Wales, D&D and Elemental Cheese

Wow, it's been like... a couple of months? How are you doing?
Though I've not made my internet presence felt for a while, I have, at least, been fairly productive :)

I've finally got a game of D&D up and running with Kat, John, Helen, and Lee, and we've had a few sessions now, despite having had a few weeks off because I was away in Wales with Kat (more about that later).  It seems to be going well, I've got a lot to learn about being a good DM though, and I feel I need to engage some of the players a bit more. Lee seems to be getting right into it though, and his character, Rangu, has a tendency for the insane (setting fire to a table full of flasks of volatile liquids in a necromancer's lab and trying to leap 20 feet from a table onto a bookcase to name just a couple of instances)

ANYWAY, onto the productiveness! I've drawn some pictures of the characters in the group which I've used to make minis (laminated and stuck in little card stands) for use in the game. Which I will post pictures of when I actually get round to thinking about taking some.

These first three pictures we done as a colaboration with Lee, who came up with the rough sketches and designs, which I elaborated on:

Rangu, Human Mage

Ellie Halfpenny, Halfling Fighter Paladin

Fallon Nor'hi, Elf Warpriest

and the next one was an excercise in drawing Kat's character on my own:

Harriet Havenborn, Human Thief

She's supposed to be pressed up against a wall, about to look around the corner, but for the sake of clarity I decided against proper backgrounds (the texture was from a tutorial in making battle maps by Jonathan Roberts, which I found at http://www.newbiedm.com/, here)
I want to draw some proper scenes with them all in at some point when I have the time :)

As previously mentioned I also recently spent two weeks in Wales with Kat, which was awesome. Spent a week camping in Llanwchllyn just south of Lake Bala (or Llyn Tegid), which was really nice. Had a ride on a steam narrow gauge railway up the side of the lake, went for walks, had awesome food at a local pub, went on the lake in a deflating dinghy (and Kat swam in it) and rescued a sheep at one point.
The second week we spent in Pembrokeshire, in a cottage in village called Solva, with Kat's family. That was also fun, and the weather pretty much held out all week, so we got to go to the beach a lot. I got tonnes of photos (which I may post on flickr at some point when I get round to sorting them out) and did a couple of small watercolours:

Solva



Traeth Llyfn beach

 I wish I'd had the chance/willing to do more actually. I need the practice!

Also, on monday, I went to London with John and there we me up with Timothy Winchester! He bought us lunch and ice creams and a lovely day was had by all!
Here's a photo of those two stood in front of a giant M&Ms shop that was too scary to go inside