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Griatch-art — Relaxed Afternoon
Published: 2011-03-14 23:53:47 +0000 UTC; Views: 1456; Favourites: 23; Downloads: 0
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Description
Relaxed AfternoonMade for a birthday card.
These are two of my recurring characters, notable Blackback the Troll-merchant (it's his hat in the lower left corner) and the girl who is usually just known as the "troll girl".
MyPaint + GIMP.
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Griatch
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Comments: 32
You have really captured that lazy afternoon feeling in this piece. The cool colors enhance that feeling for me, make me think of a gentle breeze, and sun that's not hot enough to burn.
I think your atmospheric perspective is working well. I also like the way you've captured the wild field's overgrown feeling without making it too busy. The pond and little waterfall also look very good.
I feel like your art is a bit inconsistent in style, or possibly level of completion. Most of the painting has a very blended,polished look. The hills, field, water, and troll girls are examples. Then, the merchan'ts pants just look sketched in and incomplete, as do the plants on the far right. The merchant has some areas in his fur that look almost like comic line art to me, which is a bit jarring. His elbows and upper arms, mostly.
Also, the way the sky lightens suggests the sun is low and to the left, but the shadows suggest it should be higher. At the least, I'd expect some sort of shadows from those trees to fall over the pair.
All told, an excellent piece.
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Good points. The pants went through a few revisions so I can buy that they don't quite match. The character is also kinda comic-y in itself so it becomes a matter of balancing character recognition and texturing. I could certainly put more work into this to make it fit better.
The shadows are an interesting chapter. They used to be deeper, but eventually I wanted a brighter image overall, which reduced the contrasts. I think I might have overdone that a bit, loosing realism, as I see what you mean about the angle. I'll see if I can fix that.
Thanks!
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Griatch
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Thanks! And thanks for the fave too, glad you like it!
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Griatch
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Glad to hear it. Thanks for the fave!
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Griatch
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Nice work.
What is the resolution? If you increase the resolution, i think the result will be even better in my opinion
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Thanks!
The original resolution is 6040 x 2406, I don't think I can increase that much further ...
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Griatch
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Lol oki, i said nothing in this case.
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What's the phrase you'd use to describe this? "Painterly"?
I can imagine this hanging in a sweet little grandmother's kitchen while see serves everyone cookies. It's nice.
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Heh, that's a nice notion.
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Griatch
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asdfghjkl I havent been commenting recently :C
This is beautiful! I still love the troll girl, I love all the pictures she's in <3
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Cool, thanks. I like her too.
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Griatch
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He's extremely different from the girl. Is that just because trolls differ widely among the sexes? Or does Troll-merchant mean he sells them?
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Oh, that's because Blackback is a mountain troll and the girl is, um, a forest troll ...?
Hehe, the true reason is that the two characters were created separately over a long period of time and for very different reasons. They were not originally intended to coexist or know each other. Blackback the troll-merchant is a long-time roleplaying character of mine (he's a good guy) whereas the girl was originally just a fun experiment with painting unusual skin colour (that people then liked more than I expected and has sort of taken on an existence of her own).
I did play with the idea of having my trolls vary widely between sexes in another image [link] so I haven't really decided on the "real" reason they are different. I admit my own "image mythology" is not always really consistent between my troll pictures.
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Griatch
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And that sort-of answers my question of how did you make him so muppet-like?! 
I guess I should focus on your newer art, but your older stuff just keeps catching my eye... I've been browsing through that, including old pics of the jester...
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Yeah, the various troll characters vary quite a bit in style and design. I've not heard he looks like a muppet before, rather I often hear that he looks like alien in the old TV-series "Alf".
Thanks for the comment!
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Griatch
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I think maybe I shouldn't have said "muppet", just because the teeth take that away!
But "muppet" was what I first thought, and without the teeth, that might look kinda true. I can understand "Alf", though! 
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One of the most effective arguments in favor of the difference is of course that the red and green hues make for a very striking contrast in the middle of your painting.
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That might have something to do with it, yes.
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Griatch
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*grin* Okay, fair enough.
It made me think of Robert Asprin's "Myth Series", where the males were monstrous, and the females were slinky and curvy and known as "trollops."
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Haven't heard of or read the Myth series. Sounds fun.
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Griatch
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It was a silly series of short novels with lots of puns and wordplay involved. Sort of like Xanth but more subtle, better writter, and with much less porn-esque elements.
Called the "Myth" series because all the series titles contained the word Myth, usually as a mispronunciation of some other work. "Another Fine Myth," "Mythnomers" etc.
Phil Foglio of Girl Genius is doing a comic based on the characters .
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Cool, I'm looking at that comic, very nice storytelling!
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Griatch
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Thanks dark--lite.
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Griatch
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