.... I did a thing :D

A good thing :D

A fun thing, that turned into a terrible, terrible, painstaking process towards the end :D

But I made it, and I love it, so let's jump into the process and his backstory, eh?
Now, since I presume you are able to read the title, I will present to you: Ûndaer Stonecrush.

He's the best friend of Gruithon and Cevrond, and after drawing Ruith in january, I couldn't help but draw him next... especially because they switched backpacks and I needed to see that drawn >w<

As some of you maybe know already, Ûndaer swears... a lot. To quote Cevrond talking about him here: "Seriously, I have no idea how he managed to put 'fuck' in every single sentence he said. It was... amazing nearly."
So... be prepared, because this chapter will be loaded with swearwords... not as though every chapter really is, but this one especially ^-^"

Let's start with the drawing and then I'll throw a ton of character info when we get to the colours and final image, eh?
So, I had a rough idea for a pose, going with the entire "camping trip" vibe I also had with Gruithons portrait. But the details were a mistery. I knew I wanted his left hand to be holding the rucksacks-strap, whilst the other one was... doing something. In my first sketches I had him holding a bottle, but I decided that a middle-finger would suit him more.
So after the first extremely ugly sketch, which I didn't export, I was now looking at this:

Honestly, I think I slowly nailed down drawing faces without anything underneath... >>feels a wee bit like huta-chan<<
I then continued to bring body and clothing to the same sketch-stage at which the face was chilling at. Same game as with Ruith, I decided to make a colour-comp and even went ahead to export it, because I personally just find them very funny xD

After that I started to line the drawing, leaving out that other hand and the backpack, because.... I didn't feel like doing them and procrastinated. And since I was in the flow and still didn't want to draw those parts, I went ahead and added the flats to it.

So whilst we are in between two rather random colour-WIPs, let's talk about his heritage, eh?

As you can see with the name, he's from the stonecrush clan. The clan, that is essentially just a shitload of forest and is devoted to the goddess of earth: Core.
Whilst I haven't drawn anyone from the nightmare clan before, I have indeed drawn some of the stonecrush clan, since the royal family there is directly related to the fireforgean royal family.

So here we have a portrait of the current stonecrush king, which I made in october last year, which I used as main reference for vibe and colours:

As you can see there are a ton of browns and greens involved, as well as more tribal hairstyles. Man, I think I don't talk about the other clans enough... the fireforges, deathbolts and runewhisperers steal everyone the show xDD

Now, Ûndear originates from a large city called Karnsa, which is situated right in the middle of the emerald half-island, and is only an hour flight away from the capitol city Dinaldúr.

He did indeed have a happy childhoo and adolescence, even though it had a really rocky start. His mother died as a result from the Scale Puffs disease that went around in that time, and after her passing his father started drinking. He never was home during the daytime because of his father, spending most of his time with friends or in the library, sneaking into his room in the late evening and back out again in the early morning to sleep.

After his father then committed suicide, he moved from the small town Gregul to the city, to live with his uncle, aunt and cousins. Even though he was sad to have left all his friends behind, he was happy about the completely fresh beginning and had a really nice life from then on, finally having the feeling of a proper family.

So... why on earth did Ûndear now choose to become a Paladin?
Well, his oldest cousin, Dewedir (Paladin Bloodthorn), decided to become one, as their grandfather (Paladin Mapleleaf) was before aswell. And no matter what he told them about his experiences, Ûndaer was hooked. Dewedir quickly turned into a role model for for him and Ûndaer decided that he wanted to join the Order too.

Back to the drawing! Up there you can see the flats at that point and below we have the next lineart-WIP.
A small little thing I also decided to add, was all those doodles on his arm >w<
The idea was, that he accidentally fell asleep one afternoon, and obviously Ruith and Cev had to get out the pens and doodle around. They tried to also get to his face, but that's when Ûndaer woke up and instinctively punched Cev in the face, not even knowing what was going on xD
(Also.... the stuff written on there says "fuck," "gay" and "C+Û")

So the lineart in itself was... interesting. I hated it. I hated it so, so much, but at the same time I loved it. (And if that isn't just a summary of art in general, then idk what is)
So I just pushed through the lining, the only properly fun part being the hair, since I haven't drawn proper dreadlocks in AGES and these probably are the best I've made so far... man. Dreads look so cool and they are suck a pain to draw, but yet I love them so so much.

