Something I’ve been doing lately as part of my whiteboard schedule is doing some kind of drawing at least once a week. I’m trying to break out of my doodly comic style (I call it my “Murph” style after the character I used to draw in college) and attempt something a little more realistic. The last few weeks I’ve been trying out characters from the Bridgetown Trilogy.
Here’s a perky looking Denni:
Denni is an extremely intelligent girl for her age and nearly all of her classes are Advanced status. She’s amiable with everyone, but she saves her real emotions for her closest friends, of which there are few. Her closest friend is a boisterous and diminutive girl named Amna Ehramanis, a half-blood human (she has both Earther and Meraladian blood from both sides of the family and damn proud of it). She seems to have taken the deaths of her parents (also ARU agents) a bit better than Caren; she still mourns for them but instinctively feels that their spirits have remained close by to watch over them, and that has helped her heal.
And here’s her older sister Caren, wearing her Alien Relations Unit uniform:
Caren Johnson doesn’t look too happy here, and it’s because she hasn’t been truly happy for a long time, not since their parents died under questionable circumstances. She herself did not know how they’d died while on a case until nearly six months later. She’s healed somewhat, but she now feels frustrated and directionless, and feels she needs to do more to make everything right, especially now that she’s taking care of Denni. Despite all that, she still cares deeply about her fellow ARU partners and everyone else close to her, and will go out of her way to do what is right for them.
This is actually kind of a fun exercise! I know these characters so well, and yet all this time I never really got around to visualizing them in this manner. [There’s also the fact that this is a half-serious attempt at drawing the characters for a possible webcomic version down the line, but that’ll be some time in the future. For now I’m just trying to get them onto paper!]
I will of course add more sketches as they pop up!
Welcome to Bridgetown 