The Gallery of Stormy Adler

Super Margio

Original DA Upload Date: March 28, 2020

It’s-a her, Margo! And she’s got a milk moustache!

—-

…before I talk about this artwork, I’d like to say something serious for once, because given the state of the world as of this writing, I think it deserves it.

This artwork was originally drawn on Mario Day (March 10th), and I meant to upload it here on that date. However, due to my mental health issues relating to the COVID-19 pandemic, I was too broken at the time to think of anything to say. Tens of thousands of people have died from the virus so far, and hundreds of thousands more have been infected. The economy has crashed worldwide. The virus has become the entirety of what the media is talking about. And society doesn’t seem to be reopening until at least April. I’m better now (on March 28th), at least better enough to write a description for this artwork. But watching everything unfold throughout this month, dealt a psychological and emotional blow to me I’ve not felt, since my high school graduation. I wish I could say something along the lines that the pandemic is nothing to worry about, and everyone is just overreacting. But common sense says otherwise. Truthfully, it’s the biggest historical event since World War II, and will be looked back upon as such.

No joke, I was actually afraid to draw or post anything Grunvale-related for a while, as I believed that the fact that Gilda and Wendy are Italian/Istallion and Asian respectively, was ruining the image of my work (Italy was the first Western nation to be hit hard by COVID-19, and China was where the virus originated). But somebody in a chatroom told me that was ridiculous, and I’ve since come to realize he was right. People don’t look at my work and see Gilda and Wendy as an Italian and an Asian, they see them as a raccoon and a squirrel. Which is more important than any ethnicity. Many races exist among the bipedes in the world of Grunvale, but as far as humanity is concerned, there is only the human race.

Anyways…

Mario Day was born out of leetspeak (MAR10), similar to how Star Wars Day was born from a bad pun (May the Fourth). And this was the artwork I drew to celebrate March 10th… before my mental health issues set in. I’ve already drawn Margo as Daisy before, but there’s nothing saying I can’t also draw her as Mario. Especially considering her name’s only a single letter different.

Nothing much to say from a production standpoint, other than ‘Generabrand’ can now be considered a running gag in my artwork, since Terence and Gilda have both been shown to buy the brand. You’d think a family as rich as the Hyndes would buy name-brand stuff… and they do. It’s just that Sally did the shopping this time. I can hear the interaction right now.

Margo: “You got Generabrand?”
Sally: “Yeah. It costs less. What, ya gotta problem with that, Mahgo?”
Margo: “I don’t know, I was just expecting something better. Like Pacific brand, or Silk brand, or Blue Diamond brand, or –“
Sally: “How ’bout Shut-Yoah-Hole brand?!”
Margo: “…okay, whatever you say.” [Sally walks off] “You miser.”
Sally: [walks back in] “Excuse me, what did ya just say?!”
Margo: “Uh, I said, uh…” [sees what Angus is watching on the TV] “Paul Reiser! Yeah. Paul Reiser… stand-up. Heheheh… yeah. Love his style of humor, that Paul Reiser.” [forced laughter as she watches the standup]
[Sally exists the room again, with a frustrated look on her face]

Heheheh… that’s all for this one. You know the drill.

DON’T FORGET TO FOLLOW ME ON OTHER PLATFORMS:
DeviantArt: https://www.deviantart.com/phoenixofgrunvale
Twitter: twitter.com/StormTheArtist
Instagram: www.instagram.com/phoenix_of_g…YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCEtCO…
Discord: Contact me by my tag (Phoenix of Grunvale#1752) for an invite to my server.

—–

Grunvale is owned by me. You’re free to draw fanart of it yourself, as long as you credit me.
Super Mario Bros. is owned by Nintendo.
This artwork was made at 4K resolution, in 1.85:1.

Whoa-Mens’ Day

Original DA Upload Date: March 8, 2020

The Oddball Tetrad has heard of several words used to define a lady. ‘Doe’. ‘Ewe’. ‘Hen’. ‘Sow’. ‘Jill’. ‘Mare’. But never the word, ‘woman’. How would they react to seeing the word ‘woman’ casually used in a sentence? I imagine something like this.

