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Characters / Miriel

Created: 2024.07.14
Last updated: 2026.04.26

Miriel, a red-haired elven woman, wearing her hunting/fishing gear: a green tunic with leather reinforcements on the chest and hooks for equipment on the waist, dark gray linen pants, leather boots and gloves, and a bow and quiver on her back. She has a sleeve tattoo of purple anemone flowers reaching up to her neck. Next to her are more detailed drawings of her bow, knife, and tattoo.

Miriel of the hunter-gatherer elves living in the northern forests of Yon. She's adept with the bow, her people's traditional weapon, and spends her summers hunting, fishing, and foraging with a small group of her fellows. She enjoys adventure and solitude, often breaking away from the group for solo expeditions. When not out in the wild she likes to cook, read, and dress up in fancy dresses and jewelry, which she sometimes crafts herself. She also appreciates art and often spends idle evenings drawing or whittling wood.

Alternative gear for longer hiking trips and bad weather:

Miriel wearing her hiking gear: a dark green cloak on top of a light green tunic, dark gray linen pants, leather boots and gloves, and a backpack. In another drawing the same cloak is fully wrapped around her, converted into a raincoat with sleeves. Everything is decorated with gold embroidery.

On a personal note, Miriel was the first fully-formed character I ever designed, and still the one most personally meaningful to me. In fact, she's somewhat of a self-representation (an "elfsona", perhaps) — not a 1-to-1 recreation of me, obviously, but in many ways a reflection of who I am or who I'd like to be. I didn't fully realize this at the time I designed her, but seeing and embracing myself in her has turned out to be a surprisingly powerful tool for understanding myself, my dreams and emotions, and working on complex problems like loneliness and gender identity.

Relationships

  • Salma: romance. Met while fishing, found they had matching personalities with a mutual love for adventure. They're often seen on beach dates and coastline hikes together. Both are independent souls whose paths often diverge (there are limits to where an aquatic nomad and a terrestrial one can wander together after all), but they always gravitate back to each other.
  • Elegil: childhood friends. Gil no longer lives with the elf community, but the two still meet from time to time.
  • Aava: friend. Miriel's band of elves once visited Aava's home town during their summer travels, where Miriel encountered Aava's sculpture work. They found they had many mutual interests in art, wildlife, and fashion.
  • Ivu: acquaintance. The dryads rarely interact with people, but the elves come into contact with them more often than anyone. Their relationship is one of cordial collaboration, both serving as stewards of the natural environment.

Artworks featuring Miriel (10 pages):

Gouache painting of Miriel, a red-haired elf, sitting under a tree. In the distance behind her, the sun is setting across a lake, coloring the sky in warm tones of orange and pink. A backpack is propped up against the tree, and the surrounding ground is covered in grass, flowers, and bushes.
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Solitude

Portrait of Miriel, a red-haired elf, painted with gouache. She's wearing a green dress with layered flutter sleeves, decorated with gold patterns painted with glittery metal watercolors. Her makeup also has glitter in it, and she's surrounded by a similarly sparkly frame of silver and gold patterns contrasted against a dark background the color of a night sky.
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Getting sparkly

Gouache and ink painting of Miriel, a red-haired elf, wearing a green set of lace lingerie with rose patterns. She's sitting on a cobblestone floor in front of a bush of roses and thrusting a leg forward to show off her stockings. It's a warm early sunset in a park somewhere.
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Matching lace

Digital painting of Miriel, a red-haired elf, sitting on a sofa next to a large window. It's a bright, snowy day in the forest outside. Miriel is cozy under a blanket with woolly socks, her hair let out of its usual braid, and a cup of something warm in her hand. Her forearm is wrapped in a bandage with traces of blood visible on it.
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Back home

Ink drawing of Miriel the forest elf climbing onto a pile of rubble. Behind the pile we see ruins of tall urban buildings overgrown with vegetation, and in the middle of it all a large building with a giant domed roof. There's a car under the rubble. Miriel is carrying her bow with the string on and a quiver full of arrows, suggesting she's worried about who might be lurking in these streets.
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15 images

Inktober 2025

Gouache painting of Aava, a pale-colored mermaid with black bob-cut hair, wearing a billowing pink dress. We're underwater, but not very deep - the darkness is broken by dim shafts of light from above. She's falling backwards away from the viewer and towards a gothic cathedral tower seen in the background.
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6 images

Stuff with gouache

A grid of four drawings in different styles featuring various characters.
16 images

Art Fight 2025

Three portraits of a red-haired elven woman wearing different floor-length evening dresses. The first has a double-layered skirt, sleeves decorated with colorful thread and beads, and a decorative sash hanging off the waist. The second has short translucent sleeves, a sheer layer of decorative skirt, and a long hem that trails along the floor, made of cloth decorated with shiny embroidery. The third is simpler in form, decorated with geometric patterns on the bust and hem.
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2 images

1910s dress-up

Black and white ink drawing of Miriel the forest elf lying down on her stomach with a camera, taking a picture of a small bird standing on the ground.
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15 images

Inktober 2024

Digital painting depicting a quiet lake at sunset. The sun is behind an island covered with spruce and birch trees, its light filtering through the top branches and reflecting from the clouds above. In the foreground a naked woman with braided red hair is walking into the water.
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Summer night at the lake