deviantART: gallery:aeonna/10347345

Secret Agent Cinder

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 05:40:28 PST

I posted this to Instagram last summer and since then I developed a whole story around this character. Cinder is an assassin during the French revolution with frequent under-cover missions. Her allegiance would be decided by a weekly web poll to determine who she should kill off next: aristocrats? republicans? counter-revolutionaries? imperial marshals?

I got quite excited about the idea until I found out that the name Cinder is already in use by another Cinderella spoof, apparently about cyborgs. So annoying...

A regency romance

Sat, 16 Jun 2012 01:16:29 PDT

I get the feeling that in Jane Austen books war's only effect on society life is introducing bachelors in uniforms.

Unrequited

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 11:01:42 PST

I have now tried screen tones and won't ever do it again.

The Story of the Bad Egg, p. 8

Wed, 25 May 2011 11:10:15 PDT

This is an illustration from an odd story book I wrote. I wanted to finish it by April 28th, but no such luck.

Read the whole story here [link]

Drow fascination with the sky

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 11:45:39 PDT

I'm working on a cover for the second volume of Corner Alley 13. This is far as I've gotten.

Merlin parody

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 12:58:12 PST

The lampooned object
Merlin is a TV-series, produced by the BBC, about Merlin from the Arthurian legend. The writers have taken fresh approach to the source material, the set-up is this:

Youthful sorcerer Merlin is newly arrived at Camelot, a castle lorded by king Uther. Uther hates magic and has made it his life's mission to eradicate everyone who practices it. With so much blood on his hands, Uther's Camelot is the natural target of attacks from the few, vengeful magicians who have survived. Merlin is told by a dragon that it is his destiny to protect future king Arthur, so Merlin must defend Camelot from magical attacks, while at the same time keeping his own powers a secret from everyone. A heavy burden indeed, especially since the unwittingly protected Arthur is such a prat.

The core cast is very likeable, and because the writers have changed so many details one can experience a thrill of expectation each time a familiar character presents him-/herself by name, knowing what their main role is but without exactly how events will play out, just that in the end, somehow, everything is going to end in tears.

Comment to anachronisms
The Arthurian legend is traditionally set in the 9th century, sometimes the 12th. The BBC series is hard to pinpoint in time: the clothes appear, in part, to be mediaeval but Camelot looks as though it was built in the 15th century or later. For this Arthurian legend to make sense it would have to be set in the 16th century as they have both potatoes, tomatoes (from America) and glass mirrors (not invented until the 16th century). The telephone catalogues are my own addition. I'm sure I would let even that pass.

Merlin is the intellectual property of the hallowed BBC.

Poster for Bernadotte comic

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 07:11:14 PST

This is a poster I put together from panels in the comic "Bernadotte, our French king".

It was necessary to make a collage because I couldn't sufficiently enlarge the cover to make a poster without a terrible loss of picture quality. So here is a wordless comic trailer instead.

Historical figures who feature in this poster:
Napoleon Bonaparte - right in top left panel
Joseph Bonaparte (later King of Naples and Spain) - left in the top left panel
Jean Baptiste Bernadotte - crowned Karl XIV Johan in the top right panel, and appears in a few more panels
Louis XVI - far left in the right middle panel, and under the guillotine in the center panel
Marie Antoinette - centred in the right middle panel
Axel von Fersen - far right in the right middle panel
Oscar Bernadotte (later king Oscar I) - the second centre panel from the bottom

Colouring was done by Gabrielle Nilsson

Serien kan nu köpas från bland andra följande bokhandlare
Bokus (nätbutik) [link]
Bokextra (nätbutik) [link]
Skivlagret (Eskilstuna, Halmstad, Johanneshov, Kalmar, Kristianesand, Motala och Trelleborg) [link]
Skolshoppen (nätbutik) [link]

April

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 05:10:25 PST

This is an illustration I did for the April 2009 issue of the manga magazine Shojo Stars.

It also featured in an exhibition in Malmö called Modern Svensk Manga.

The cat is derivative of Tom Puss, a creation of Marten Toonder's.

Bernadotte, our French king

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 12:27:48 PST

~Now available in stores!~

I am proud, and relieved, to present the project that I have been working on for the past four months: “Bernadotte, vår franske kung” – which means Bernadotte, our French king in Swedish. It is a comic about the life of Charles XIV John, or Karl XIV Johan as he is called in Sweden, and Carl III Johan in Norway. All 36 pages are drawn and I will be putting everything together next week.