—–

First of all, yes, I do realize I technically made a typo here. I put the apostrophe in “Women’s” after the ‘S’ instead of before, as is correct in ‘International Women’s Day’. Luckily, the Grunvaliverse, as with every other universe I create, operates on its own rules. So I imagine the graffiti artist that wrote “Happy International Womens’ Day” here, comes from a universe where “Womens'” is correct. I could’ve sworn “Womens'” was correct while drawing this, though. But apparently it’s not, and it is indeed “Women’s”. Maybe I’ve Mandela’d.

Anyhoo, time for some production notes!

Believe it or not, the hardest thing about this, was coloring the Tetrad. You might notice that, like the room itself, they get slightly darker the further back they are in the room (most clearly seen with their whites). Gilda is the only one whose normal colors were used here; Wendy’s colors were obscured with a black solid at 5% opacity, April’s colors were obscured at 10%, and Margo’s at 15%. This filtering was pretty time-consuming, as you might imagine. And this was before the bandage layer!

Also, as you can see, I decided to use a colored subtitle for the dialogue (color-coded to show that Gilda’s the one speaking) this time around, instead of a speech bubble. There are two reasons for this. One, I felt it enhanced the cinematic look that I always try to go for with my artwork. Two, I tried several different ways of executing a speech bubble here, but none of them looked good. Every speech bubble I tried was either too small, in an awkward position, or obscured the rest of the Tetrad. So I decided instead, that it would be best to show Gilda’s dialogue as a subtitle. And, if I can be honest, I think I actually prefer the dialogue being presented this way. It doesn’t create any of the three problems I brought up above, and, like I said, it makes the artwork feel more like a still frame from a movie, than a panel from a comic. I’ll run a poll asking which my followers prefer; colored subtitles or speech bubbles. But put my vote down for colored subtitles.

Anyhoo, that’ll be all for this one. Happy International Women’s Day! Apostrophized correctly.

Grunvale – Chapter 11, Part 3: Now Available on DA!

—–

Grunvale is owned by me. You’re free to draw fanart of it yourself, as long as you credit me.
This artwork was made at 4K resolution, in 2.35:1.

—–

“I’m sorry women.”
– Rodrick Heffley

Someone had to make that reference. 😆

Pretending

Original DA Upload Date: February 14, 2020

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Please do not comment on this piece unless you have watched the music video for “Back on the Chain Gang” by the Pretenders. It will answer most of the questions you have regarding this piece.

—–

Nothing says “Happy Valentine’s Day” like making a joke about your last name by paying homage to a 1980s music video.

—–

It’s Valentine’s Day again, which means it’s time for another piece featuring Grunvale‘s most prominent canon ship, Margo Hynde x August Lowry. Or, ‘Margust’ for short. I knew I wanted to draw something involving the two again like I did last Valentine’s Day, and when I ended up drawing Margo Hynde as Chrissie Hynde (shut up! it’s funny and you know it), I pretty much just went from there, and decided to make this year’s piece a full-out homage to the 1982 music video for “Back on the Chain Gang”, with August dressed how drummer Martin Chambers appears in the video.

While Margo was traced from pre-existing artwork I’ve drawn of her, August was (mostly) not, as I wanted to see how much I could do using the references only as, well, references. This experiment resulted in him having a pudgy look to his face, and… I honestly don’t know if I like it or not. I’ll have to trace from this and Ready For Their Date, to create a potential middle ground between regular-faced August and pudgy-faced August. I do think there is potential integrating the latter into his design. But if I don’t like the result, I’ll just stick to regular-faced August.

The drawing process went pretty smooth this time around… or at least I thought it did, before I realized, AFTER uploading this to Twitter, that I had used the wrong color outline for much of the suit on August’s asset. Instead of using pure black like I usually do for character outlines, I used the off-black of the suit, which resulted in a lot of unintentional missing outlines. Though I managed to fix them before uploading the piece here (and BlackMoonPaladin didn’t even notice the missing outlines until I pointed them out to him), it’s still pretty embarrassing for me that I let the art be seen in that state.

