Flare's artwork

[Flare]

Thanks Howl! 4's hair was fun to draw.
As far as what the character does, he's unfortunately stuck in a room all the time; by stuck, I mean physically unable to leave it. However he's able to 'leave' mentally, by a connection he has with several others, and can experience the world as if he was physically there through others.
So he's like a homebody but a serious one.

 

[Mayo Master]

I like style #1, personally - although I'm not sure if that really matches what you want to convey with his story. Is he 'stuck' by his own will (or a physical condition?), or is he kept there?

 

[Flare]

Thanks Mayo!
He put himself in the room by his own will, for two reasons; so he doesn't lose 'himself', and to try and lift a curse on his race.

He's a lonely guy, and wants to be with people, but he also has a lot of anger inside of him for something that happened in the past.
I just always have trouble it seems designing hairstyles.

 

[Keveh Kins]

#2 Reminds me of Balthier from FFXII

But I'm drawn more to #3 because it's long (and I'm totally not projecting my wish to have my long hair back on to your work here >___>) and looks like the way a 15-18 year old would style their hair. Makes him look more teenage/young adultish

 

[Mayo Master]

Thanks Mayo!
He put himself in the room by his own will, for two reasons; so he doesn't lose 'himself', and to try and lift a curse on his race.

He's a lonely guy, and wants to be with people, but he also has a lot of anger inside of him for something that happened in the past.
I just always have trouble it seems designing hairstyles.

With that background, I'm not sure #1 suits him then. I would think that a loner who has some anger inside of him would have somewhat of an unkempt hairstyle. I think Something along the lines of #3 - maybe slightly more scruffy - would fit, I find this style a bit more "aggressive" which would convey the "hidden-anger" side of him.

 

[Flare]

#2 Reminds me of Balthier from FFXII

But I'm drawn more to #3 because it's long (and I'm totally not projecting my wish to have my long hair back on to your work here >___>) and looks like the way a 15-18 year old would style their hair. Makes him look more teenage/young adultish

Thanks Keveh~
I totally didn't realize the Balthier look-alike. I enjoyed drawing that one though.
I see what you mean about #3; it does make him look younger. Thank you for your advice/opinion!

With that background, I'm not sure #1 suits him then. I would think that a loner who has some anger inside of him would have somewhat of an unkempt hairstyle. I think Something along the lines of #3 - maybe slightly more scruffy - would fit, I find this style a bit more "aggressive" which would convey the "hidden-anger" side of him.

And wow, I didn't even think of his personality playing a part of his hairstyle, but you're right, it would. I think that'll help me a lot when it comes to designing other character's hairstyles from now on, so thanks a lot.

So that's two votes for #3; yay! Thanks for responding guys, it's really helping me out. <3 Anyone else, feel free to add to it!

 

[Starling]

Your art is lovely. Some of this reminds of things I've drawn, but better quality. I really like 1 and 3 but think 2 or 4 might be better suited for the character. I should start drawing more and see if I can get my old tablet working, now that I actually have some idea of how to use photoshop for drawing. I don't know where the software disk is though.

 

[Flare]

Aw, thank you Starling! And thanks for the vote on the hairstyles; I think I can eliminate a couple from the selection now.
And if drawing sounds fun to do for you again, you should definitely do it again! I love being creative on a lot of stuff; life wouldn't really be worth living if I couldn't create.

 

[Flare]

This is an octopus keychain I made for my coworker's friend a few months ago; it's the most difficult keychain I've made so far. It has a very sturdy armature inside of it made with wire and foil, yet I heard a week later that she had somehow broke the chain off the octopus.... she says she's very rough with her stuff.
I feel kind of bad, because I'm selling these things, and I don't want to sell items that can break easily and affect my reputation. I'm trying to find more ways to make my keychains sturdier and better. Of course, if someone&#8217;s rough with them, then I can&#8217;t really help that.

 

[trash panda]

^ I've never worked with clay, but I have some reservations about it because it seems so breakable. I have an idea though...

You can make your figures from clay, then make molds of them with liquid silicone. (That way you'll only ever have to make one clay girraffe, one clay dog, etc)
THEN make your figures by pouring resin or enamel into the molds...

I'm going to try working with resin in the next week or so just to test out how sturdy it is. To my understanding, both resin and enamel are quite durable as far as keychains go.



EDIT: I'm purchasing some enamel paints too. I'll be using both resin and enamel to make small keychains. I have every intention of doing a durability test (dropping them onto pavement, etc). I'll let you know how that turns out.



EDIT EDIT: I recently (like a year ago) purchased some Pebeo Fantasy Prisme/Moon paints and I think you'd LOVE them.