Karl XIV Johan's biography in brief
Karl Johan was born in 1763 in a small village near the French Pyrenees as Jean Baptiste Bernadotte, son to a low-level lawyer. To escape the legal profession he enrolled in the army at the age of 17. He did quite well there, but his career road was blocked by the laws of the time, which stated that only those of noble birth could gain officer’s rank. This and many other things were over-turned come the French revolution in 1789. Although Jean Baptiste was not a whole-hearted supporter of the revolution and the chaos it brought, it did provide him with rapid advancement and was the catalyst of a fantastic life story in which he served first the Republic and then the emperor Napoleon, and in which chance and coincidence would eventually take him to the distant northern land of Sweden where he was made king and given a new name.

The current king of Sweden is descended from Jean Baptiste. The crown princess Victoria is to be married next year, which coincides with the 200 year jubilee of her French ancestor's election to crown prince of Sweden.

For this project I have taken care to be historically correct, and there are plenty of Easter eggs for those who know their history!

The production team
The comic is written by Maria Bergström, drawn by me and coloured by Gabrielle Nilsson, known as Gabbi here on Deviantart. Anne-le Sahlin has provided support though additional historical research. The publisher is Kulturpoolen i Falun, who specializes in historical comics and often pick relatively new artists to work with. I have made one comic for them before, “Little Selma from Mårbacka”.

How to purchase
The comic is now available to buy! Many stores will not have it on their shelves yet, but you can remind them or, if you can't wait, the comic is available through the following vendors:

Bokus (on-line) [link]
Bokextra (on-line) [link]
Skivlagret (Eskilstuna, Halmstad, Johanneshov, Kalmar, Kristianesand, Motala and Trelleborg) [link]
Skolshoppen (on-line) [link]
Ord & Bok (on-line) [link]

ISBN number is: 978-91-977522-9-9.
At present the comic is only available in Swedish.

Links
Please note that the colour work of this piece is © Gabrielle Nilsson. I only drew the lines.
Preview pages for Bernadotte, our French king [link]
Poster for Bernadotte, our French king [link]
Karl XIV Johan on Wikipedia [link]
Kulturpoolen i Falun [link]
Little Selma from Mårbacka [link]

Vector self-portrait

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 06:20:42 PDT

I used to have long hair but I cut it a while ago. The hair-dresser tried to talk me out of it. Personally I think it was worth it just to see the looks of horror on the faces of my acquaintances.

Karl XIV Johan comic

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 06:12:36 PDT

This is a test page for a project I am currently working on; a comic about Jean Baptiste Bernadotte, a lawyer's son from rural Pau who became a marshal i Napoleon's army and eventually became Sweden's king under the name Karl XIV Johan. The current royal family are descendants of Bernadotte.

You can read more about Karl XIV Johan on wikipedia:
[link]

With this page I was just trying out drawing the main character, clothes of the period and various scenes from the main characters life that I expect will be in the comic.

The script for this comic will be written by Maria Bergström, who also wrote "little Selma from Mårbacka" [link] . The comic will be published by Kultur-Poolen.
The comic will be coloured by !

Noelle in a cave

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 12:15:05 PDT

An image I worked on for a new cover for my Webcomic, Corner Alley 13 [link]

The background was painted in one layer, which is a new method for me.

Underdark City

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 10:22:10 PST

A spread from my Webcomic, Corner Alley 13 [link]

If anyone is daring enough to try you are welcome to colour this piece.

Indy Olympics

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 11:17:25 PDT

Athletes are amazing in many ways, one being that they can put up with all the interviewers.

I didn't mean to do this experimental clean style colouring, but it just so happened that my regular computer (with the wacom) doesn't work. So this is my lazy version of colouring, using only the magic wand an fill tool.

A cat in Venice

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 10:17:14 PDT

My old school gave us some art supplies but I left them alone for more than a year. This is my second attempt at using the scraperboards.

The cat is my own design, inspired by Martin Toonder's work and the background is based on a photo of Venice by Carlo Ponti.

Next I am going to try the oil pastels.

Drow pack

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 06:22:13 PDT

Characters from my webcomic, CornerAlley13 [link] in a slightly different style.

Inked with metal nibs, coloured in Photoshop.

Cole or Kh'ohl

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 12:12:03 PDT

Digitally inked... and the lines just disappear... why bother?!
Still struggling with realistic fire.

I may edit this piece later.