As you can tell, I decided to place this artwork, which I drew in 4:3, in a 16:9 matte. I did this because I thought the black bars had artistic purpose. Most music videos from the 80s and 90s were shot in 4:3, which, though mostly long abandoned by mainstream cinema by then, was still the standard for television, and by extension, music videos (which, at the time, were mostly shown on MTV). Today, however, 16:9 is the standard, and thus, media in 4:3 appears with black bars on the sides by default. In other words, I have those black bars on the sides to make the artwork look like a snapshot of the past, being viewed in the present. Something of a nostalgia filter.

Anyhoo, that’s all for this one. Happy Valentine’s Day!

—–

Grunvale is owned by me. You’re free to draw fanart of it yourself, as long as you credit me.
“Back on the Chain Gang” was written by Chrissie Hynde for the album Learning to Crawl, owned by Warner Music Group.
This artwork was made at 4K resolution, in 1.33:1. However, it is matted to 1.78:1 for artistic reasons.

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Don’t worry, August doesn’t mind having to use the pickaxe. That’s why he has that subtle smirk on his face. If he minded, he wouldn’t even have agreed to do this.

Gilda Works Out

Original DA Upload Date: January 12, 2020

Considering the 1980s were a big decade for physical fitness, surely Gilda would like doing workout sessions?

But of course!

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This idea’s been running in my head for a few weeks now, ever since I found the song “She Don’t Look Back” by the late Dan Fogelberg. I’ve for a while brushed off Fogelberg as another folk-rock musician in the vein of James Taylor, until I listened to some tracks off of his 1987 album Exiles, which “She Don’t Look Back” comes from. I came to love the song for its uptempo beat, prominent guitar, and that distinctive synthesizer sound only the 80s could bring. It sounded like the kind of song Gilda would love to dance to. So was born the idea of drawing something involving her exercising.

…which later evolved into her doing yoga to another cheesy 80s album, Kenny G’s Duotones. When I ended up drawing Gilda doing yoga instead of aerobics (which was my original intention), I decided to choose Duotones over Exiles, to be the album Gilda listens to in this piece. Exiles does have some slow-tempo songs (such as “The Way It Must Be” and “Our Last Farewell”), but it’s not an album I’d put on a ‘music to do something relaxing to’ playlist. Duotones on the other hand, I’d sometimes listen to on CD in high school, as I did homework. Besides, Exiles is a concept album about a break-up. It’s not exactly the most pleasant thing to listen to when you pay attention to the lyrics.

Now to the art itself!

Since this artwork began with inspiration from the 1980s, I knew I had to draw Gilda’s hair in a perm. That was a given right from the beginning. To add to the retro aesthetic, I also gave her fuzzy wristbands (in citrus colors, of course) and bright purple leg warmers (same color as her earrings, which I omitted here). The tank top and shorts are the same colors as her Classic Green polo and skirt respectively.

Since the cover of Duotones shows Kenny G (the actual musician), I had to draw a Grunvalified version of the cover. As a subtle reference to The Aristocats and Kenny G himself being a jazz musician, I drew him as a domestic cat/feline. It’s fitting. Kenny G’s a cool cat, heheh.

While we’re on the subject, I ended up making a minor mistake on that Grunvalified cover, partially due to the fact that I used a low-quality photo reference. I didn’t notice until it was too late, that on the original cover, every other letter in ‘Duotones’ is a navy blue, not all black like I originally thought it was. Which was… pretty embarrassing for me. I’ve seen that cover hundreds of times in my life, and yet I never noticed that not every letter was black like I thought. In my defense, though, that navy blue for the lettering on the CD and LP, isn’t much lighter than the black. It’s much more noticeable on the cassette version of the cover, which used a much lighter blue.

Also, because you were gonna ask, yes, Gilda is listening to “Songbird”. That is indeed how I imagined this scene.

The tree is what I’m proud of the most about this work; it started off as just a thick trunk and a single branch, which I later gave shading for depth, and stretched-out, beveled dots for texture. The roots were created by making duplicates of the tree asset, that were twisted and pinched, then partially erased so that they blended in with the rest of the tree. It was a beech that I had in mind. I know it’s not very convincing, but hey, at least I proved to myself I can draw convincing trees that aren’t birches.

