Lighting Study 4

Lighting studies, but with my hand as reference.

I think I'll be hyperfixated with lighting for the rest of this art challenge, at this point.

Lighting Study 3

Still keeping the crosshairs on lighting studies. I took a further step towards working with something more basic than yesterday by using spheres and cylinders to understand lighting. I've been watching both this Marco Bucci video and this Lighting Mentor video that were recommended to me by a friend and they've been helping me move more towards the right direction... Hopefully.

Lighting Study 2

More attempts at lighting studies. I was struggling to decide on what subjects to practice on today, and for the last one I settled ultimately for Ramza, since I have his Bring Arts figurine just on display beside my tablet. 🥰

Lighting Study 1

I recently joined an art group and after they gave me some feedback on some of my art, I was told that I needed to broaden my understanding of lighting. Lighting is certainly something I struggle to understand immensely, and they pointed me to something I could read up on to understand this further. So I've indulged in simply trying to understand more of it through these shapes, though I couldn't help being curious and applying the concepts onto a human bust at the end. 😅

I was also striving to render more comfortably in this lineless art style again, but make further strides towards a style similar to that of concept art in Guild Wars 2. I realized I could attempt to do this by softening the edges of the darker areas with a soft round brush. You can see this effect at the bottom row of the image.

Gold Rendering Study

Was digging up more tutorials and decided to try painting gold today. This art challenge was definitely a good opportunity to finally get to some of these. My brushstrokes were pretty lazy but looking at things from afar these actually aren't too bad 😎

Composition Sketches - Portrait

I have a bunch of ideas drifting around in my head for future art pieces. I figured this was a good opportunity to sketch some of them on paper and create these composition sketches.

Surprisingly, I ended up indulging in art pieces that involved more characters than backgrounds... 😅

Terra Sketch(es) 2

Indulging in another Terra sketch because oh my god the new Dissidia for mobile has been announced and she looks so cute...

I wanted to just stick to a simple sketch but one thing led to another and now it has color and (sloppily added) cel shaded rendering. Like all the rest of the Studytober art pieces so far, this isn't particularly a serious work, though I am not proud of how much time I invested in it (at least 5 hours). And now it's almost 6 a.m. Good lord.

Anyway, I'll definitely have a more serious Terra art piece soon... I hope...

Nature Landscape Studies 1

Ugh, it's been a while since I jumped into anything related to landscapes... This was such a itch I enjoyed scratching.

For the first image, I used this tutorial as a reference and wanted to recreate it. The second image is from a reference photo I took of Mike Lake at Golden Ears Provincial Park in Canada. The third image from a reference photo from Numata, Okayamachi in Japan.

Trees: Rendering 1

Been focusing too much on anatomy so I thought it would be a good time to change things up a little bit. I was looking through some of my saved pins on Pinterest for a couple of tree references and attempted recreating a few of them. I'm not really liking that last one over there if I'm being honest with you... 😅

Nose Sketches 1

Going back to more fundaments... Though I admittedly started later than usual for Day 11.

Noses are definitely up there on my list of things I struggle with. I'm going to have to come back to doing more practice sketches again at some point.

Terra Sketches 1

Man. I haven't drawn Terra in ages. It's definitely a breath of fresh air seeing her in my style today compared to before. I should dredge up my old Terra sketch from the early 2010's. It's probably sitting locked away in my old dA account  vault somewhere.

I was actually supposed to do another set of eye sketches, because me and a friend thought it would be funny to look at it like the eye-mouth-eye emoji combination (an inside joke between us). But I was feeling uninterested in drawing more eyes after I finished with mouths, and I decided I wanted to indulge in some fangirling and draw Terra after seeing all the fan art of her flooding my Twitter. 🥰

Apparently there's a hashtag called #1日1ティナ that's gone viral and it's everyone and their dog posting one art piece of Terra everyday. I figure it's because October is also her birthday month so that's a thing. Not gonna lie though, I am eating good with all the Terra content... But I thought I'd also want to add in my contributions. 😋

This also turned into a bit of a study on hair and bangs again, in addition to putting my previous study of eyes to good use. I would have loved to make more for this post, but I ended up being pressed for time at the end of the day. I settled for just four sketches of her for now; I'm very keen on making more again some time later in the challenge.

Mouth Sketches 1

Yesterday I was focusing on eyes, so today I focused on mouths next. 👄 Nothing really groundbreaking, but I'd like to have my characters to have more expressive faces when I sketch them.