They do this all by themselves.

 

[Starling]

You think clay is breakable? When I took an art class, we had to mix sand and plaster into a cut up milk container in order to make the blocks were were going to sculpt. One wrong move and half of it would fall apart. I had a really neat wax sculpture, though I made it with my bare hands so it had a lot of fingerprints on it.

There's this show called face-off that goes into the process people use to make costumes, which they have 3 days to make for a given challenge. Then, the judges give pretty detailed explanations on why the costume is good or bad. Since sculpting can be involved in costume making as well, it could probably give you ideas on stuff to try out.

 

[Flare]

Thanks Howl for the tips! That paint looks awesome, I just have to be sure it wouldn't negatively affect polymer clay (the kind I use), as usually only water based stuff works on that kind of clay. But I read on a blog that it seemed to work just fine, so I might be picking some up for myself soon.

As far as molds go, I've considered that too, but haven't tried it yet because I really like the fact that my clay stuff is all one of a kind. Like all those giraffes were all different, no two were the same. It does take a lot more time and clay, of course, but... Call me silly, I think it's cool.

Well, the brand I use is pretty durable for clay, actually, but I guess it can really depend on the sort of impact. My mom has a turtle keychain I made for her, and she got it stuck in her car door one day, pulled it out, and it flew onto the cement floor of the garage.... Yet the clay turtle was just fine, the only thing that happened was the chain ripped out. Go figure, eh?
But I've had other things break before from dropping onto hard surfaces, so it really depends on the shape of the sculpture and how many fragile parts are in it versus how well I made the armature, I think.

I know there's better ways to make it more durable, I just have to test out more ideas.

Oh, and Howl, there's some air-dry clay I've been looking into recently, that's actually flexible and hard to break once it's dry. I'm very curious about it, I guess you have to order it from Japan? I kind of want to try some.

And Starling, that sounds like it must've been a pain to build with. XD Using this clay is fun, because it's very flexible before baking but becomes hard afterwards, and fairly durable. Oh, I'll definitely have to check out that show! I'd watch tutorials online, but my internet space isn't limitless, so I have to be careful on how much I watch.

 

[trash panda]

Drat....my friend just recently visited from Africa and while she was here she made a sculpture with this odd air-dry clay just like the one you mentioned. Of course that was 7 months ago and I had no interest in clay at the time so I didn't ask.

I did find this on DickBlick:
http://www.dickblick.com/products/activa-la-doll-satin-smooth-air-dry-clay/

I just checked the pricing on the Pebeo paints and they're a little too pricey for my liking right now. I think they're still worth it for small-scale projects though.

It seems like you already make your clay things quite sturdy (don't you put wiring inside of them?)

 

[Flare]

For that air-dry clay I mentioned, here's a really good review on a few different types of it by a woman who makes clay food: http://pinkpandacraftshop.blogspot.com/2013/04/japanese-resin-air-dry-clay-review.html

And here's a woman's gallery on DeviantArt, where she uses this kind of clay to make this super-realistic flower jewelry: http://vakhara.deviantart.com/

In case you're curious/interested. I hear air-dry clay shrinks a little as it dries though. And thanks for the link, that stuff sounds pretty good too!

I'll see of Michael's has some of that paint and check their prices if they do.

I do make them all with wire and aluminum foil for the armature, except the mini charms; they're so small I don't need to bulk them out, so I instead use an eyepin and bits of wire to help support the insides of the clay and limbs and whatnot.

It really depends too on how small and fragile a piece is. Like during my street fair, a woman came by and picked up my display with all the mini giraffes in it and they all tumbled out before I could stop her; one of them broke off a little horn numb because it hit the table and fell onto the cement below. So I now know to attach the horn nubs with wire next time, but the ears are also super-tiny and thin, and I'm worried about how breakable those are.
I think I just need to use wire on all the small pieces to help keep them attached.

 

[Starling]

Flare, it really was a pain. I had to buy hard sculpture tools and lost over half the block first try, so I had to make another one, which set me back 2-3 days. We were expected to give our sculptures a secondary purpose so mine was meant to be a bookholder. I never actually us it that way because after the whole ordeal, I didn't really trust it not to break if it had to support the weight of even 1 decently sized book. I also never painted it so it was this ugly, unfinished grainy off-white thing that just hung out on a shelf. I'd rather look at my cu-tip black and pink daffodil from when I was 7 or something, which is still hanging in my mom's room. My brother broke it in a fit of rage a couple years ago so I can't really take a picture to show it. I wasn't too upset with the loss of that particular work but he also mangled the wax sculpture I actually liked, plus there's the basic principle of messing with my stuff. I still have a picture of that one though, seen

Spoiler: here.

