Akiili Bem
2010/08/11
a character from the Thorns RPG
A 42 year-old helmswoman, with a compass eyepatch!
I started taking character requests for the Thorns RPG. One of the things I really like about this game is that it is racially diverse, not just in terms of in-game racial divisions, but in terms of the real-world ones as well. The players are really enthusiastic about having a diverse cast of characters and cultures. So when I decided to take requests in order to practice drawing, I was really pleased to have more than one request for a “non-white” character. On top of that,
This was really good for learning to do skin-tones in black-and-white mediums. Because most blank drawing paper is white, it is very simple matter to illustrate pale-skinned individuals using only grays, but the darker the skin tone gets the more difficult this becomes, particularly because pencil and/or charcoal strokes tend to overlap, causing unrealistic variations throughout the skin. For rough doodles this isn’t much of an issue, but when you want to do something more refined it becomes an obstacle you really need to think about. Naturally, art programs make this much simpler, because you can control the grays precisely.
Let’s not talk about the background, which I always forsake.
Done in Photoshop Elements 6.
