I carved out some time to get back into inks with a quick sketch of Nor, the Ethereal of the Merging Stars, from my Realm Ethereal universe. This piece revisits the closing moments of The Dream Awakens and points toward my follow-up arc, The Sky Dreamers.

I worked traditionally—minimal pencils, then straight to a brush pen. Since you can’t “scale” on paper, I redrew the figure smaller and leaned into form, shadow, and a touch of dry-brush texture. Inking is still my favorite stage: committing to the line, defining planes, and watching a character emerge in black and white.

Lore-wise, Nor hints at a broader, grander order of Ethereals that I’m excited to explore as the story expands. Sketches like this help me re-enter the world between day-job hours and map out the bigger conflicts to come.

If you’re new here, you can read The Dream Awakens free on my site and download FREE PDFs of the first issues. I also recorded this session—check out the video for the full process and more world-building talk. More art soon!