Mysterious Skeleton Gléomir

"...The sight to the warder seems wondrously queer,

When the villainous Tempter speaks thus in his ear:

'Seize one of the shrouds that lie yonder!'"

-Goethe

This painting was a request I filled on r/characterdrawing and amazingly enough I received for this art alone more upvotes than what I have ever received on every post I have ever made on reddit in the two years I have been using the site... So I really felt the love with this one. ♥

I like to fish out some requests like this one on TRPG communities to keep my skills as a commission based artist fresh, and because they are fun to do! Additionally I am hopeful that I'm doing something for someone who couldn't otherwise afford to have their character drawn by paying. In other words: I am open for commissions, but do not ask me for requests directly.

About the process:

The description was pretty well laid out, as they often are by people who know their character. It contained references and a description. I did decide to design the character with pants and a cape that got decomposed even though the character woke up on his after life in a stone slab. I liked the idea of painting decomposing fabric, putting that university textile workshop taught by a drag queen to good use, and also I needed to find a way to have his bones out to add the runes later on.

So, on the version I posted on reddit I added the runes on his femurs and tibia. But it didn't stand out much. It was the only digital change to the art, so on everywhere else I posted the version above. Without the runes on his bones.

The painting was done using a palette of 5 tertiary colours: The dark japanesque gansai sumi watercolours. [A set of paints I love!] And some Napples Yellow and some Cobalt Green for flavor. Just a little bit.

A cellphone picture of the watercolour set next to the painting.

Just as interesting bonus: As I was correcting the digitized image to best correspond the actual painting I noted that fiddling with the hue I still got a nice colour palette. See image below

They look like more powerful versions of the same enemy you'd find in JRPGs. Anyway that's all folks!

The one on the left is the original painting. The middle and right one were digitally changed.