Garlon and plenty more - January 2023 wrap up!

February 4, 2023 Christopher Cant

Alrighty, the first month of 2023 down already! We got that one done a bit quick, didnt we?

Incase you don’t keep a close eye on my every move, here’s what we got up to in the month of January:

Plenty of Fall of Camelot art made live on Twitch.tv/ChristopherCant

This month, there was lots and lots of hanging out, chatting absolute shit, and sometimes painting stuff, over on my Twitch channel - I’ll show you what we worked on, starting off with my favourite:

Garlon the Red, the invisible killer and brother to King Pellam, the Maimed King - this guy is a minor villain in an Arthurian tale that the protagonist hunts down and slays. Garlon has the very interesting ability of making himself invisible, hence the mist representing that power, and stays in his brothers castle, hence the castle in the background.

And a sketch of his brother King Pellam, which will probably have an alternative version in which he is maimed from Sir Balin and the background is transformed into a wasteland:

Next, the Fall of Camelot banner, to be used on the site homepage and other places - honestly I have much further I want to take it, but it’s developed enough to start using it on the site, so it’s the first thing youll see when you visit FallofCamelot.com!

The finished Sir Balin, central character in the Arthurian arc that I’m illustrating. Now that I’ve started to add backgrounds to the portraits above, I may go back and add backgrounds to these earlier guys:

And his brother Sir Balan, who plays more of a supporting role to Balin’s adventures:

I also painted the Sword with the Red Hilt, the cursed blade that Balin draws and pulls him down a dark, tragic path. I’m working on some extra bits and bobs for alternatives to this image, such as without the scabbard, and also the sword embedded into red marble and floating in a river, as Merlin did with it after finding Balin and Balan’s graves.

I also made a sketch that’s probably of Sir Lancelot - I’m not completely decided yet, but it’s likely. He definitely has the flamboyant and superior air that I’d want Lancelot to have:

Lastly, we have a general use illustration that I’ve been working on for the last couple of days - I’ve no idea who this guy is, but it feels to me like hes hunting that dragon, so I’m going to do some browsing through Arthurian characters until I hit upon a dragonslayer, or an approximation.

The website this art is for, FallofCamelot.com, was updated with many of these pieces of art and some of the articles. I need to do some editing, and there are still plenty of things to build and publish in the next couple of months to fully tell the Balin story, but the site is starting to take on some actual substance!

I published part 2 of my ‘Future proofing your art career’

I wrote another article tackling the AI art issue, part 2 of my planned 3 part series. This article was diving deeper into ways to bolster your career against AI.

If you haven't read it yet, it's over here.

The next one will be about ways to utilise AI itself to improve your art career, which is my last article planned for the ai series and then I'll move on and cover a different topic.

Other projects are still underway

The art-education site that I’m working on with some artists I know is actively being worked on and should be live soon, as will my upcoming mentorship program! I’ve been wanting to help out upcoming artists more, after not doing anything in 2022, so it’s cool to have these so close to launching. You’ll hear more about both of these soon.

I’m back in Turkey!

We hopped back over the border from Georgia to Turkey, and settled down for the next few months on the outskirts of a city on the Black Sea called Trabzon.

We are trying to save up money for a few things, including getting over to India, so we should be just sitting tight in this part of the world and knuckling down for the next 6 months or so.

Alrighty; this coming month will mostly be a continuation of the things I worked on this month, so I expect to delve much deeper into Sir Balin’s tragedy! Til next week, see you later gang!

Chris x