Meet
Roondar Nackle. He is a forest gnome with some magical talent who enjoys
nothing more than watching corpses decay. It may seem like an odd hobby, but
for someone who may live up to five hundred years, taking a year or so to
observe the process of a body turning to dirt seems totally reasonable.
It’s
probably a good thing that he’s more interested in the dead than the living,
because the living tend to have no idea how to deal with him. It would be
better if he was morbid and morose, because his constant enthusiasm and excitement
when talking about corpses is rather unsettling. He tends to get a lot of
vacant and confused looks, though those that know him well have discovered that
the best way to avoid his decomposition lectures is to point him in the
direction of a dead animal they saw recently.
Roondar is
a character I made for playing in a D&D campaign that, sadly, didn’t last
that long. However, I’ve recently joined another game that is allowing me to
play him again – my hope is that this time, I’ll be able to explore him to his
full potential. However, this isn’t really a blog about D&D; this is about
that picture up there.
About a
year and a half ago, I decided to start working on several tasks every day to
improve skills that I wanted to develop. One of said skills was drawing. I used
to thoroughly enjoy drawing as a child, but at some point I felt my skills had
reached a plateau and – that plateau not being particularly high, I stopped.
However, I never stopped wishing I could draw – so, at last I decided that what
I lacked in talent, I would try to make up for with practice and skill.
I wasn’t
certain I would get anywhere with it, but I knew I’d never find out if I didn’t
try. So, I started working on drawing exercises. Every single day, I spent some
time drawing, constantly moving on to the next task and training my hand to
actually draw what I wanted it to. I very rarely attempted anything outside of
the various drawing tutorials or exercises I found.
When I resurrected
Roondar for a new D&D campaign, I decided it was time to attempt an original
piece – no model, no tutorial, just something straight from my imagination to
paper. It took some work, and I still had to reference some of my earlier
exercises for proportions and such, but I at last completed something that I
was happy enough with that I was willing to share – and I was delighted to see
that my efforts had finally paid off.
Roondar
here is the result of a year and a half of drawing daily – only spending
between 10 and 45 minutes on each of those days. Looking at how little time
that is in the grand scheme of things, I’m quite happy with how far my drawing
skills have come. Soon I’ll have to stop claiming that I can’t draw.
Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.
Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.
If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.
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