Highlight

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 05:04:46 PDT

Doing the highlights in hair is my favourite part of colouring a picture, so this time I left it at only highlights and removed as much other information as possible.

Original Sketch on paper
and "inked" digitally

Cover for Selma comic

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 06:44:48 PST

This is the cover for a comic project I am working on with Maria Bergström about Selma Lagerlöf, a famous Swedish author who became the first female winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. The comic will be printed some time in April, for the 150 year jubilee of Selma's birth.

Now, some trivia in case you don't know who she is:
Her first book "Gösta Berlings saga" was made into a film starring Greta Garbo.
Her most translated book is "The Wonderful Adventures of Nils Holgersson", which was written as a geography book for school children but is now read as a fairy tale.
Her face adorns the Swedish 20 kronor-bill.

HunterxHunter Parody

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 07:51:01 PDT

Honestly, I hope Gon punches his father when he finds that irresponsible man, though I doubt it.

HunterxHunter is the best manga I have encountered and I highly recommend it if you haven't read it yet!

HunterxHunter, and all its characters are copyrighted their creator Yoshihiro Togashi.

*Update 2nd of April 2009: shading added*

What Drow ought to look like

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 11:03:44 PDT

To my mind, it would be logical if the Drow were all albino, as many cave-dwelling creatures are.

In this picture I have also given the Drow girl large, bat-like ears as I assumed that her hearing would need to be excellent in such dark surroundings. She may even be blind. I postulate this with the assumption that the Drow, after thousands of years in the Underdark, cut off from the Surface, would adapt to their environment.

Further comment: Thank you for some great discussions on this subject! Some of the comments contained points so important that they ought to be mentioned here.
1) Talking of evolution in this context in misleading, as the process takes a lot longer than the few thousand years I mentioned. This becomes even more true if one assumes that the Drow have a longer life-span and reach maturity later than Humans.
2) A self-contained world COMPLETELY without sunlight is not orthodox D&D, whichever version of the rules one looks at. I know this and I only discuss the make-up of life without sunlight because it is an amusing theoretical dilemma.
3) There are several different versions of the D&D world. In one early version, the Drow were in fact pale and in another, dark only refers to their moral alignment.

A vampire's qualms

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 00:16:55 PDT

If you haven't noticed yet, this is supposed to be funny.

The idea is derived from (I can't say inspired by, because my contribution was not all that great) a comment made by in my website's [link] shoutbox: "Maybe the vampire likes his food kosher, no wait, that wouldn't work".
I have their permission to display this image.

I would also like to make it very clear that I am by no means an anti-Semite.

CA13: Part 3 Cover

Thu, 24 May 2007 06:15:32 PDT

This is the (second) cover for part three of my webcomic CornerAlley13 [link] . Part three is going to be an adventure with humour, magic and possibly (but I'm not promising anything) romance. It can be read alone even though reading the preceeding chapters is recommended.

Super Scary Monster 2

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 02:54:42 PDT

This time I felt I should take the horror theme seriously and do something that could really cause nightmares. I don't know if it turned out quite that scary, but it's better than my previous attempt.
At least no one will tell me this one is "cute"...

Super Scary Monster 1

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 02:47:56 PDT

We were asked to draw monsters for a school assignment. I never draw monsters so this was difficult for me. I sat down and tried to design a horrific monstrosity, but the more I sketched the more I felt that small, slimey things are often more frightening then big things. Things that you can't see - but you still know that they are there hiding at the bottom of the lake ready to pounce and bite your toes.

After this picture I did another in a less comical vein.

The Revenge of Katu Lata Kulu

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 09:45:13 PST

If you've ever read the video comments on Youtube you've surely noticed the annoying spamming about a soul-thieving ghost called Katu Lata Kulu. I find it unbelievable that people actually fall for this stuff. I suppose that was the motivation for the person who started the chain: "I wonder if people will fall for this?"

Unless of course it was Katu who started it all.

More of my comics about Katu can be found at [link]

Detective Conan Parody

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 00:19:20 PST

Read LEFT to RIGHT

I can have such a bad sense of humour some times.
This comic will not make sense unless you have read the Detective Conan manga. If you haven't, then you should! It is truly great. One thing that annoys me about this series however is when there are codes to solve and as a reader you sit for hours trying to figure it out only to find that it is impossible unless you know Japanese.

Conan, and all other characters are copyrighted to their creator, Gosho Aoyama.

