Jenny Dolfen

Mousegûl

Dormice in cosplay, part 4: Evil Mousegûl. Suggested by Kateryna. XD

Look! Proper ink! This was fun. 

Maedhrostober =)

After being sidelined by my eyes on Sunday (they pretty much shut down after the last few exams I was marking), I got to the promised Maedhros drawing yesterday! I remembered that I had decided to draw him with a slightly more tousled hairstyle (I'd already adopted that for "The Bliss of Valinor"...

Sailor Mouse

"I am Sailor Mouse! And in the name of the Moon, I will - - - is that a strawberry tart?!" 

Suggested by Holly. 

I'll probably have to do a good-looking Maedhros tomorrow. There's no way I can keep this hilarity going. 

Watercolour and ink on drawing pape...

Hannimouse

Aaaaaaand thanks to Liv, here's Hannimouse. My daughter nearly lost it when she walked past my desk.

And my, how I love painting linothorakes! They're the coolest armour in existence. Even if they look terribly unflattering on dormice. *lol* 

This is going to be a fun month. And ...

Maedhrosmousetober the First

In a fun live sketching session, I inked and (mostly) coloured a drawing of Mousedhros I'd been sketching earlier in the day (tied in a little with last year's Elves in Brocade), and Tanja suggested other mousified characters, like Star Wars, so there was a Luke Skymouse also sketched. =D  2020-10-01 18:31:06 +0000 UTC View Post

Poll results, currencies, annual memberships, and plans for the future

(Sorry for this huge amount of info - but with pledge levels, currency, and annual membership, these are all connected and I wanted to keep you completely informed!)

Thanks to all of you who ticked boxes in the polls! The results look pretty straightforward - most people want sketchbook tou...

Zoom, Discord, workshop and demo - poll!

Here's where you weigh in! I've put in a lot of options of things I can think of for the future. I would love your input before I decide on the exact specifics, but I've already included the price ranges I'm thinking about, so you can better decide whether these things would be for you. I'm think...

Zoom fun - Maedhros and Baby Smaug

(And naturally, I now have "Baby Smaug, doo doo-doo doo-doo-doo" stuck in my head, to the tune of Baby Shark. Now you do too. You're welcome. XD)

So, this was fun - for those who couldn't join us, what we did was a session of me making quick sketches at people's requests (I maaaay have push...

Zoom test tomorrow - details and ideas

I've set up everything we need to a full Zoom test tomorrow at 6 pm CEST! I have my webcam aligned to film my desk, and I have my laptop cam aligned with the spec-ta-cu-lar pimple that sprouted on my chin last week. I apologise in advance. You'll see it. I think we'll make liberal use of the desk...

US shipping is back! Whoo-hooooo!

I just saw that the US is open for shipping from the EU again - by ship, so expect runtimes of at least three weeks, possibly more. But - whew. It's been six months. I honestly didn't think this was going to happen this year anymore.

So, what's next? First, I'll carry my huge "CORO...

Zoom tryout!

New Patrons welcome time! Welcome to Michael, Joanna, Tanja, Maxwell, Erin and Lisa this month! =D So happy to have you.

Hangouts! So, I have no idea whatsoever how to do Discord or Zoom meetings. Let's find out together. ;) 

I've set up Zoom and have scheduled ...

Dormouse adventurer (finally finished)

I'm finally back among the living! That stupid surgery cost me three weeks of my life, but I'm finally working again (mostly for school) but I hope to get myself sorted enough for art before long. 2020 has been a taxing affair, to say the least. 

Shipping to the US (and Australia) is s...

Quick sign of life...

... I told you I had to go in for some surgery two weeks ago; well, it seems that I was incredibly unlucky with it. It went well; it's healing well; it's just that, for some reason nobody has been able to fathom, that it was so dratted painful it took me ten days to feel halfway human again. I'm ...

Finished little Bill!

I'm really happy with the colour scheme here! So cheerful. I actually do picture Bill darker, but the next one's going to be dark enough, haha. 

Prints are...

Tricking myself into painting...

