Another page drawn while amazingly sick. I like how drawing requires basically none of my higher thinking powers, so as long as I can sit in a chair without collapsing I can draw with only a slight decline in my (meager) abilities.

Oh, and three cheers for Photoshop textures available for free on the Internet. Though I worry I might be going overboard, I’m continually dissatisfied with my attempts to produce background effects with just my brushes and Photoshop tricks.

Also, large-scale architecture is still my nemesis. Of course, I have many mortal foes in my art. And now I can include water effects on that list! Seriously, I have no idea how to draw water.

Drew this page while sick, so I hope it’s not just a confused smear of clashing colors.

I wonder if those blood grooves were always for blood, or if they moved chicken gravy around before Yamra took over the place. Actually, did Yamra originally…let me check the notes…no, the structure itself is from before Yamra’s conquest of this part of Vasgol. So yes, almost certainly a hijacked chicken gravy transport system.

Creating dust and a general look of wear-and-tear on structures is surprisingly tricky.

I was worried for a while there since my buffer was really getting low, but I’m building things back up again. More talking on this page, but at least I got to draw someone flying out of a window….I hope it’s obvious that’s what’s happening in the last panel.

It’s funny what sorts of silly tricks I find in the course of learning to draw, like how I can make glass gleam by adding a fuzzy “shadow” that’s white instead of black.

Yeah, lots of talking on this page. Mbako likes to talk. Makes sense; you’re cooped up with nothing but an alchemy lab and a couple of weird purple guys with big claws and floaty masks, you’d want to chat too.

I’m still having fun with different types of shading and with the tints.

So, Cultivation seems pretty useful. While anyone can make Vish go “splat,” the trick is catching him.

I continue to mess around with the color effects. These look better: the sky itself began with a green tinge instead of a gray winter color, giving everything a sickly hue.

Also: I’ve discovered how to make curved word balloon tails that don’t look all shaky, so I’m going to try less hand-drawn word balloons, since man, those things are ugly. Rejoice!

And here we get a glimmering of Maresh’s odd theology. You’ll be getting more of that crammed down your throat over the course of the comic.

Green!

Again I tried for a fuzzier shading brush, and again I have no idea how to make everything look green. But this page turned out okay: the first panel looks good, and Anthem’s face looks right, though I’m not happy with the way I expressed energy and movement in the last two panels.

Ah, now I can finally throw out that sketch of the Forgers of Pain I drew on a cocktail napkin. That thing was getting all sticky.

So this page was needlessly complicated. Just so you know, that “standard Yamra statuary” look that clutters up Barabbon’s cave and a few other places takes forever to draw, as does Yiggish armor. Put the two together and coloring–which normally goes quickly–takes two or three times as long.

Just spent two days painting ceilings and my hands feel like they owed a pimp money. Glad I had a page with three black panels.

I’ve discovered I really don’t like drawing Vish. He’s usually small in a panel, so I think I can get lazy drawing him, but I really can’t. Glad to get a shot from above, though; this chunk of comic has had way too many basic shots, and I need to mix it up so I can actually learn something.

Not perfectly happy with the comet’s “greening” of the scene, but I think to make the weird green light look really good, I’d have to change the whole color palette or mess around with dodge tools or something else I don’t have much talent with.