Calais and Zetes

Sat, 13 Jan 2007 04:29:19 PST

These are the twins Calais and Zetes from greek and roman mythology. They inherited their wings from their father Boreas, the North wind. Although they were among the heroes searching for the Golden Fleece I haven't found much information about them. I suppose it is partly because they disappeared before the quest was completed. When the heroes were making a quick stop at one of the local king's dinner table they were attacked by a flock of harpies. The winged brothers pursued them. Neither the harpies nor they were ever seen again.

According to Ovid Calais and Zetes are supposed to be blonde, but so many of the greek deities and heroes are said to be fair-haired and it gets repetitive after a while. I somewhat larger digress from convention is that I've done a modern take.
I tried using a slightly different method to colour this one, only hard brushes and some curve tweaking. The result is a bit strange. It looks a bit like they are made of plastic...

Look alive

Sun, 16 Jul 2006 06:01:10 PDT

Fanart of Dakota Dead! Yes, you guessed it: she's some sort of undead. Ark the Improbable, the comic that this character is from hasn't explained her origins yet. So far she and her partner have mostly been effortlessly slashing dog/centipedes. But it will come I'm sure!
It has interesting characters and great art so I recommend you to read the comic: [link]

Dakota is copyrighted to Amy Yenser & Steven Newman

Looking for the Sun fanart

Tue, 20 Jun 2006 01:00:03 PDT

This is a picture of Kite from Looking for the Sun, by Morag Lewis aka SunKitten. It's mostly a hairstudy. I wondered how Kite does her hair-do, but I don't think I got it right >.<. The circle in the background isn't the actual sun, because it's missing. It's more like a... um... mental sun? Otherwise the lightsource would be messed up.
Anyway, read the comic here: [link]

(Kite is copyrighted to Morag Lewis)

X-men parody

Wed, 07 Jun 2006 07:50:47 PDT

This won't make sense unless you've seen the X-men 3 movie. If you haven't seen the movie yet but want to, then avert your eyes quickly from the following! Throughout the last battle I kept thinking that Rogue would jump out from behind Phoenix and stop her. Considering the destruction she was causing this would probably have been impossible though. Still, I couldn't help being disappointed at Rogue's choice. My brother and I discussed alternatives and came up with this. Admittedly, it has some flaws.
I liked the X-men movies because of their political dimension, but the creators seem reluctant to let any character stay dead.

The Matriarch and Drel

Sat, 18 Mar 2006 12:39:16 PST

These two are characters from my comic Corner Alley 13 ( [link] ). They're not underwater by the way, there's just a strange, green light in the underdark.
This is the slightly edited version. Changes include some light tweaking and rock remodeling. I didn't think the result was different enough to merit a completely new deviation though.

Olympian family tree v.2

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 10:38:40 PST

As a basis for the family tree of the Olympians I have used the following sources:

"Metamorphoses" by Ovid
"Tales of the Greek Heroes" and "Stories of Ancient Greece" by Roger Lancelyn-Green
Panteon.org [link]

The ancestry of many of the characters is ambiguous. Most notably, there is more than one version to Aphrodite's birth. The version where the goddess is born from the sea has been widely popularized, not in the least by Botticelli's famous painting. Where I have found a conflict I have chosen to follow the oldest source of the ones I have available. In line with this principle, I have chosen to use Greek names over Roman ones.

Noelle pensive

Thu, 27 Oct 2005 11:41:32 PDT

This was a commission I did for Moonside, who gave me alot of freedom with it. I wanted to try watercolors, mainly because I'm not very good at it but I like the look of the medium. I really admire people who've mastered the technique.

Lost all the sheep

Sat, 13 Aug 2005 03:24:23 PDT

When I drew this a year back I thought I'd do a Little Bo Peep with such detailed attire that it would be impossible for her to actually do any work. At the time I felt that this was funny, but I'm not sure any more.
I tried to get someone else to color the lineart for me but people refused, and I couldn't think why until recently when I tried to do it myself. Dashed details >.<

Keep it together

Mon, 08 Aug 2005 10:03:28 PDT

This is a piece I drew a year back and only recently found scanned on my computer, I took pity on it and coloured it. Is always, I'm not completely happy with it but I still like the clothes.

Folkdress 4

Thu, 26 May 2005 03:05:34 PDT

This is from a school project on modern takes of tradition folk clothes. Don't bother with the full size, it's huge (because I had it printed).

Panda

Mon, 23 May 2005 12:12:05 PDT

I did this a while back, but I was quite pleased with the result. (This one is unrelated to the comic theme).