Sketchy Characters

A game journal makes a great gift for a fellow player.  An artistic member of our troupe customized a composition book for each of us, with VAMPIRE: The Masquerade, the chronicle name, and our own names laminated on the front cover and our character names and permanent info on the inside.  In just this first story, playing about once a week for nine months, I’m almost halfway through the book.

I’m a pretty diligent note-taker, much to the delight of my Storyteller.  Besides recording essential action items and learned information (I can’t carry my character’s entire memory around in my head; I have a hard enough time holding on to my own), I like journaling my character’s thoughts, and sketching her and other characters.  The friend who made the books for us is quite the sketch artist herself.  Drawing characters, especially with a relevant prop or two, helps me conceptualize them.

Though I’ve taken a few drawing classes, I’m no visual artist.  The human body is a challenge for me, especially without a source.  I can scratch out a halfway decent face, but even then I work much better from life.  (I love the shadowy portraits in the sourcebooks, and recently sketched an NPC from one of them, adding additional details.)  Lately I’ve had a full-body sketch idea in mind, and decided to search online for free figure drawing model images.  I’m happy to say I found an excellent photo gallery on CharacterDesigns.com, which features almost forty extensive photo sets. (Be advised: there are nude photos, though not all sets are nude.)  If you’re like me and you like to draw characters, this is great resource, and there are some fun costume sets, including a very pretty gothic set if you like your vampires in black leather.  (Who doesn’t?)