Jenny Dolfen

Inktober #3: Dietrich von Bern

Added 2017-10-03 13:37:52 +0000 UTC

Wooo-hooo! Ballpoint pen proved to be exactly the game changer I'd hoped it would be when someone suggested it last night.

There's something I've noticed about making art: My brain goes into certain media modes. When I think of myself inking, my brain immediately toggles "awkward anatomy", "contrast gone wrong" and "to hell with detail". When I thought about doing the next pieces in ballpoint pen, my brain immediately saw them as detailed, intricate without half trying, with interesting features and faces.

I was immediately so comfortable with the very thought of ballpoint pen that my brain did something else: It gave me a theme! Even better, it gave me a theme that already fit the previous two drawings. So I proudly present my Inktober project: Jenny's literary and TV heroes. I actually made a list of them last night and easily found thirty-one.

Dietrich von Bern was my hero when I was nine or ten. He's one of the protagonists in Germanic myths and briefly features in the Nibelungenlied, as the one who enters the scene after everyone else has been butchered at Attila's court, and mourns the death of chivalry.