2012 Paintings

Well I pulled my thumb out and got to painting again this year so I have quite a few to showcase! Seven paintings if I am to be accurate but considering how many other pieces of art I made in 2012, seven is a fairly impressive amount to add onto my workload. I guess I can say with certainty that I found my passion again during this year.

Starting then with….

Cat’s Eyes  - 8 x 10” Oil on stretched canvas

Not the first cat eyes or black surface I have worked on but the first fully black canvas I tested out. I called it complete but am still not overly happy with the final piece. I may see if I can rework this at some point or create a newer version with more detail.

The Watcher – 8 x 8” Oil on cradle board

I always enjoy painting on wood more than I do on canvas and I feel like this piece was quite successful. I was happy with the colour balance and amount of intensity I managed to capture in a singular eye.

Snow Leopard - 8 x 10” Oil on canvas board

I always seem to struggle the most with canvas boards, they are a little too slippery for my liking. The challenge here was to create something mostly made of white since I find white/grey tricky. I wasn’t displeased with the outcome though I decided that next time I set myself the challenge of painting in whites I should use a surface I am more comfortable with!

Morning Harvest - 8 x 10” Oil on canvas board

I think I got a touch obsessed with spider webs this year since I made three paintings including their delicate formations. It’s a shame my copies of the images don’t show the iridescent golds I put on the webbing. Interestingly all three spider web paintings sold. It may have taken a few years but they all found new homes – hooray! :D

For the above Morning Harvest I was aiming to create the tingling sensation of a frosty morning. I chose a limited palette of softer browns to evoke a misty dawn look that I thought would highlight the silhouetted corn and golden threads of broken web.

Autumn Glow - 6 x 6” Oil on cradle board

For this one I wanted to try warmer colours and to capture that hazy glowing feel that autumn sunsets create.

Iron Web - 3 x 4” Oil on cradle board

Back to colder tones for this little piece; I was hoping to evoke a frosty morning again and juxtapose the soft webbing against the hard metal spiral.

Supper - 6 x8” Oil on cradle board

I really love this one because the subject challenged me and also allowed me to use some iridescent colours I wanted to test. I love the way that wooden cradle boards absorb my thin layers of paint and allow me the option to keep some of the wood grain patterning on show. Of course I also like working in dark colours and on creepy subjects as much as the cute ones so this was a win for me ^_^

Well that’s all for this blog post, hope you enjoyed it as always and catch you next time :)

2012 Illustrations

Since most of my illustrative time in 2012 was dedicated to creating fictional character portraits I only have a handful of other illustrations from this year. Or four to be precise so this will be a rather short entry. Oh also did I just say that these were not story related illustrations? 

I lied again, two of them are :P

Ok so this one above is not story related but just a random drawing of an iguana I tried to fancy up a bit. He was a fun splatter type of illustration where I added the subject after the background. Upon seeing this my aunt told me that the iguana should be named Jasper. So Jasper he is.

 

Original characters Lire and Keir. Yep this one is story related.

I wanted to draw something a little dark and who better to draw than the aptly named Keir for ‘a little dark one?’ I have quite an affection for drawing Keir even though he is the youngest of all my characters and cannot speak. Maybe his lack of words lends to better visuals.

This one above is also story related but I wanted to switch away from my ‘Sharlene looks gloomy,’ Christmas posts and find out if I could fit many characters on one sheet at a time. I decided to use hero type characters and forced them into angel/elf fancy dress. 

Obviously I had to make our sour main protagonist in the middle and make him disdained by the whole event. Plus, it was fun to put a xmas hat on top of Hvidsten ushanka … yes he is still wearing it even underneath the silly Santa hat. Hehe.

Oh yes and there was that not-so-small matter of getting married in 2012! :D

Well of course I had to illustrate us in our wedding gear with the beautiful backdrop of Kasugai gardens in Kelowna where we held our ceremony (and I possibly kissed the groom a bit too passionately in front of friends and family LOL) *Ahem* Still this was the most beautiful setting for a ceremony with running water and all the acer trees display wonderful autumnal colours.

It was cold I will admit – I was also almost late and yes I nearly tripped over the huge biker boots I chose to wear under my glorious blue gown…well that bridge had moss on it and was slippery! All in all, one of my favourite memories so how could I not create a bit of art to commemorate the day? A very pleasant experience and good place to end this blog post too :)

2012 Fictional Character Portraits

Now I probably don’t need to make a post about these here on The Glass Spire since they have a whole blog of their own. (See: http://blackwednesdayisle.blogspot.ca/)

However, 2012 was the year I really worked hard on trying to visually bring to life each of the characters from my novel. Heh – see I said way back in 2014 that it wouldn’t be long before I mentioned that on this blog again :P

I'll try and drip feed the images because there are a lot of them.

So for this post and this blog I have stapled together all the fictional character illustrations I made in 2012. If you wish to learn more about each one you are welcome to read Black Wednesday Isle. As for the process of creating so many faces, well I always had an idea of what each would look like (even those described/gifted to me by contributors) and I would often go on net hunts looking for people with the ‘correct’ face shapes.