...by making Bill even brighter and more cheerful than intended. ;) 

The cheer is probably needed, as my usually morbid self has found a most depressing (and compelling) audiobook to accompany the work: "The Radium Girls" by Kate Moore (Asfaloth was accompanied by a podcast on the Gold...

Mad world, pretty horse

My current state of mind, I suppose. ;)

I'd really hoped that I would get some stuff done during the holidays, but it seems my battery was a lot emptier than I thought. I then spent the last week cancelling Etsy orders that had been pending since March - rising infection rates in the US pro...

Dormouse adventurer

Drew a little dormouse on the train yesterday. Dormice, it turns out, are perfect doodle material, as they're practically impossible to mess up.

Flowery horses #3: Bill and apple blossoms

Next horse underway! Cute little Bill looking out from under the apple blossoms. 

It's taken me a lot longer than I thought to get into any sort of art mood again. With the weird school term winding down (half my students were ignoring the last three remote schooling tasks I sent them ...

Mathos Tyrsgard, human Paladin

Not mice, but men this time. ;) I've played Mathos in a Pathfinder campaign for years now, and started drawing him just before the onset of my eye condition, but since we finished an epic campaign last weekend, I felt he needed a proper bit of art.

He slightly recalls a German actor I was m...

Flowery Rochallor

Finally finished this! 23x23cm, watercolour and white gel pen on Fabriano 5 cold-pressed paper.

Gosh, I can't wait for the holidays. Four more weeks. And with practically no travel, there's a reasonable hope for some art.

I've decided - again - that I want to do more plein-air and loc...

Rochallor, lineart

Be still my beating heart, haha! 

Thanks to all who gave your ideas for future Tolkien horses! I will definitely do Shadowfax, Bill, and very probably a Black Rider's horse. (Yay for at least two non-white horses!) Bill will be fun. 

Fun trivia: In the German translation, Bi...

Rochallor - sketch

While "Asfaloth" has always had a ring of beauty and slender grace for me, "Rochallor" is like the Elven equivalent of all-caps. The name alone conveys pure strength and fierceness.  No headstall. Absolutely no bells.  <3 

He'll be surrounded by blue asters. 

Pa...

Flowery Asfaloth

It's funny how Camargue-y he looks with that yellow tint! I really only did it to differentiate him from the flowers. :P

Okay, and he *is* based on a Camargue horse I photographed at a reenactment show. But normally my horses don't show it that much!

Watercolour and gel pen on Fabrian...

Asfaloth wip

Now, THIS is making me happy. :)

It was really yesterday that I told myself, I need to stop filling my sketchbook with more or less useless things "until the pandemic is over". I'd somehow been reluctant to do any actual work again, but I can't doodle cacti and dormice until there's a vacci...

Flowery Asfaloth (wip)

So it seems I needed to get a few cacti out of my system. Who knew?

I went for a comfort zone idea again, but more satisfying than cacti - horses, and flowers, and pretty colours. I won't rule out more flowery horses. =) 

Cactus page

Well, that was quite fun. ;) 

inprnt shop (plus code!) - Etsy closed for now...

The Good News (tl;dr:) I've now got a shop with inprnt, where you can get prints in different sizes, shipped from the US. I've set up a coupon code for use of all Patreon supporters!  AJTSE3H4  If you're missing any prints, please let me know, and I may add them. :) (The dormice are sti...

The Vitruvian Mouse, and Valar pins in the shop!

Okay, so this thing happened today at school. XD

School was weird today, I can tell you. Germany is slowly opening up from our lockdown. Parents working in healthcare or other essential jobs can send their children to school to be supervised; I spent three hours today supervising one (very ...

Of Mice and Valar

The pins arrived yesterday!! I still haven't been able to look at them all; I spent all day at my desk yesterday, putting together the school work for next week, and giving feedback on what the students sent me last week. I just managed to rip open the box and grab two of each, just to convince m...

Valar pins arriving soon!

If they arrive tomorrow, I'll have a huge problem. I have three video conferences between 9 am and 1 pm - two with my students and one with the staff. I can already see it happening: 

 Me: "So, let's repeat! What suffixes do we have for adverbs in Latin?"
Student:...