Finally, as a subtle reference to Yoga from Cookie Run, I also drew a bag of pretzels. The pretzels’ flat appearance was achieved with thresholds and posterization over a photo, like with the oven from a few artworks ago. If I’m gonna use stock images, I’d at least like to have them appear stylized, so that they blend in with everything else.

And that’s all for this one. Post in the comments below what you think of this!

DON’T FORGET TO FOLLOW ME ON OTHER PLATFORMS:
DeviantArt: https://www.deviantart.com/phoenixofgrunvale
Twitter: twitter.com/StormTheArtist
Instagram: www.instagram.com/phoenix_of_g…YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCEtCO…
Discord: Contact me by my tag (Phoenix of Grunvale#1752) for an invite to my server.

Grunvale – Chapter 11, Part 3: Now Available on DA!

—–

Grunvale is owned by me. You’re free to draw fanart of it yourself, as long as you credit me.
Duotones is owned by Sony Music through Arista Records.
This artwork was made at 4K resolution, in 2.35:1.

—–

Also, in case you’re wondering, yes, I do recommend Exiles. Probably the only Fogelberg album I’d recommend in its entirety. It’s quite on the high side of 80s cheese, but there’s still some legitimate talent behind it. Hell, as a fan of music from the era, I’d even argue the cheesy factor makes the album more enjoyable.

Galarian Zigilda

Original DA Upload Date: August 13, 2019

Sinnoh’s gimmick of new evolutions to pre-existing Pokemon + Alola’s gimmick of regional variants to pre-existing Pokemon = a new form of Zigzagoon and Linoone I never knew I wanted, with Galarian Linoone able to evolve into a new Pokemon called Obstagoon.

Oh, and also a new version of Zigilda Zagrime that’s a Galarian Zigzagoon, instead of a shiny Hoennian.

—–

First things first, you’re probably wondering why I have this new version of Zigilda dressed in 70s attire, with the sweater, the bell-bottoms and the feathered hairdo and all that. Well, it’s because I’ve noticed that a lot of the Galarian Pokemon seem to take a lot of inspiration from the fashion of the 1970s. You thought that was just some random throw-away line I made about Gossifleur and Eldegoss back on Dynamaxed Margorbunny? No, it’s actually a legitimate observation, something I’ve picked up from my hundreds of hours of studying the history of fashion. I first noticed it with Eldegoss’ cotton, and how it looks like an afro, like that of Diana Ross or Pam Grier. And that led me to noticing how the red hair-like growths of its pre-evolution, Gossifleur, resembled a feathered hairdo, like that of Farrah Fawcett.

And now I’ve noticed how the color scheme and markings on Galarian Zigzagoon, Galarian Linoone and Obstagoon, look like the outfits of the quintessential 70s glam rock band Kiss. In fact, everyone’s noticed it… including none other than Gene Simmons himself! And yes, I totally see it. Even without Gene Simmons agreeing that Obstagoon looks like him, I agree Obstagoon looks like Simmons. I also think Galarian Linoone looks the most like Ace Frehley, and Galarian Zigzagoon looks like Paul Stanley.

So now that two of Galar’s evolution lines (that we know about) take inspiration from the aesthetics of the 1970s, I think it’s safe to say that this may be a theme with the region. And if it is, I’m down for it. The 70s are an awesome decade.

Anyhoo, that’s pretty much my explanation for having Galarian Zilgilda dressed how she is here. My personal headcanon is, this Galarian version of Zigilda is into 70s stuff, as much as ZP-51498 Gilda is into 80s stuff. It just seems fitting to me.

Now to the artwork itself!

The purple that Galarian Zigilda’s wearing here, are actually inverted colors from ZP-51498 Gilda. The dark purple of her sweater was inverted from the light green of ZP-51498 Gilda’s classic polo, and the pink of her shirt is inverted from the dark green from her classic skirt and ribbons. The Zigilda asset is actually modified from an asset of the ZP-51498 Gilda (also dressed in 70s attire) I drew and colored before working on the version you see in this artwork (uncolored version with Gilda here) . I also made a version with the shiny Hoennian Zigilda, that I… may or may not post. Also, the birch trees in the background were quite easy to make. Essentially, they’re just three layers of white lines with blurred bevels, with a clipped and stretched black brush overlayed over each layer. Not perfect, but way better than my attempt back in 2018.

