so! finally got around to write this chapter ^-^""

 anyways, this time around i had a lot of fun again >w<
micaappatossis has two wonderful wonderful contests, which i'm participating in.... and whilst i am procrastinating on finally finishing the one picture up, i've had a ton of fun with the other one, hehe.... that's my workflow for ya >w<""

the challenge was, to draw a piece in purely black and white, with one single other colour to add accents. like... where the colour is just flat and doesn't vary in tone? it was that sorta challenge.

after a bit of contemplation, i then finally decided to draw my character frey'qask. i've been working on his design quite a bit recently, figuring out his backstory, maybe making a short animatic or comic about him.... all that stuff.

and since you guys seem to be interested in my design process.... why not start right here!

frey was the guardian of the sun, a flaming bright illusion in the shape of a man, that struck fear into every soul that gazed upon him... or at least that's how he is perceived in his godly form.
since the gods are made of pure magic, they are able to shift their appearance at will, enabling the gods to life a somewhat normal undercover-life and then erupt into an unnatural, twisted illusion of the element they personify.

i usually start designing my gods with their humanoid appearance, since i find it easier to obscure a human base, rather than trying to get a human design out of some abstract nonsense.

so here i started with my first ideas. frey's weapon is a flaming spear, that appears as an aggressive, fiery sunbeam, when striking down onto the surface... and since i recently pulled my boii xiao in genshin, i was so tempted to give him one of those ritualistic masks.... i couldn't stop myself ^-^"

so i went ahead and doodled my first rough idea. not pretty, i know, but it was just to figure out proportions, shapes, and figure out where the heck i wanted this to go, ya know?

as soon as that was figured out though, i went to the left and drew the whole thing again. refining shapes, textures... the general design honestly, and taking a lot more inspiration from samurai helmets than from the ritualistic masks.

i then also made a quick outfit sketch, to get a feel for his appearance, but wasn't too satisfied, so when i moved on to the next page, i tried to de-clutter the silhouette and refine the thing a bit... also skipped a page in between, which is why i'll come back to that other clothing doodle in a bit >w<

now! after i finished the more refined clothing sketch on the right page, i moved on to the left page and started to think about the facial features.
i thought a bit and then drew the face on the top left. and whilst that did indeed give me quite the amount of ideas, but i quickly realised that it wasn't what i was going for. so i kept that in mind, mentally noted down the things i wanted to change... essentially i wanted to make him look a bit more angular, elongated and elegant. and so the dude directly below him happened. i pushed the features a bit more, but never refined the thing, because i rather quickly figured out what i wanted, resulting in the... welll... final portrait in the middle.

essentially i took the elements i liked from each of the other prototype-faces, and then adding some details that seemed to fit.

i also remembered that the gods don't look human... especially not in the times of ancient mesoria, so i gave him the typical double elf-ears the norinath used to have
also i keep forgetting that the dude has four arms -_-" ... but since that's only a god-thing i just... rather quickly made it canon that he likes to not have them there, for... reasons... i guess???

anyways. i initially also wanted to give him a third eye, since frey is the one, who has the "suns gaze" aka "holy ball of fire in his forehead that can shoot fireballs and is able to see through every type of deception"  but then.... welll....... i thought about the culture he grew up in in his first life... and changed stuff up.

so... here we have that clothing sketch i was talking about earlier ^-^
makes a lot more sense in big and with more details, even though the pose...... is questionable.

either way, i then decided to draw frey as a child.
he was not born as one of the elf-eared norinath... he belonged to the sub-species named harath (which later on ended up being the only variation of humanoid life-form to survive the cataclysm). the harath were more resistant than most norinath. several norinath-species were accustomed to different climates.... and now i wanna yeet some examples in here, so bear with me >w<
- the "sathreath" elegant people with holographic scales and gills, building enormous empires on the oceans ground
- the "granath" bolder creatures, with sharp teeth, thick, grey skin, sometimes horns or large fangs and red eyes that managed to build a certain immunity to nearly everything, mostly being either undefeatable warriors or skilled craftspeople
- the "aegonath" were an interesting variation. they had skin, covered in tiny, fluffy feathers, four eyes, three sets of ears and lived on the floating islands, since they were the only ones with large enough wings to fly so high
- the "florath" were actually not norinath, which was only discovered in the closing days of that time, but instead were their own species all-together. they had skin, that ranged from red, over purple, to blue, three eye-like constructs that were pure white and glowed, long, sharp teeth and once a year the females of the species generated beautiful hair-dresses made of flowers, had glowing patterns all over their skin, before growing a flower on their back, unique to themselves, nearly looking like wings. these people roamed in forests and actually were highly evolved plants that later on where given a more humanoid form by the gods.

...

yeah... i got a lot more where that came from, but i think i should just make a seperate chapter for them, as soon as i finish drawing them all ^-^""

either way, the harath were kinda good at everything and only excelled in creative measures. they usually became priests, mouthpieces of the gods, authors, poets, musicians, painters, dancers, architects, etc.

now the issue here was, that the gods used to be rather cruel... as we have seen with the florath... they were initially parasitic flowers, that later on were experimented on, mutilated and mutated, until the god initiating all of this, had a result he found somewhat satisfying and continued with a more interesting project.

this ended in many many, cruel methods in hopes of pleasing the gods, one of which was child sacrifice in the name of ilshan, to beg for a future in which this particular civilisation would continue to exist.

and our dear little frey was one of those sacrifices.

now, on the page after that i essentially figured all that out, especially in terms of the visuals. i didn't need a lot, essentially i just wanted a symbol to represent this whole thing, and a better idea of what they do with the children, before burning them alive whilst chanting prayers.

so yeah... still have no complete concept for all that yet, but as soon as i do, i'll keep you updated ^-^

then later on... well... i thought more about clothing designs, and made these digital sketches, that you probably already know from the chapter dedicated to this exact drawing >w<"

aaaand.... this is where we start with the actual drawing for the contest.

on terms of the palette, we obviously have all the values between white and black, and for my singular additional colour, i decided to choose this shade of orange:

so... well.. essentially i then just did what i always do, but in grey...

i also cheated a bit when it came to glowing effects.... i hope that's still acceptabe though??
basically i just drew things in white, framed them with the orange and then blurred the orange out to make it glow. if this is already outside of the rules, below the picture with the orange glow i also added one with the grayscale glow >w<"

other than that... well, as you have probably noticed i rarely export WIPs anymore, unless it is required or something.
instead, i record the entire process in the new recording feature of krita, since that's not only easier, but already speeds the whole thing up for me, so i can edit that stuff without needing to wait for my computer to process several files with 5+ hours of video footage :')

either way, i plan to always include a speedpaint that i will upload to youtube in these chapters, and if it isn't included, i will probably mention in a future chapter if i added one later on or not, so watch out for those!

https://youtu.be/FmMGqq4kgrE

and last but not least, the final piece:

i really do hope the blurred orange is okay.... i'm kinda pushing the limits of the challenge here, since i technically only used one colour, but made it fade into another one, thus creating different variations of the colour so.... yeah... as i said, here's the alternative version:

aaand.... i guess that's all i have for you for now!

i hope you liked the little speedpaint there, and find the concept of grayscale-drawings exactly as fascinating as me >w<

they do just be hella fun to draw, ngl...

either way... uh.... idk what else to say, so let's hope that we'll read each other again in a future chapter!
if you liked the drawing, consider leaving a vote or comment... not because i'm thirsty for engagement, it's just that i never really know who reads these chapters, ya know?
the number of reads is quite a bit higher than the number of votes and the amount of people that comment, and i would love love love to get to know yall >w<