lamaery

Simply wanted to draw a Jon. It's been a while. And it felt wrong not to add a Martin. Cow-mug or cat-mug? ----------------------------- image description: Two digital potraits of Jonathan Sims ex-archivist and his Martin K. Blackwood painted in a dynamic mixture of rough, broad and thin, squiggly brush strokes. The first images shows Jon's head and upper body, sitting and reading a paperback book. His long black, salt and pepper hair is gathered in a loose knot at the back of his neck. The black beard on his jawline, pointy chin and upper lip is not very dense. Small round scars pepper the brown skin of his face, neckand the back of his visible hand. Additional there is a thick pink-white-ish line stretching across his pronounced Adam's apple. He wears a thick woolen cardigan in a deep green and rectangular glasses through which he gazed with his large, heavy lidded eyes not directly at the book in his hand, but just over the pages at something else to the left. His expression is not fully open and happy, but certainly unguarded and soft. In the shadow of the book cover which has the symbol of a green eye on his, one can make out a black ring on the middle of his left hand. Martin is depicted as a light-skinned, big, broad man with a round face and tousled, ash-blond hair. He too wears glasses, although their frames a big and much rounder than Jon's. He wears a green-blue pullover and holds two mugs in his hands, both steaming with hot tea. One mug features the cartoony face of a cat, half hidden behind the tea string and paper bit on those. The other mug has a shaggy Scottish highland cow on it and the painful pun "Cow are you?" There are soft dimples in Martin's round cheeks as he smirks mirthfully down to his right.

I know moth!Jon has been a thing for a while in the tma fandom. It wasn't something I was particularly seeking out when digging through fanfiction, but when I came across dustsceawung by callmearcturus, I couldn't resist the urge for character design :D Jon is a fairy who diet consists of books (and other things) and Martin dies wool for a living. It's cute.

Since the line art / sketches for these have been reblogged more often, than the reblog with the coloured version (and I like the coloured version), I dare to repost this one. So that it may be shared and seen more as well. At the danger of being repetitive... Have an additional Mr Spider :D

Now with colour and description (thank you @saintbleeding for that, I expanded on it a little bit) ------------------------ [ID: Two versions of a sketch page of characters from The Magnus Archives (the first is the sketches, the second has them rendered in full colour): Martin is pale and freckled with light blond hair and light violet glasses and is holding a thermos and cup, with text in the steam billowing from them reading “Let’s hope it’s not oolong”; Jon has a brown skin tone and dark wavy, grey-streaked hair coming down to his shoulders, He watches with a sad, wide-eyed, stare, His eyes are glowing in a bright, green and small eye symbols are forming around his head; Tim smiling and looking slyly to the side; a small, low-detail bust of Sasha with dark skin, round glasses and a large blob of dark her bound to the back of her head, behind a larger, more detailed bust of Not!Sasha looking over her shoulder (not by op: both of them are meant to be differing designs for Sasha, but the bigger sketch showing a young woman with a blond bob of hair could work for Not!Shasha quite well); Jon and Martin grinning smugly, Martin has a purple towel hanging over his shoulder, Jon is wearing a soft salmon colored hoodie, which is too large for him; Tim lounging on a wheely-chair and wearing an open Hawaiian shirt, holding a mug with a paper umbrella and smiling; Georgie is dark-skinned with short curly hair that has a red shade to it and freckles on her face. She is looking mistrustfully off-camera with an arm around Melanie, whose face is downturned. She has dark glasses concealing her eyes. The second image is a stylized, spidery figure consisting of a dark black, uneven blob for a body, a smaller black blob for a head, with almond shaped eyes scratched roughly and randomly across it, including a small bowtie at its non existent neck. Thin, scraggly, slightly hairy lines bent in many unnatural angles for the eight legs of the creature. A tiny hat adorned its head. It is with a splatter of bright red. End ID.]

I was just scribbling tonight and suddenly was overwhelmed with the desire to draw their smug little faces...

Well kids, wether you are getting back into the fandom now, or stayed here the rest of the time like us other weirdos, here is one of the gems I stumbled over while digging through loads of fan fictions to distract myself from the stress and the woe of the world. Not fine together by asleeb It is utterly fluffy and involves a lot of neck kisses. It is rated mature – for mild reasons, though (it's in the tags) – and goes for very soft ace/allo representation. At the same time is written in a way that makes it feel very emotionally grounded and in the moment. The banter is excellent and in my opinion feels very true to both of their characters.