And that’s all for this one. 🎶 Shout it, shout it, shout it out loud! 🎶 in the comments below what you think of this.

—–

Grunvale is owned by me. You’re free to draw fanart of it yourself, as long as you credit me.
Pokemon is owned by Nintendo.
This artwork was made at 4K resolution, in 1:1.33.

Zigilda Zagrime and Wendirisu Wyler (80s Pokemon AU)

Original DA Upload Date: February 28, 2020

Yesterday was Pokemon Day AND National Retro Day… so I created a retro (1980s) AU, of the Grunvale Pokemon AU! An… AU-ception. BWWWOOOOOMMMMMMMMMM.

—–

So which version of Zigilda Zagrime have I decided to go with, the shiny Hoennian version or the Galarian version? Well… why not both? I see both versions as equally valid for different AUs. The Hoennian version of Zigilda being for the present day (since I drew her in the Classic Green outfit), and the Galarian version of her being for the retro AUs (since I drew her in a 70s-inspired outfit). But, of course, the differences don’t stop there.

If you recall the original Galarian Zigilda artwork, you may remember that I said that the purple colors of her outfit were inverted colors from the Classic Green outfit of Gilda Grime and Hoennian Zigilda Zagrime. Well, because I think purple fits the Galarian version well, and also because I want to more easily differentiate between the two versions of Zigilda, I decided to make purple be Galarian Zigilda’s color, just like green is regular Gilda’s and Hoennian Zigilda’s. And I continued with the inverted colors here; the pink of the jacket is inverted from the dark green of regular Gilda’s suit trousers, and the lavender of the trousers here are inverted from the lighter green of regular Gilda’s suit jacket.

And, of course, because I’ve always wanted to, I decided to draw Wendy as a Pachirisu named ‘Wendirisu’. The colors of her suit, as well as the mint-green streak in her hair, are also inverted from regular Wendy’s purple suit. In this scene, Wendirisu is supposed to be blushing about her boyfriend, Zigilda’s adopted Golbat brother Randolbat (this universe’s version of Randy), but since Pachirisu already have yellow cheeks, I had to approach the blushing in a different way than I usually do. So, seeing as Pachirisu, as Pikaclones, store electricity in their cheeks, I decided to show her ‘blushing’ by having small bolts of electricity emerge from her cheeks. The bolts were executed the same way as the bolts in Arrival On Yonderpine; they were placed over the layers I used to light the scene.

Overall, even if I didn’t get this out right on February 27th (when Pokemon Day and National Retro Day both were), I still love how it turned out. It’s a cute scene, and I’m glad I finally got to draw Wendy as a Pachirisu.

And that’s all for this one. Post in the comments below what you think!

—–

Grunvale is owned by me. You’re free to draw fanart of it yourself, as long as you credit me.
Pokemon is owned by Nintendo.
This artwork was made at 4K resolution, in 2.35:1.

—–

You know, seeing as this is still February, and it regards Wendy’s relationship on Randy, this can also technically double as a late Valentine’s Day artwork. Heheh. 😁

Watch Out Where The Huskies Go…

Original DA Upload Date: December 20, 2019

Yeah, Gilda ain’t gonna fall for that, Margo. Not after eleven years of living with abusive brothers that pranked her that same way.

—–

This is just a triple-panel comic I drew to celebrate the official start of Winter. Which is actually, technically tomorrow, but hey, it doesn’t hurt to be a day early. Especially considering my nostalgia for snow.

You see, I live in a part of the US, that pretty much only experiences Winter in name only. Jacksonville, FL does frequently see days in the 50s Fahrenheit this time of year, but that’s it. Below-freezing temperatures and especially snow are almost unheard of. New York, on the other hand, is on the other extreme. In New York, I’ve experienced Winter days with temperatures measured in the negative degrees Fahrenheit, and snow measured in feet. And of course, in the Grunvaliverse, the town of Grunvale, being an upstate New Pork town based on my own hometown of Guilderland, NY, would experience those freezing temperatures and high snows. Hell, where I am writing the web novel so far, a big blizzard is coming into town.