Eye Sketches 1

Decided to be more focused on something compared to the head and face sketches I've been practicing through my requests. Today, I tackled drawing eyes in a more structured way and just adding a bit of variation in some of them. The expressions I focused on are neutral, half-lidded, and eyes staring upward.

Twintail Agrias

The last of six requests I've been working on. This one of Agrias in twintails is from Desiree Whitehall in the Kingdom of Ivalice Discord server.

I don't think she's at all pleased to have her hair up like this, but she's putting up with it anyway. 😛

Slade

The fourth and last request from Comic in the Kingdom of Ivalice Discord server. Slade is the patriarch of this little family of four.

I actually drew Slade before I started working on Spade, actually. When I learned they were father and son, I was already drawing Spade in such a way that he inherited some traits from his dad, like the eyes and eyebrows. Then I just stayed on that course and became more proactive in keeping the genetics consistent in some way.

That wraps it up for Comic's requests! I have to say, drawing the four of them was a lovely exercise in ensuring characters match certain traits of their parents... Even though I admittedly spent a lot more time focusing on shaping the noses. 😅

Diamond

The third of four requests from Comic in the Kingdom of Ivalice Discord server. This is Diamond, Spade's sister and Shade's daughter.

Her sprite was basically a female Chemist wearing Reis' dress. I tried to draw her in such a way that she would basically look like a slimmer, shorter-haired Shade in her youth. Before I confirmed that she was Shade's daughter, she actually had a much sharper jaw than she does now.

Shade

The second of four requests from Comic in the Kingdom of Ivalice Discord server. This is Shade, Spade's mom who's coping with the loss of her husband.

Considering this was someone supposedly in her forties, I tried to make her look more like that age by adding a few lines and wrinkles to her face. I think drawing Peitha so often has helped me feel rather comfortable trying to draw faces affected by aging.

Since I'm drawing Spade and his family, I'm also trying to practice drawing people that have genetic features passed down/inherited from their parents. That said, I tried to draw in such a way that Shade would have physical features her children would inherit (I'm still working on her daughter as we speak).

Spade

The first of four requests from Comic in the Kingdom of Ivalice Discord server. This is his thief OC, Spade. In the coming days, I'll be featuring the rest of his family ✌

Isilud

A request from Caddlewacker in the Kingdom of Ivalice Discord server. I agreed to draw Isilud, but I never mentioned how he was going to look like... 😏

Studytober 2025

Oh, god, it's October again. You all know what that means... My yearly October art challenge that I'm going to struggle to finish on time! 😂😭

This year, I've decided that I want to focus on properly understanding art fundamentals, honing my art skills, and learning some rendering techniques. I've been feeling stagnant in terms of my art skill lately, and I figured the best ways to overcome it are to just have a firmer grasp on the basics and to learn new things.

I've been working on a few requests for some people in my pursuit of these goals. A lot of my focus has been on drawing heads and faces from the front, noses, and more natural-looking hair.

As is custom with my art challenges, I have to start with a self-portrait:

This was a result of studying curls. I was looking at these tutorials for reference mostly. My hair is naturally curly, though I did have a period in my youth when I thought my hair looked terrible compared to straight hair. You can blame Filipino commercials spreading that propaganda. 😑

Honestly, I haven't felt as comfortable with a self-portrait up until this one. It best resonates with my actual everyday appearance compared to my previous ones. The self-portrait I made in 2024 was supposed to have a more realistic hairstyle. It did, but the hair wasn't curly enough to my liking; it felt like straight hair but bouncier.

In addition, sometime earlier this year (March or April, I think), I started to feel like my 2024 self-portrait didn't properly reflect my identity. This felt especially true when I further associated the look to my nameless, self-insert Wayfinder. She has her own personality and backstory in my headcanons, even if we do mirror in some aspects. I like to self-insert in OCs like my Wayfinder, but I also pride myself in being a separate individual to them. I want my OCs to be their own people, you know?

Later this year, I'm planning to make a proper full body portrait of my avatar, featuring this hairstyle. It should have been done earlier in September but I got caught up on the Tactics remaster hype. 😅

Anyway, this is my first entry for Studytober 2025. Will I be able to complete the challenge on time this year? I sure hell hope so! As always, you can find the tag for this year's art challenge under the Crossover Map on the right side of the website. 👉