As you can see some were also based on animal studies. Drawing one per week for two years meant I ended up with a huge collection.

It’s always easier to draw with a reference. It is not always easy to find a reference photograph that matches the picture you see in your head. A few times I had to Frankenstein eyes, mouths and face shape references together to get closer to the face I had in mind.

Written cues from other writers who wanted to help with the project were great but I didn't always get it correct on the first try.

Also dealing with such a wide variety of characters and specifics made it very challenging.
For example we have six types of elf and six types of fae, two types of 'cyborgs' (ok they are not cyborgs but it's the best easy reference I can give you in a short post) An innumerable amount of what are currently being called ords who are the closest to human beings in this fantasy. And also many types of anthropomorphs, which are humans crossed with animals - which I also chose to do in three different ways.
I have half-written a species compendium to try and keep track of who should look like what depending on 'x.'
Did I mention I like a challenge? :P

Anyways all those shown in this post are ones created in 2012 - I made just about as many the following year and they are are all Letter sized illustrations.

I’ll admit it was difficult but also great fun and I will upload my 2013 creations on this subject here in a later post.

Sketches and Paintings 2009 – 2011

Well it’s only been *ahem* two or so years since I last made a blog post here – whoops! >.<

I guess I got a touch distracted somewhere along the way…let’s just hope I don’t take quiet as long to blog between this post and the next one!

Anyway, picking straight back up from where I left off, here are my illustrations and paintings from 2009 – 2011. It seems as though I was in a bit of an art lull during those years as I hardly created anything at all.

Starting then with two illustrations from 2009 and one oil painting.

2009

Bonnie

Above is the singular oil painting I created in 2009. This was one of my very first commissions – albeit one I chose to do for free. The little dog shown was named Bonnie and belonged to one of my mum’s friends at work. Sadly, the dog had passed away but she knew how much her co-worker loved his pet. Since he was retiring she asked if I could paint his dog and supplied me with the only photograph she could acquire which was literally the size of a postage stamp – argh! (I have to wonder if she stole the pic from his wallet and photocopied it…honestly)

 I did the best I could with the given image and a bit of researching pictures of similar dogs. Thankfully all turned out well. I wasn’t there when she presented it but he was overcome at the gesture and decided to gift me a huge bouquet of flowers and a nice bottle of scotch. :)

The two sketches.

I decided to call this first sketch, ‘While You Were Sleeping.’ It is a sketch of my boyfriend at the time and little was I to know then that he would eventually become my husband ^_^

I remember I sketched it after he stayed around my house one evening; I woke up early but didn’t want to disturb him so took the chance to do a bit of drawing. I’m certain that sentiment could pass as exceedingly creepy if not for the fact that we ended up getting wed. Oh and I needn’t have worried it turns out that he is a super heavy sleeper and almost impossible to wake!

My only other illustration of note that year was a self-caricature expressing precisely how I felt about Christmas.

Yep I wasn’t a fan.

2010

Zero paintings this year and only two sketches of note. The first sketch below was from a trip to the Botanical gardens in Birmingham, England.

I remember this day quite vividly not because it was sunny and I got to spend the day with my now husband and his family but because said husband somehow managed to brush past a cactus in the hot house and had to spend the best part of the afternoon trying to get super fine cactus hairs out of his coat, gloves and palm – ouch!

This bandstand was drawn in a moment of respite from cactus hair plucking, sat on a long sloping hill that overlooked the green of the gardens.

As for my second sketch …. Well I guess I just really wasn’t into Christmas still.

2011

Three paintings this year, plus one underpainting (I’ll show you later), two sketches of note and a tattoo design.

I’ll start with the sketches this time. First up being a gondola rendered in charcoal.

I recall this being done for a ‘drink and draw’ challenge a friend was holding on Facebook. I didn’t take many of the weekly challenges set by this group but this one interested me and it had been awhile since I revisited charcoal.

This led to a commission from a great internet friend of mine who asked if I could sketch his girlfriend’s cat named Misu. The photograph was again terrible quality but the three of us agree that there is something rather pleasant about this sketch of their kitty Misu ^_^

My other illustrative commission of the year was to design a tattoo for a different friend who is very into his music. He asked for a treble clef with a rose and below is what I came up with.

He seemed very happy with the design and paid me for it however I don’t know if he ever got my design inked onto himself or not.

Of the paintings I made, one was yet another commission (I was popular that year!) to create an oil painting based on the anime Death Note. The customer in question had seen my previous Death Note fan art and had a kid who was also heavily into anime. I created the below 12 x9” of the two main characters for them.

This was a paid commission and I got told they were happy but I never got to speak to the client or recipient.

Next up is ‘Baby.’

This is one of my few larger oil paintings. With permission I used a photograph that a Canadian friend had posted on her page. I really liked the contrast of smooth and textured surfaces and the stretched out position of the cat. I was told later that the cat’s name was Baby and have been promising a print to the owner since I completed this painting … it’s now 2016, I haven’t forgotten but I still haven’t got that full sized print done. Also in some sad news I learnt that this little kitty passed away a couple of years ago :’(

My final painting from 2011 was a 9 x12” oil on deep box canvas that had no particular inspiration. I guess it was just one of those ideas that spoke to me so I painted it out. Perhaps not the most shining example of a wolf but I was happy with the mood it evoked.