But enough about the goings on of the big snowstorm in the web novel, let’s talk about the goings on of the big snowstorm in this comic!

Snow is pretty easy to draw. I can see why Norm of the North and Arctic Dogs chose snowy settings for their movies, because at the beginner level (or in those movies’ cases, the idiot level), snow doesn’t take much effort at all to draw or render. However, I’m not a beginner. So I actually put some effort into giving the snow texture, more than just solid white. It’s mostly compact, with just a little bit of flakiness at its top. Just like actual snow. To give a feel of the flow of time throughout the comic, I made sure to have the clouds rolling in the background, and the snow interface randomized in each panel. Compare each panel; the clouds and snow are different in each. That’s attention to detail for ya.

As for the outfits the girls are wearing here, I actually drew concept art of Gilda’s winter clothes all the way back last year, but only now did I have an opportunity to draw it again. Unlike a lot of old Grunvale elements I’ve since scrapped, I found the outfit good enough to keep. It fits Gilda well. Margo’s outfit, on the other hand, is entirely new. The parka was inspired by that of Kenny McCormick, as well as Ronnie Anne Santiago, both her usual hoodie, and the parka we’ve seen her wear in official artwork. Also, as this is set in the cold, I decided to show Gilda and Margo getting frostnip, which is shown here by the pink of their cheeks, noses and ears (all of which are some of the most suspectible to frostbite).

A Twitter friend of mine, AnimatedAntic, had trouble reading Margo’s dialogue, due to the snowy interface obscuring the speech bubbles. I can understand the criticism, however, I do have an explanation as to why I did the speech bubbles the way I did. That being, I thought it would look awkward having Gilda and Margo standing behind the interface, but their speech bubbles appearing in front of it. I did experiment with the snow turning transparent over the speech bubble, but it just looked awkward to me, so I decided to just have all the snow be opaque instead. Probably not the best idea in practice, but I tend to think in terms of how things would actually appear. And the way I was thinking, if a speech bubble were to actually appear above Gilda and Margo, it would be obscured by the snow. For those having trouble reading the speech bubble, Margo’s saying:

“Hey, look, Gilda! Lemon snow! Don’t you wanna try it? I mean, you do like lemons, don’t ya?”

Anyways, that’ll be all for this piece. Happy Winter, everyone!

Grunvale – Chapter 11, Part 3: Now Available on DA!

—–

Grunvale is owned by me. You’re free to draw fanart of it yourself, as long as you credit me.
All three panels of this artwork were made at 4K resolution, in 2.35:1. However, they have been compressed to 1080p for this upload, to allow for easier loading.

Interdimensional Celebration (600 Twitter Followers)

Original DA upload date: November 29, 2019

Grunvale’s oddball tetrad, and the fiery redhead of the Korvat Isles, celebrate yet another hundred-follower milestone breached on Twitter.

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Wow… 600 followers. And to think that not much longer than a year ago, I’d just crossed 300 followers and thought it was a huge milestone (yeah, I know, that artwork was specifically celebrating 300 DA watchers, but I crossed 300 followers on Twitter around the same time, so looking back, I see that artwork as fainting two Magcargo with one Muddy Water). And just in the span of this year, I’ve crossed 400 and 500. And now, as of last night, I’ve broken the barrier of 600… it still feels surreal. All I can say about that, to everyone who finds my work awesome enough to warrant a follow, is, well, thank you. Thank you all. You’re all awesome. Here’s to 700 and beyond!

Now to the artwork itself… HOO BOY. Get comfortable, there’s a lot to unpack here.

I knew as the milestone was approaching that I wanted all five of my most prominent characters (Gilda Grime, Margo Hynde, Wendy Wyler, April Lowry and Rowan Rudyard) in this piece together, and I wanted them all in their formal attire. It’s a special occasion, after all. And nothing says special occasion like giant groups of characters gathered together, dressed to impressed and ready to celebrate! So that’s what I went with.

