FEF SS: Fire Inside

First finished Secret Santa of the season! More to come!

I was happy to be tasked with drawing the original character of the ever intelligent and fabulous Manic Martini. Drawing his character gave me the opportunity to draw more red and orange on black pastel paper, which happens to be one of my favorite combos. I just hope I was able to do him justice. I felt like this was as good as the picture would get without me nitpicking the thing to death, even though I think it came out rather well. I also experimented with drawing fire differently than I have in the past. Aside from some sketch ghosts that escaped, I think the colors and contrast came out rather well, and it was pretty fun to do. Though I have a million other nitpicks about the head size and chest and what have you. But I don't want to spoil what is a gift for someone else.
This fellow, known as FD, is from an Fire Emblem-themed crossover RP at a lovely FE forum that I frequent. FD is a Fire Dragon. And not just A Fire Dragon. THE Fire Dragon. Reference pictures were a little dicey all around. For the human form, the design was originally thought up by and made into an FE7-style sprite mug by , both of which I used as references. They are both great, don't get me wrong, but I had to do some style merging on my part and I actually practiced drawing his face many times before finally starting the final product. The dragon I referenced from FE7 OAs and CGs. But those were a tad dicey too, since they tell me different things about Elibian fire dragons.

I've actually done a lot of drawing since last summer, and I think I've improved a bit over that time. I've tried some different things and experimented with some new techniques and worked on others, especially drawing faces. This is my most recently finished piece, but I have others from the autumn that I haven't uploaded yet. So that will happen. Soon. Though I've got to fix some more scanner related issues on my side first.