So yeah, if that sounds like your cup of tea, give it a read. I definitely enjoyed lots of it. --------------------------------------------------------

[image description: The first image shows Martin and Jon standing next to a highland cow. Both are wearing outdoor jackets and scarfs. Jon a big red one and Martin a thinner blue one. Jon has brown, pockmarked skin, wears glasses and long, grey-streaked hair pulled into a loose bun at the back of his head. He gazes at the cows head, apprehensively touching is long fur on the top of its head. The cow has long, curved horns, and a short face with only its snout peaking out of the brown, shaggy fur. Martin stands next to Jon, almost a head taller, a very round face and nose. He has light skin, that is peppered lightly with an array of freckles and blond with an ashen shade to it. His expression when looking down at Jon is somewhere between very fond and highly amused. He says "There, now you like a cow."

The second image is an array of sketches and scenes. On the left side is a sketch of Martin's face, looking down, smiling. Underneath is a depiction of Jon looking worried and haggard. To the right in a panel of its own we see both of them standing next to a hight coffee table with both their big backpacks stuffed underneath. Martin is holding a small plastic cup, smiling, while Jon bickers next to him in the morning light. Underneath is a little sketch of them at a bus stop next to a random field somewhere in the highlands. Both are wearing their backpacks. Jon stands there hesitantly. "Seeing the ... 'sights'" he comments. Martin rambles excitedly towards the landscape around them and exclaims "The Sights!" In the lower left corner is another tiny sketch of Jon giving a surprised Martin a peck on the cheek. The third image is a drawing of both of them sitting on a blanket in the grass with a pasture with highland cattle, tress and the highlands in the background. We see them from behind. Martin is leaning into Jon, his left hand holding to the back of Jon's jacket. Jon has his right arm through around Martin and holds him tight, while Martin whispers "thank you for holding my hand."]

Yes, of course we are still listening!!!! While I adore these characters and am absolutely infatuated with their voices (there is a reason my go-to-resting-spot has been the soft, comfortable jonmartin rot part of my brain for the last weeks), one of my thirst thoughts was like "haven't these characters suffered enough!!"

This is not directly from the Under The Skin Series by @anonymoustypewriter, but especially now with part two starting to continue the story, I cannot stop thinking about how good Selkie-Martin would look in Peter Lukas’ get-up. (the answer is very good) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [image description: several sketches of Selkie-Martin, on the left it is showing him from head to knee as a large, stoutly built man with light grey, wavy hair, light, freckled skin wearing a light grey, blue turtle neck pullover, charcoal grey dress pants and a dark blue, long coat. He looks serious and holds the strap of a sea bag over his right shoulder, A bit fur is peeking out form the bag. In the upper right corner is a close-up of his face in a three-quarter profile looking towards the viewer. The coat collar is pulled up and he wears a white captain’s cap, with a dark shield and a golden cord decorating the front. Below is another close-up showing his head in profile. This time he wears a dark blue, knit hat and his seal skin around his neck, holding it with one had. His cheeks, ears and nose are slightly pink from the could and his breath is white cloud coming from his mouth.  Further below in the shadow of the standing Martin’s coat is a drawing of a seal peaking out of the water. It is wearing the captain’s cap.]

in Martin’s defence, it is pretty sexy when he does it...

image description below the cut:

I am currently re-listening to season 5 of The Magnus Archives, and as I was looking through some fanart last weekend I stumbled over this post, read the mentioned fanfiction (it is post season 5 and called Out There, Somewhere, it is lovely) and fell, as one does, into a JonMartin-hole...  The Sweetest Thing  features an AU with Jon as a marine biologist and a selkie Martin. Cute seals and fluffy fanfiction? If that is your jam (it certainly is mine), I can recommend it :D  Oooh and just for fun, in case you want some seal-facts, I can recommend watching this fantastic video by William Burwin here.

Hello, thank you. :) Well, since these magnus archive portraits are all done in more or less the same manner, I can elaborate on those. I usually start with a pencil sketch in my sketchbook to find the general idea and expression that I am looking for with what I want to depict. I take a picture of that into procreate and sketch over that a second time, manifesting more firmly what I want the drawing to be, mirroring that sketch a few time to make corrections.

Then I put my sketch on low opacity and draw my linework over it with the blackburn brush. Overall I only used two brushes for these character portraits: the Blackburn drawing brush, for its roughness and expressiveness and the Syrup ink brush for sharper edges and more precise work.