We were shown a bunch of surreal paintings, given a bunch of materials and told to make a sculpture adopting traits from what we were shown. I wasn't too happy with the thematic constraints but I ended up going with the spindly legs that seemed to be a recurring thing in what we were shown. I didn't have enough wax to really blur out the blockiness of the wooden base, unfortunately.

From what I remember, the front and back legs are a single wire with the ends curving into Us for the hooves and looping around the base before becoming the other leg. The head was made with either 2 or 4 wires, 2 intertwining for a sturdier neck, passing other the leg loops and splitting into the two tails, which was a spur of the moment decision I made instead of twisting the wires all the way for a single tail, which I would've shaped differently.

The nose is the end point for at least 2 of the wires, though I forget if the others had their ends at the ears or neck. I filled part of the head in rather than leaving it completely hollow when I was putting wax over the frame. The eyes are small cut pieces of wire I pressed into a circle using pliers before sticking onto the head, so they're the only pieces of wire that aren't actually part of the frame. The legs started out all touching the ground properly but something about the wax kept making them slip id they weren't stuck to the surface they were on I never had a base to put them on so all I could really to was pick hard surfaces in consistently cool areas where it's be alright for a while.

 

[Atticus]

Wow that turtle sculpture is so lifelike. I thought it was a real turtle at first. And same with the octopuses. And your pencil work is really good too. You have quite a talent!

 

[Flare]

Thank you Atticus! I really appreciate that~

 

[Flare]

My recent mini charms I did for commissions. Love these ones sooo much! <3

Spoiler: Elephant

Spoiler: Loggerhead sea turtle

Spoiler: Belgian Horse

Spoiler: Size chart

Painting the horse and turtle was a lot of fun; my favorite is doing all the tiny details.

 

[Flare]

Just got through Golmore Jungle last night in XII, and so after I turned off the game, I had an urge to do a sketch of the Hellhounds in there. I really like their design, probably one of my favorite wolf designs from the game; all glowy and transparent and wicked looking. XD I could only find their concept art and bestiary entry pics online, so I did my best sketching it out with those references. Tried to make this one look like he was in the dark jungle.

It's a speedpaint! The first true speedpaint I can ever say I've done! Took me an hour to do this; I feel like I'm getting better at using layers and colors, this was fun and I learned some stuff.

 

[RedFFWolf]

^That Hellhound is unreal!

I love seeing creations like these; it's not often a seemingly arbitrary creature gets attention. And with a design like that, it definitely deserved some love - one, indeed, that you've captured so well!

I see a FB link - a fresh new like is coming your way
(And an hour is all it took?? Seriously, never fails to baffle me! I'd have to think for that long before making my first failing move.)

 

[Flare]

Aw thanks, Red!

I enjoy drawing creatures a lot, and I haven't drawn creature fanart in a long time, so this was fun to do.

And double thanks for liking my page! You're awesome!

Well, this was the first speedpaint I've done, so it's the first time I've done something like this in an hour. I was surprised too. Layers help a lot; I did the lineart sketch first before going behind it and adding the colors. I use a simple art program, Sketchbook Express, but it does the job.

 

[Starling]

Creatures are my favored thing to draw, as the can hae varied shapes I for some reason find easier to work with than human shapes. It probbly has to do with my tendency not to use references unless I'm explicitly drawing something/someone that already exists.

 

[Flare]

^That's probably a big reason why I love drawing creatures too, like dragons and stuff, because there's not any real reference out there (yet ) to draw from, so I can make them what I want them to be. But you can't do that to a human without making them look funny (unless it's just a small change like different ears or something). I'm getting better at drawing people more accurately without reference, but when it comes to realistic styles, it's like I still manage to have problems without a proper reference. But the more I do it, the better I'll get!

 

[Starling]

I don't really draw humans realistically so there's a bit of room for artistic liberties, such as my habit of forgetting to draw eyebrows. For some reason I find my drawings look better without them most of the time. I once tried drawing my bunny without a reference. It was nice enough but not very realistic. I then plopped him on a chair and drew a really nice portrait. The difference really speaks for how useful references can be.

 

[Flare]

Here's an idea of what sculpting bigger sculptures look like; I took progress pics of my marsh dragon, which I'll eventually show on here too, but anyway here's how I made him first. Takes a lot of time and effort, but super fun! I was helped out quite a lot of how to make the armature and sculpt muscles by reading 'Sculpting Fantasy Creatures in Clay' by Emily Coleman. Great book to check out if you're trying sculpting for the first time, or even if you've been doing it for a while, as it has a lot of good info.