Chrysophylax's Sketchbook: Efforts in Creativity

[Chrysophylax]

Well... here it is... I finally started a sketchbook. I was actually trying to hold off on doing this until I went back to Cincinnati at the end of December so I could use my tablet again and do some color... alas.

This will probably be far from daily, knowing me, but I hope to keep up on it somewhat regularly.

As you may have notice, my User Name, Chrysophylax, is the name of a dragon from one of J.R.R.Tolkien's short stories, "Farmer Giles of Ham." On top of that, my computer's hard drive is named Caudimordax, after the enchanted dragon slaying sword of old in the same tale. So, as you can imagine, it is one of my favorite short stories. Thus I decided it was time to make an avatar for myself and what better subject than Farmer Giles, himself.

The drawing took me a couple of hours and in the end I think I was not quite creative enough... so I find him rather plain and plan on doing a redesign in the future... but for now this will do.

Farmer Giles of Ham


P.S. I'm not quite satisfied with the sword angles and how the hand is "holding" it... eh... i'll have to work on that for the next one.

[Chrysophylax]

All righty... so... I was scanning my sketches on my dad's scanner and for some reason my pics kept coming out WAAAY too dark... I was losing lots of detail in the scans. Finally I found that my dad had the "auto adjust" box checked.

here is the difference:

Bad Scan


Good Scan (well... better, at least)


The character's name is "Tiger," due to the scars on his body from a tiger attack. He wears a necklace made from the claws of the tiger which he killed in the fight. (inspired by "the Ghost and the Darkness" )

I'm actually thinking of changing him a little by combining him with another character that i'll put up in a couple of posts and i'll talk about the changes then.

[Chrysophylax]

For years no I have done all my sketching with pen only. Preferably the cheapest kind. All those fancy and expensive pens brag about even ink flow and all that jazz... which reeks havoc on shading.

here are some recent sketches:

Martial Arts doodles (no refs)


Mouths (no refs) and Hand (my hand )


Angel (no ref... and NOT inspired by "Dogma")
Another character i'm working on... beyond that... can't tell you much about him because i don't know.

[Chrysophylax]

Like I said... i've used nothing but pens for the last several years... but after cruising around on CA for the last few days, being both blown away and inspired, I ran to the local office supply store, bought myself a couple of mechanical pencils (0.5mm), some erasers (plastic), and some refill led (red and standard graphite, HB). I went for the mechanicals because I am just lazy and didn't want to have to keep worrying about sharpening my pencil. I decided to try something new (for me anyways). I started by laying down the basic structure of the sketch in red. Then I went over the parts I wanted in graphite. When I scanned it into the computer I did my best to eliminate the red without destroying the rest of the pic. In the end it has made a huge difference in the cleanness of my lines... in just a couple of days. Here are the first attempts (before and after clean-up):

Gearing Up (inspired somewhat by the Metal Gear series)
I actually don't like how large I made his feet... I have the tendancy to do that a lot.


Holiday Cheer? Depressed Santa


Jesse (worked on making the feet more realistic this time)


Jesse is a character that I made up a few years ago. My idea was that I wanted to write my own manga... heh... like that'll ever happen He is a 16-17 yr old kid who transferred to a new school. He is considered shy, but is really just quiet, and doesn't really engage in idle chit-chat (strong silent type but really kind). He is somewhat of a prodigy when it comes to Kinesthetic Awareness (awareness of body ... spatial awarness) so he excels in Martial Arts especially and other sports, though he has little interest in any organized sport. However, he has always struggled with the more "marketable skills" like english, math, etc. ... i.e. skills that will get him a job. Because of this he has always struggled in school to maintain good grades, and manages to squeak by on Cs. I am considering merging him with "Tiger" (see above), making "Tiger" and older version of Jesse, perhaps later in the story.

Coming Soon -- Character: Alexis
brief: Alexis is an enigma to her parents and her teachers. She runs with the wrong crowd and seems rebelious, but her teachers are at a loss as to what to do with her because she is one of their best students. She manages to find her way into detension almost every week, yet at the same time she pulls nearly straight As. When Jesse saves her life she befriends him and begins helping him with his studies. Their friendship develops... and I haven't figured out the rest yet.... anywho... i'll get a sketch of her up soon and then I'll post pics of both of them in more dynamic poses.

P.S. No refs on any of these... come to think of it... i rarely use refs... unless i'm drawing knees and elbows... but it's kind of hard to look at your own elbows when there's no mirror around... hurts my neck and people start staring...

[NightVision]

I prefer the red sketches with the red still in, after fiddling with it, you lose some of the subtle lines. Nice work so far ! As a minor crit, the characters in the first pic and the first of the 'red' batch, don't feel like they're really standing on the floor.

[vigostar]

hey, man these are looking good.. You have some really nice lines going on here.... I would like to see you pay a bit more attention to your shading and where your shadows are casted.... I know I for one get really lazy and just start to add shadows but, if you really sit and think about it you'll place them better... Keep it up and keep on posting

[Senira]

It seems like you have a decent understanding of proportion. I noticed that your style is more cartoony, which is fine, but I think some anatomy studies would help make your characters more fluid and convincing. Your faces aren't bad; I actually quite like the guy in the most recent post.

Keep it up!