Of course, Gilda’s in her 40s-style yellow dress, and Margo’s in her sequined yellow dress. That was a given right from the time I conceived the idea. Fun fact; back at the beginning of this year, I was honestly considering making the blue dress Margo wore back on Valentine’s Day her main formal outfit, over the yellow one she’s had since the beginning. But I had a change of heart after I realized my followers like the yellow dress enough to make fanart of it… which in turn led to me realizing that it’s much more fitting for Margo than the blue one. I totally see the oddball tetrad going to a formal event together, which Gilda wears her yellow dress to… and then she gets angry at Margo once she sees that she’s also wearing yellow, just to troll her. Hell, it’s in character for both of them to react just like that in that kind of scenario.

Wendy’s formal outfit is basically an updated version of the dress she wore when she danced with Randy. Most major differences here is that she’s wearing diamond jewelry instead of pearls and gold hoops, and she has a beret. I did consider at one point giving her dark purple gloves (the same color as her beret and heels), but I abandoned the idea. As for April, since she made Gilda’s yellow dress, I figured it’d make sense for hers to have the same basic design (puffy shoulders, lace trim), but with a different color, of course. So that’s what I went with. That red is the same red as the polo her brother often wears.

And as for Rowan, I did experiment with drawing her in a dress, but after drawing her in a tuxedo in my sketchbook, I found that the latter fit her personality better, so I went with that. Whenever I draw Rowan in a formal situation in Korvat Isles, she’ll be wearing this tux. She’s not like Margo where she just has a regular disdain for dresses, she hates them so much that it doesn’t even register as an option to her. Also, because Korvat Isles is set in a completely different universe from Grunvale, and also because it involves magic, I decided to have her coming through a portal from the Korvativerse, and have her use a potion to spell out the word ‘FOLLOWERS’ instead of hold up a sign. Which makes April’s nervous face all the more fitting.

The scenery was fun to figure out how to execute. I loved the carpet texture (without beveling) so much, I decided to save it as a PNG for future reference. Considering this is a piece celebrating a milestone, I decided to give the scenery the colors of precious metals. The carpet is gold, the wall is silver, and the baseboard is bronze. All and all, this was a fun piece to work on…

…and you very nearly did not get to see it!

Immediately after finishing this artwork, I decided to clean out some old PSDs in ArtStudio Pro. And when I went to the Photos app shortly after, I saw, much to my horror, that I forgot to export this. So I immediately rushed back to the ASP app… where much to my relief, the PSD for this file (which was a whopping 132.5MB, in case you’re wondering) was spared, and still ready to be exported. Phew! Could you imagine if I deleted this by mistake? This took me nearly six hours, and plus, this is one of the works I’m doing for the college assignment. That would have been a nightmare if I deleted it by mistake!

Thankfully, it was not. You know that carpet texture I talked about above? That too still had yet to be exported, and was one of the layers of the PSD. So this artwork, literally owes its existence to that texture. The gold carpet these girls stand on, is holy ground.

And that’s all I have to say about this artwork. Thanks again, everyone, for helping me reach this milestone. As for this artwork, post in the comments below what you think!

Grunvale – Chapter 11, Part 2: Now Available on DA!

—–

Grunvale and Korvat Isles are owned by me. You’re free to draw fanart of them yourself, as long as you credit me.
This artwork was made at 4K resolution, in 2.35:1.

—–

(reads Margo’s sign)

…oh, real mature, Margo.

Shoppin’ Around

Original DA upload date: August 24, 2019

Gilda and April are out on a shopping trip the mall, and the procyonine geek, at her friend’s suggestion, has bought herself a pair of white gloves, which she has instantly fell in love with.

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April Lowry doesn’t just like wearing gloves to make a feminine fashion statement. She also wears them because of her OCD; she hates getting her hands dirty. But only August knows this. When anyone else asks her, the only reason she gives is ”cause dey’re pretteh, a’right?’ or something similar.

