Welcome to my character portrait gallery

For anyone who is wondering, Wednesday became 'black Wednesday' for me because I cannot draw mid-week!
In fact I'm sure the rainforests mourn Wednesday too by the amount of paper I tear through in frustration... so this is a blog for all who know what like it is to regularly shout at their pencils
Oh yes it's also all about fictional characters plus interviews with them, yeah, that too :)


Sunday, February 24, 2013

Jet Korro (returns)



Jet’s had his ears lowered! 

  
 Ok so although we’ve met him twice before and had not one but two stabs at sketching his portrait we realised we’ve never sat down to interview Jet, what better opportunity then than his arrival at the studio to show off his freshly chopped locks?

Still standing at 6ft 7in tall and a little eccentric in his behaviour Jet is an amiable 19year old with an acute addiction to video games. Therefore to begin with whenever we asked Jet a question it took him a good five minutes or more to process and respond since his eyes were glued his hand-held device. Then when he did manage to wrench his attention away from the screen, his answers didn’t make any sense seeing as he had only heard a portion of what we asked. 

Thankfully convincing him to put the game away wasn’t too tricky, however without the distraction in hand he opened up like a grimoire and began spouting way more information than necessary. In the space of sixty seconds we learnt that Jet is an adventurer of sorts, he can’t swim, his favourite colour is black, he has minor OCD for symmetry, has a dire fondness for cats and cat related things, suffers from light sensitivity and low blood pressure that causes dizzy spells and black-outs, has fantastic flexibility and night-vision, loves his shades, and the one we found most peculiar and amusing is that the very tall Jet is apparently afraid of heights.

He also seemed to enjoy sharing even the most intimate details of his private life in detail as though flamboyantly parading around in his underwear. Jet explains this as compulsive honesty. He relays that he gets over-excited when meeting someone new and that he can’t help but overload them with pointless details and stories. Immediately after which he decided it was important to tell us that until recently his favourite food was eggs on toast but that he has just adapted his diet to a purely noodle and bread regime.

Fair to say then that Jet rambles a lot and not just in the country. He rarely gets straight to the point and seems to have a knack for finding the most convoluted way to tell his story.  His outlook on life the universe and everything is in his own words, ‘things are what they appear to be until they no longer appear to be what they are.’ An observant character who notices details others might miss at first glance he does tend to over-complicate matters. Thus Jet has adopted a method of decision-making that involves dithering and procrastinating until the presented choice is made for him. 

Jet’s biggest bugbear in life is the need to sleep. He wishes he never had to slumber but informs us matter-of-factly that he understands naps are necessary to move on in life. When asked to explain we realise that Jet seems to think that it’s normal to wake in a different room, town or even country to the one he fell asleep in. He calls it ‘sleepeportation.’ Which we discovered is a term he invented roughly 30 seconds prior to uttering it, that translates to, ‘sleep teleportation.’ To elaborate he decides to regale us with an anecdote about how he once thought he woke up underneath a dragon but after a fit of blind panic realised that a gecko had just fallen asleep on his face.

He states that he likes to help others when he can and will often put himself out to do so. However from witnessing the extent of his game addiction we can’t imagine him going out of his way very often. He shows us the pixelated names of his closest friends on his screen and then mentions that he’d quite like to be a dragon tamer or a cat breeder, or a cat, or failing that he’s quite good at ‘stick twirling.’

We jokingly suggest he sticks to the latter only to discover that, as it happens, Jet really is quite nifty with a Bo staff. He explains how he started staff fighting as a young child after he found he was fascinated by playing with sticks. He taught himself many new ways to bruise his forehead via twirling and twisting the bamboo canes in his garden before his grandfather took note and mentored him in the art. Jet says he doesn’t miss much of the quiet life back home with his folks but that he does miss regular mealtimes. Quite the antisocial, social butterfly he’s never lonely as he tends to get on well with others and makes friends easily. Besides as he jests, he’s always got himself to talk to and his gaming station.