The linework can be rough and scratchy. I often end up erasing and correcting parts of it later in the painting process, when it doesn't match up with what I want to paint. After that I start blocking in my base colours, attributing my general ideas for object colours, values and thinking in broad terms about where I want my light sources want to be, how warm or cold I want them to be and how the background colour will affect | reflect my overall light situation. (For the jonmartin example here, the main light was a less strong, frontal light, slightly from a both with ambient light from around them, to give the image something like an overcast feel and enhance the slightly heightened position of the viewer. For the season 2 Martin drawing instead I went with a cold blue light coming from the left, and a warmer more frontal light from the right, making it more of an indoor situation with maybe a window and a lamp or second sunshine filled window being possible light sources)

After that it is detail work: fleshing out the light and shadow parts. I like to pick my colours from the image via colour picker and work then with various degrees of opacity on the brush to blend and form. But do this for long enough and your painting becomes more grey and grey, so it helps to to throw in some fresh, more saturated colour from the colour wheel, for example at strong light and shadow edges or for rebounding light to counteract that. It basically comes down to making lots of educated guesses to what feels right. I also tend to mirrow-swapp the image now and then to get a fresh impression and find obvious errors for example in the anatomy.

For a stronger contrast in light and shadows and pulling everything together I often use very light colours on an extra layer with multiply and very dark colours on a layer with adding colour. As for colour decisions and ambient light Marco Bucci here has a video on it, that puts very good and much more educated explanations to my own thought processes while painting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwLQ0cDb4cE These character portraits take somewhere between two to five hours. I usually get swept up by the process of making them and suddenly it's two hours later. This rendering was done in four and a half hours. Also I spent a lot of time in the last half year doing these kind of portraits as studies from photographic references. It was mainly to get a better feel for different kinds of faces and skin colours, but it also helped a lot to get a better idea of shadows and light. (For example like this study for Rosario Dawson:)

so yeah. I hope this was insightful. :)

Martin Blackwood – season 5 his reason Ah, hell, let's finish that series off. Properly. With boyfriends. (I do have some ideas for the other avatars, and few extras, but for now, let's call it a day) :) ------------------ [image description: It's Jon and Martin standing next to each other looking slightly upwards. Their holding hands. Jon's black hair and beard is more greyed than ever, his brown skin marked by small round scars on his neck cheeks, forehead (one prominent one at the left side of his upper lip) and a thin long one across his throat. He looks tired and melancholic but composed. His pupils are little points of green lights. He wears his dark brown, rumply jacket and the green pullover and checkered shirt from his first season portrait, both look much more tattered and distinctly less pristine. Martin also wears the green blue sweater from his season one portrait under a grey windstopper jacket that is designed with the upper part around the shoulder and collar in a darker colour. He has a backpack on his bag. His blond hair is tousled and there are the beginnings of a blond beard around his chin and jawline. His expression is determined and resolute.]

Martin Blackwood – season 4 lonely I feel like Corruption and the Lonely get a lot of treats with the pandemic going on. As someone who thrives on independence and just doing my own thing, and becomes a bit of a hermit when recuperating, retreating into one's own space is not really a help, when being alone too much becomes the actual problem. So one of the lesson from the last two years, was to be more aware of my social needs and be more proactive about when to reach out for my friends and family. Or just make sure I plan in enough social meet-ups into my weekly schedule. The Lonely is definitely one of the powers I felt at times quite vulnerable towards. So I really feel for Martin here. Make sure to not get lost in the fog.

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[ID: Martin is a broad guy with a round face and light, blond hair wearing a white / light grey hoody and is standing in front of a grey blue background in a very pale light. Whisps of fog are floating past him as he directly stares at the viewer with empty grey, pallid, grey eyes through his glasses. He looks disconsolate in a passiv, silent way. There are dark shadows around his eyes.]

Martin Blackwood – season 3 stepping in Well, someone has to take and read statements, while their boss is off getting kidnapped... ------------------- [image description: Martin, a big, stout guy with blond hair and round glasses, sits at a desk his hands lying on some sheets of paper and a dark yellow folder, probably containing a statement. He stares down at the paper with puffy, reddened eyes and reads. A tape recorder is propped up in front of him on the desk. He wears a light grey hoody and is lit from the front and slightly from below – likely by something like a desk lamp. The background around him is of a shadowy, purplelish brown.]