking directly at the viewer. As such, I took some changes in my second, more painterly approach. As you can see, I just coloured the sketch with overlay layer and started painting on top. Interestingly enough, I chose to work on a single layer (but copied to have checkpoints to go back to).

Having properly shaded the two, I have obtained these cuties. In a way, I like both and from what I have seen, people are divided.

As a perfectionist I am, I have looked closely into both. I like the texturing of the right one and its more lively colours but I also like the more orderly shape and powerful occlusion shading of the left. And so I tried overlapping the two.

Community Monster of the Month (March 2025, actually): Kraken

I have put this design challenge on hiatus due to quite stressful life but I may still like to do more pretty monsterboys once for a while.

For me he is number 1 meow meow, whatever Ego thinks. And I have to say that I like how Bluelock decided to present immaculate beauty. He is not cute but majestic. His silhouette is tall and graceful, decorated by beautiful long hair and heralded by his powerful, echoing voice. His dramatic posing is beautiful with no unnecessary innuendo. Lovely. I need more such men in media.