There were a few brief moments where Jet appeared to show glimmers of high intellect and we wondered if he simply chooses to play the fool. Then he would say something nonsensical just to remind us what a tall, ditzy blonde he can be, making us conclude that the air up there must be as thin as he is.


Thursday, February 14, 2013

Happy Valentine's!




So here’s the card I made for my beloved this Valentines in lieu of his surprising me with a beautiful bouquet of flowers ^^ (and waaay too much chocolate – woot!)

We never normally celebrate so it was nice to this year :)

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Ann Cyncaid



Interviewing vampires usually unnerves us not only because they have the potential to kill and/or alter us to be like them but also because it means that the session has to take place at night and we really like our sleep. Having previously met Ann Cyncaid we were more afraid of dozing off during another painfully awkward interview than for our lives. 

She continues to use the pseudonym Cyan in place of her real name, is currently 24years of age and is still a waif-like 5ft 2in tall. For the most part she remains a timid, introverted and sensitive character who is overly-cautious and highly introspective. Knowing that the kind and soft-hearted are easily trampled we try to be sympathetic by not yawning too often and feigning interest on the odd occasion where she speaks without prompt. Much of the following information is therefore subjective and gleaned from the sparse few questions she was able to answer.

In many ways Cyan is the embodiment of your atypical ‘vampire who doesn’t want to be,’ a pathetic half-starved wretch whose self-esteem went on hiatus and never returned. Perhaps a little less crushed under the destructive weight of depression than the first time we met, Cyan is still a miserable soul prone to tearful moments and emotional outbursts. Her bleak and ultimately negative outlook means we’d probably have had more fun interviewing a limpet. 

A social outcast by her own doing, she inadvertently makes situations such as this one more problematic than they are which is quite a feat considering her origins. Having a mind ravaged with guilt and dark thoughts, it is apparent that she often allows her fears and worries to consume her. Whilst we appreciate much of this anxiety is justified it does prove difficult to hold a conversation when the other party is continually looking over their shoulder and jumps at the slightest sound.

During the interview she nervously gnaws the corner of her mouth and constantly fiddles with the hematite band around her thumb. Being a lip-biter appears to have caused scarring and indicates it’s something she does frequently to the point where it repeatedly bleeds and heals otherwise no mark would remain. Her anxious habits are most distracting and when questioned about the origins of her ring she clams up as though we had asked what colour knickers she is wearing.

Although usually of a demure nature Cyan’s excruciating insecurity makes her liable to catastrophic thinking and the occasional bout of melodrama. Clearly uncomfortable in her own skin, she is very aware of personal space and dislikes being touched. To say she is hypersensitive would be an understatement, plus we never thought we’d meet anyone who could best our writers when it comes to ridiculously lavish over-exaggerations.

What is perhaps surprising about her lack of self-confidence is the fact that it is coupled with the sheerest determination we have thus far witnessed. Whilst on the one hand she spends a lot of time lost, confused and blubbing like a baby, on the other she dropkicks every challenge life throws at her so squarely in the jaw she may as well be made of metal. It’s enough to make one’s head spin, but therein lies the nature of her depression; she simply cannot recognise her own successes. To do so would be like admitting that it’s ok to keep breathing, which would in turn mean that it’s ok to be Cyan and a vampire, which she intrinsically ‘knows’ to be incorrect and won’t be told otherwise.

Thus Cyan only feels justified when berating herself and believes she deserves to be punished. She mentally tortures herself for every little mistake and scrutinises every part of her being whilst glossing over all the faults of others, even other vampires. Most of her woe is self-inflicted and likely existed before she was sired; being vampiric is simply another convenient excuse for self-flagellation. Yet for all her melancholy she has a fierce will to live and strong sense of moral grounding, she will readily fight for her beliefs and those she cares about.

It strikes us that Cyan could probably use a sharp wakeup call followed by a big motherly hug, however by the end of the interview her eyes were a hunger-ravaged yellow so don’t judge us for not volunteering, ok?