Scribble of the week #13

My sketch books are forever filled with random mind-scrawlings and scribbles that will otherwise never be used for anything or be seen by anyone, because of this I bring you "Scribble of the week".

Scribble of the week is a weekly feature(well, bi-monthly at best at the moment) where i'll be posting a random sketch, scribble, design or element from one of my various sketch books. These will always be unfinished pieces of work and will often, most likely, be very random.

This is my first attempt at a villain.
 His name is Mallus and he's my take on a vampire, that, in my mind, I like to mix up with the old Nordic(Or Tolkien) Elf-folk.
 I shan't go into too much detail here, I tried to reflect a few ideas, I even dropped in a slight homage to Gary Oldman's dracula hair-do.
The furthest right image is a really quick and poorly coloured scribble of him in days of old when he would've been more of a general in an army than he is in modern day.

He's a man of power, knowledge and undeniable evil. I tried to draw an image of him where he's non-chalantly standing over a pile of corpses, which I tried to make look like other characters I've been working on.
See:
James
Daniel
(Edit: See also Rose)

Where the ice giants dragged their feet...

This past week I've been on holiday with my family, on a P&O cruise ship called the Ventura, sailing across the North Sea and up and down the great Fjords of Norway.

We visited Stavanger, Skjolden, Geiranger and Bergen, due to the toddler amongst us we weren't able to do any particularly adventurous treks into the mountains or Norwegian wilds however we did see some extraordinary views as we sailed right up the middle of some of the most beautiful mountain ranges in the world.

This also gave me a brilliant excuse to put the Tokina 11-16mm lens I bought recently to a proper test and try my hand at some landscape photography. Having such a wide angle is something that takes some getting used to. A lot of things can sneak into frame that you wouldn't necessarily expect and often the details within the shot are too seemingly 'distant' or small to comprehend when reviewing them through or on the camera. In some cases it wasn't until I got the image home and post-processed it that I realised what I had.
Hopefully with sufficient practice I'll become more accustomed.

The following three shots were the first few shots I took on the top deck of the cruise ship in Stavanger. To amuse my self-sense of irony I decided to use the wide angle lens to see if I could make a panoramic 'photo-stitch' image of an even wider angle.

I didn't take many photographs in Stavanger itself, most of what I did were very touristy, more so than the above three (The third isn't very obviously stitched anyway).

The following shots are from the departure of Stavanger and the sunset that punctuated it.

Some random shots from Skjolden

... and then Geiranger...

The views from our rear facing balcony on the journey out of Geiranger.

To put things into a bit of perspective I snapped this one of the back of the ship.

This was the very last shot I took on the trip. I just held the camera against the window in and took a photo on almost full auto settings(I think it was aperture priority)I after the shutter stayed open for longer than I expected I assumed it'd be a waste of time so never thought to review the image before putting it away. I never expected that taking a long exposure on a moving object(The ship) could work as well as it did. If i'd realised this sooner I would've played with the technique much more.

So there we have it. My trip to Norway. :)

Scribble of the week #12

My sketch books are forever filled with random mind-scrawlings and scribbles that will otherwise never be used for anything or be seen by anyone, because of this I bring you "Scribble of the week".

Scribble of the week is a weekly feature(well, bi-monthly at best at the moment) where i'll be posting a random sketch, scribble, design or element from one of my various sketch books. These will always be unfinished pieces of work and will often, most likely, be very random.

This chap is called Wolfgard, an unimaginatively named character who is a werewolf. He is the chief of a clan of werewolves. He's meant to be a fairly stereo-typical Scandinavian Viking type who's taken it upon himself to lead and build a refuge for others of his kind. The woman is Wielew, his wife, who i'll likely draw later. Werewolves in my mythology, such as that is, are a complicated breed to which they can control their affliction and live their lives as morally as the rest of humanity wherever possible. Sometimes though the affliction can cause madness when mixed with other diseases such as rabies or more simply pre-existing psychological maladies, this causes a werewolf to be referred to as a lycanthrope. Traditionally the name used for the psychiatric condition of "thinking" you're a werewolf. Lycanthropes differ from werewolves in that they are not organised, they don't try to cling to humanity and will not bind themselves to human morality. Typically this causes them to live wild in forests and country, hunting whatever sates their hunger, man or beast. Wolfgard and his clan take it as their responsibility to "handle" the lycanthrope problem and where possible re-abilitate.