So... after finally fighting my way through the lines of the backpack and the other arm... man... that felt great. I also worked a bit on the idea of what the different clans would have their equipment to look like, which is why the nightmare-backpack (that Ûndaer is having over here) looks more ridgid and simple, as opposed to the stonecrush-backpack, whilst the "mattresses" rolled up on top are more or less the opposite.

The idea is, that the nightmares often do more daring things, as they are known for being overly confident and slightly arrogant, meaning their equipment needed to be more durable. The stonecrushers are a bit more peaceful, like collecting plants or rocks and are used to walking around in difficult terrain, so the equipment is allowed to be a bit more comfortable.
So why do the stonecrushers have a less comfortable sleeping spot? Very simple answer: they usually sleep on the floor. Well, not properly, but that's very close. Since they live either in huge trees or in small settlements on the ground, they have developed a method of weaving these speacial leaves into soft mattresses to sleep on. they only have this thin layer of... essentially plant-floof between them and the floor. They're used to it, most other people aren't, and the reason the trainees here even have those things, is to ensure that they don't end up sleeping in a puddle or whatever.

Also: CAN WE TALK ABOUT THE DREADLOCKS AGAIN?!
and the fact that I drew both hands completely without reference, which is a first for me, since I always use references for everything except faces... sksksksksk...
(that's also why the not-middle-finger hand looks so wonky...)

So we've got the lines all done now, so I could finally finish the flat colours. It was interesting to get to the colours of his rucksack, since I originally just took the same as I used for Gruithon and reversed the positioning, until I realised that if they wouldn't have swapped, the equipment would've been completely monocoloured, which would look stupid, so I had to bring in some tonal variation.

Coolio! Now, since we're apparently don with all the WIPs now and the final piece would be next, I planned on talking about some stuff in regards to him and his character. The problem is, my mind is blank at the moment and I have no idea what I actually wanted to tell you guys, so here's a small advertisment for myself I guess >w<"

Well, as most of you should know, I am a member of the ArtClub. What's that mean?? It means I'm part of a cool batch of people that create drawing tutorials and upload them on wattpad! Personally, I am very lazy when it comes to tutorials... I always screenshot everything, write like... 80% of it, and then I drop it, whilst not being able to return, since those 80% of writing are already a few months old.
BUTT this time is different. Using Gruithon as my example I will finally redo my hair-tutorial explaining in three chapters my three main hair-shading styles:
1 sketch - 2 rendered - 3 cell-shading

The tutorial itself isn't finished yet, but it will be soon, so if you're curious about how I colour my hair, you know where to look out for ^-^
(it's th "how to draw: manga" book btw.... the name is indeed a bit tricky, since it's more a stilysed art-tutorial dump... like.... i would personally never call my artstyle "manga" you know? but that's just a small little ramble on the side.... sorry >w<")

Well.... I hope I didn't bother you lot too much with that. I just thought to myself that if I publicly announce the tutorial, I'll be obliged to properly finish it, so.. there's that.
Here's the finished drawing anyways ^-^

Man... the shading was a struggle guys, simply because I didn't get to just shade however, but I wanted it to somehow match the drawing of Gruithon, meaning I had to emulate the shading colours and whatnot... in the end I think I did a pretty good job though... and the drawings look really cool next to each other ^-^

So! That's two outta the grand trio then, and you can take a big guess who I'll be drawing next xDD
I don't know... I really really just hope, that Cev will turn out okay this time.... I really do hope so... I also want to really desperately do some fanart, because.... because i'm a simping fangirl obviously. I won't say of whom though, that'll be a surprise for the upload and I'm also not quite decided yet, so we'll see what I'll do next.

I also should desperately think about finishing up my WIPs from January and getting those requests done, so no promises on anything really.

Oh man this chapter was a bit chaotic. I don't know if it reads that way, but writing it was... confusing in a weird way. I hope you guys can forgive me and most of all, enjoy the drawing of the two.
After Cev I do indeed plan on slowly working my way around all the trainee-kids in Paladin and Legend, but we need to see about that, since that's.... 42 kids to draw...... ye.... a lot...

So... >>gives you tea, cookies and a blanket<< ... I hope you'll have a wonderful rest of your day, maybe consider sticking around for a while, write a few comments about everything or nothing... you know?
And until we read each other next time: