Jenny Dolfen

There is always light

Okay, this is really, really unusual for me. I spent two days wrestling with Alcyone, not being totally happy with the lineart, and then completely failing at any sort of digital colouring, and decided I needed to do something quick and spontaneous and simple (no involved backgrounds etc) - and was totally blown away by Amand...

Alcyone - sketch

I've been wanting to draw something inspired by the myth of Alcyone for a long time. It has grief, the sea, and kingfishers! 

Alcyone was the daughter of the wind-god Aiolos, and was happily married to Ceyx, the son of a titan. (When anyone in Greek mythology is happily married, you know disaster is about to follow...

Victorious return - finished

Hooray! I'm really happy with my first iPad/watercolour mixed media. And I love those golden blues here! Hope you love it too, Intea! <3 

Fun with granulating colours and new palettes

There's so much new about this piece! 

• Drawn on the iPad
• Painted with all-new brushes (my old synthetic ones were four years old - from back when I made the new year's resolution of no longer using actual animal hair - and of course, while real-hair brushes last ten years or so, my synthtic ones had ...
  2021-01-15 16:41:21 +0000 UTC View Post

Victorious return - in progress

I'm very artistic today. I get new brushes that are wonderful to work with (not because they're the best brushes ever made, but because my old brushes were four years old and it never had occurred to me to replace them...), I'm having fun with raw Sienna and Ultramarine, and I cut my own fringe today. XD Zoom conferences and ...

Victorious return - lineart

I HAVE THE POWERRRRRR!!!

Sorry. But I can't get over what I can do with Procreate. All the little sloppy bits in my pictures, suddenly GONE because I can zoom in to a ridiculous extent. I had to stop myself at ornaments on the background riders, haha. 

Feast your eyes! <3 

Progress: Lineart

I swear I'll stop turning this Patreon into product placement for Procreate some day, but... it is not this day. Holy s***! I will never, ever, ever do lineart in any other other way ever again. I can get as detailed and intricate as I want, yes it takes me twice and three times as long as lineart usually would, but ...

More work on the sketch

It‘s such fun to go overboard with the fine-tuning here! And it‘s a huge relief to know that I can do the lineart right here in Procreate, on the sofa if I want, on several layers that I can move and adjust wherever I want. Art on the sofa. Who knew this was the biggest perk of drawing on the iPad! 😁

When I drew ...

Victorious return - Procreate scribble

First steps of a commission for Intea - of Fingon‘s victorious return after driving off Glaurung. I‘m constantly thinking of the Jabberwocky poem - “And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

Of course, we know Fingon hath not slain the Jabberwock,...

Interlude: Gamora

All right, I'd better explain this. XD

On a watercolour forum I'm on, there are monthly challenges. Mostly, they don't interest me much (many of the artists there are of the flowery-landscapey persuasion), but this month's was fun: Let a family member choose three colours, a brush, and one extra thingie, add only one mo...

Mousiarty - coloured

The Napolemouse of crime. No matter how boopable that nose is - don't. 

Docmouse Watson is up on Etsy now! If you buy Shermouse and Watson, you get Mousiarty as a free add-on. If you have already got Shermouse and are getting Watson now, just leave me a note if you want Mousiarty as well. :) 

2021-01-04 08:50:13 +0000 UTC View Post

Mousiarty

„I‘m sooooooo changeable!“

Inks (again in Procreate) of Jim Mousiarty, the Napolemouse of Crime, again done for Is.
Is, I went for mouse skulls instead of humans; if you think they look too much like Aliens, I can change them back =D

Procreate Maedhros

I have a clear pathway getting to know a new medium: 1) I have no idea what I’m doing - better draw a beautiful woman. 2) I’m getting the hang of this - Maedhros, here I come!

I can’t tell you how much I love doing art on the iPad. I can work for hours without my eyes getting tired, and I can do it on the sofa bec...

Happy Better Year!

Oh my, this silly little piccie took me ten times as long as the result warrants, but first attempts with new digital media tend to have that effect on me. At least it’s safe to say that Procreate watercolours aren’t likely to make me give up the real thing soon. I still love the way the colours behave though - I’ve nev...

First attempt to paint in Procreate

... and again, the most intuitive art programme I‘ve ever worked with, and the easiest to use lively textures with! So much fun.