As for Gilda Grime, considering her personality as a retro geek, and also, to quote The Narrator, ‘gloves been out of mainstream, non-winter fashion for like 50 years, unless you’re a cartoon character or Michael Jackson‘, I also see her as the kind of individual who’d wear gloves on (formal) occasion (which, to be fair, she does). In fact, Gilda herself has a design deeply rooted in classic/retro cartoons. Her outfit is inspired by that of characters such as Little Audrey (the character on which Audrey from Harvey Street Kids is based) and Luan Loud (who comes from a franchise inspired by comic strips from yesteryear), and Grunvale‘s art style is inspired by Sonic the Hedgehog, which itself is inspired by that of the 1930s Mickey Mouse cartoons. Not to mention that Gilda’s Fleischer-style counterpart, ‘Li’l Gilda’, always wears white four-digit gloves, in keeping with the cliches of cartoons of the era. With all that in mind, I don’t think the regular, ZP-51498 Gilda would mind wearing gloves at all.

Anyhoo, back to the subject matter, this is supposed to be set shortly after April gives Gilda that yellow dress. April originally made the dress for herself to wear, but when she found that it didn’t fit her, she planned to throw it out. She had a change of heart, however, when she found that the dress fit Gilda perfectly. The way I pictured this work, this shopping trip was to buy accessories to wear with their outfits. Those white gloves are the same gloves Gilda wears with her dress.

Now to the art itself… and boy is there a story behind it.

While I didn’t have any serious mishaps on my part like with Kyle’s birthday present, it was ASP itself that was giving me issues this time. ArtStudio Pro does tend to crash on me when I do certain complex things with it, like inpainting or a massive (100px+) blur, but those are usually by accident, and only happens once during the drawing process, if at all. This time though, the app crashed… I’d like to say five times. Five times! As I was just doing what I normally do! If I had to guess, I’d say that it was the background that was giving me issues. It’s got skewing and gradients going on with the walls, beveling with the bush, the flowers were created by making a bunch of thick strokes with a generated stroke effect… there’s a lot of complex stuff going on in the background, is what I’m trying to say. If that was what overloaded the app, I wouldn’t be surprised.

But even with all the issues it caused me… I’m proud of how it turned out. It even inspired me to draw a few experiments in ASP, to see how far I could push the 3D illusion using only the tools present in the app. You’ll… be seeing those here in the next few days.

And that’s all for this one. Post in the comments below what you think of this!

…hey, what’s that graffiti on the wall?

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Grunvale – Chapter 11, Part 2: Now Available on DA!

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Grunvale is owned by me. You’re free to draw fanart of it yourself, as long as you credit me.
This artwork was made at 4K resolution, in 2.35:1.

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To add to that paragraph about Gilda’s retro inspirations, her retro geek personality is inspired by how I was in my youth, and still am today, albeit to a somewhat lesser extent. I still love retro music and retro video games just like Gilda, but as a teenager, I wanted to look retro too, just as Gilda does Grunvale. I even grew out long, 60s/70s style sideburns, like those of Ray Dorset and Joe Cocker. I thought they looked cool then. I know better now.

April Gets Cool

Original DA upload date: October 10, 2019

The fourth of twelve of this series, and the last featuring one of the Grunvale girls as the opposite archetype. Here’s what April Lowry would look like as a tomboy!

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No, April still doesn’t have freckles. The way I imagined this piece, April drew the freckles on herself with a brow pencil, hence why they’re brown instead of black like those of the other three main Grunvale girls. Also, yes, underneath the heavy blush, that is how April’s rosy complexion naturally looks. I mean, she’s August’s twin, it only makes sense.

Not much else to say about this one, other than I used a motion blur effect to get the impression of movement, like this was a photo taken right as April was dropping da mic. Also, as a nod to April being LGBT, I decided to have her wearing a gay pride pin and lesbian pride pin on her jacket. Both were achieved with a rendered stroke effect for the border, and double-beveling for depth. Originally had her just wearing the rainbow flag pin, but a Twitter friend of mine, ‘FrickEpic’, suggested that I also have her wearing a lesbian pride pin. Took some digging to figure out what the lesbian pride flag looks like, there’s… a lot of different versions of it. But the one shown here seems to be the most current and accepted version, so I decided to include it.

And that’s all for this one. Post below what you think. Next up is… I guess Fashionista Gilda. See you then.

Grunvale – Chapter 11, Part 2: Now Available on DA!

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Grunvale is owned by me. You’re free to draw fanart of it yourself, as long as you credit me.
This artwork was made at 4K resolution, in 1:1.33.