I think she’s Earwen, by the way. :)

Mousetor Watson finished

I‘m really pleased with how well this workflow went! Sketching and drawing on the iPad, printing on mixed media paper, colouring with watercolour and gouache, and photographing again on the iPad - this thing even takes better photos than any other of my devices (which, granted, are all pretty old). You know how you want to ...

Mousetor Watson (inks and timelapse video!)

Woo-hoo! Procreate is such incredible fun, and it took two days to revolutionise my workflow and motivation!
Here‘s the beginning of a Commission for Is, who asked for Watson and Mousiarty to accompany Shermouse back in October.

2020-12-27 16:39:37 +0000 UTC View Post

Happy holidays!

I wish everyone a wonderful holiday season, with as much calm and happiness as anyone can hope for under the circumstances. The final week of school was once again *far* more hectic than a lockdown ought to have been, and I seriously need to reconsider my lockdown teaching modes, it seems.

Anyway, I got the much-coveted...

Nib sketchpage

These landscape large sketchbooks are great for one coloured piece per page, plus some sketches next to it. It always looks so impressive and professional. =D

Also, I realise again that with fur, less is more. Too much scribbling and too many layers here. Something to keep in mind for the next. 

Nib - sketch

Nib must have been one of those unfortunate young squirrels that fell from the nest. Fortunately for her, she was found by Corvus, a raven who, still more fortunately for her, had just eaten. When she followed him around for half a day, his annoyance gave way to curiosity and finally affection, so "Uncle Corvus" raised her, m...

Squirrelly homework

I decided to avoid a mistake I'd made in my Dungeons and Dormice last spring: I'd jumped straight into a series without more than a very basic idea of what dormice even looked like. So this time, I set out to understand squirrels' faces. In the process, I found again how much more expressive they are than dormice, with their ...

Another Lockdown...

Germany's entering another lockdown on Wednesday; our district has already been in lockdown since Saturday, after cases were rocketing. Schools are mostly closed - exams were supposed to be happening, but we had so many students calling in sick or in quarantine that the next exams are cancelled, too. 

I've been rot...

Whoa, look, it's gouach-y!

Here's the final Squirrelpunk piece. I'm beyond happy with the look of this! You'll notice it's quite a lot softer and yet more vibrant than what I've recently done with watercolour; funnily enough, I've been wanting to achieve a look like this for years, but never really knew how (and never actually ventured to find out in e...

SquirrelPunk, next wip

I always find it fascinating how my painting style changes when I've gone for a month without painting, or when I've gone for six months without painting on watercolour paper (the cosplay dormice were on toned paper, and the gouache style definitely shows here). 

I'm slowly getting to know the characters and the se...

Squirrelpunk in progress

Today was literally the first day in forever with a little bit of time to paint (and the necessary minndset for it). I know that there is no ideal Pandemic setup, but Pandemic with two kids squarely in the middle of puberty has to be a special level of hell. 

I also spent hours each day packing orders! =O Cyber wee...

SquirrelPunk - Lineart

And I'm very pleased to report that a search for "squirrelpunk" yields next to nothing! 

Steampunk attire is fun. Although the coke tins for greaves are probably too big! 

SquirrelPunk and CyberWeek

We had our chance - now Squirrels rule the world. 

Sketch with blue pencil (I turned it inky blue so you can actually see something, haha). I'm pretty sure the hero is called Rick (I had a plush squirrel called Ricky when I was little, plus I just realised again how much I love the Mummy). What is the danger they'r...

Three new shirt designs!

https://teespring.com/stores/jennydolfenart

I just uploaded "Feanor, no", the Fairy Story design as well as Harry Podmouse. And then I promise there'll be a Teespring break! ;) I'll be collecting new ideas but don't want to flood the sho...

T-shirt idea

Many thanks to C. for his terrific t-shirt idea! I used some other paintings than the ones you suggested (Ulmo would have been terrific for "recovery", but the Vala was completely unreadable in the design.) It's the three main elements of Fantasy, as laid out by Tolkien in "On Fairy-Stories". 

I can also report tha...

Pencil shading trial, Discord chat and a quick heads-up to my Russian Patrons

For years and years, and years, I've been wanting to do some soft pencil shading, and I never was able to work out how the hell to do it. Using less force and harder pencils is one thing (I always put a lot of pressure on the pencil even in the very early stages of sketching), and yesterday I came across a tutorial that had t...