So that bring us up to 2012.

After such a long lull, I was super productive in 2012…so my next post might have to be broken into several long ones, who’d be an artist? :P

Book Sketches 2009/2010 - (part 4) - Layouts/Backgrounds

Ok, last post to do with the book, I promise, for real this time, honest it’ll be at least two whole posts until I mention it again.

This one is all about the layouts I created way back when, so it will be art heavy, dealing with my initial concepts of what the places in this tale might look like. Many of these are largely unfinished, they vary in quality and handling, some have suffered bleed through or dreaded tea spillages over the years. The ideas are still sound even if tea drenched intentionally or otherwise so let’s take a walk around.

First up, gates to Draygun city: those are meant to be huge stone dragons. I imagine these gates to be colossal but like most things on the isle of Niam rather broken and rundown.

A rough layout of the city centre within Draygun, showing the glass spire that gives this blog its name.

So this one is a little confusing due to my choice of warped perspective; to explain, there are tunnels running beneath the houses of Draygun city, these are primarily lit by glowing moss (the blue bits here) and this is a semi down shot of a tight bend in one of those tunnels.

A complex close up within Niam’s city centre, I worked on this many times and actually only just finished it this year – yikes! Hehe and yes for those who have visited my website, (here) those are the two shops I mention in my welcome write up ^_^

Above are the first three renditions and below is the final. I might have a go at colouring this at some point, at present the different coloured pencils merely served to help me get less confused in the myriad of lines.

Niam’s wastelands and Tine canyon; Fao and Amber live here and yes this was intentional usage of aforementioned tea staining.

Below is an idea for the entrance to Amber’s cave within the Tine.

Knuks is a small town outside not far from the major city of Draygun. Below is a very very clean (by Knuks standard) example of a street.

Another example of a street this time in a town called Odel which is not on the island of Niam.

A very basic room; I imagine this room to be in the very seedy ‘hotel’ in Odel.

Yet another confusing down-shot, guess I must be a fan of those. This is a small cylindrical tower in one of Dirzryn’s hideouts, a place I imagine he goes to sit and drink tea and brood.

The location of this dungeon is not known, however I imagine it to be a place where vampires keep their thralls and just you know generally torture people.

Speaking of torture, below is an early concept for a place affectionately called ‘the room of the dead,’ I’ll let your imagination run with the reasons why it’s called that.

This had both bleed through and tea-spills – oh joy, oddly the bleed through on it is actually from the first portrait sketch of Dirzryn.

Last but not least, well I couldn’t leave without posting up our lovely Cold harbour dungeon.

This sketch was created for a written role-play we set in The Elder Scrolls universe, specifically the daedric realm of Cold harbour because none of the games at that point had any playable content in that realm. The role-play began in an empty cellar, hence this sketch. Also it seems even more appropriate to mention it again now since the makers of the Elder Scrolls games are soon to release their new MMO which is set in …yep, Cold harbour!

Book Sketches 2008/2009 - (part 3) - 3rd Party Contributions :D

Ok last of the character book sketch posts because if I wrote about all of them I’d be here forever.

This time specifically looking at a couple more of the early characters, two of whom ended up being the basis for a species called extropians. In my usual half-cocked fashion this group were first named teks because it was the easiest title to say what I needed whilst getting on with the actual writing. 

Once the initial writing and art had settled in I did some homework and voila, there is such a thing as extropianism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extropianism

Dealing with that first here are Bug and Elgar our two main extropians thus far.

Bug

Elgar

Another loveable early was Kha’Rii, still only a bit character at present but certainly worth noting.

Kha’Rii

This post is also set to give credit to external contributors to this project. I’d like to give a nod to those people who submitted a written character sheet that I then took hold of and both visually and narratively designed.

In no particular order then, the bit-chars, the donated small players in narrative that I decided to make portraits of are as follows:

Left to right: Zak, Klay and Braus

Left to right again: Nico (normal form), Nico (wolf form) and Orin. 

None of these characters had pre-sketches or doodles prior to their portraits; feel free to click their names to read their interviews over on Black Wednesday Isle.

On top of that we have had two major contributors whose praises I continue to sing.

My wonderful ‘online little brother,’ a Finnish fellow named Lauri Kouvivaara and my most marvellously mad ‘online little sister,’ an American named Dan Johnson. Now Dan is actually male and I was quite annoyed that Facebook wouldn’t let me list him as my sister!

I have dubbed them my siblings because I am an only child and because we have at one time or another worked quite closely on these characters together. The reason Dan is a sister rather than another brother is because he makes fantastic female characters. 

I on the other hand seem to make better male characters.

This becomes quite amusing or confusing depending on how you look at it as Dan has his own narratives and we sometimes do instant role-play via messenger to explore our characters, I always play a man and he always plays a woman.

Dan’s biggest addition to this body of work has been Zyaxine. Naturally, I took the character and with his permission made it my own.

Zya

Another thing Dan excels at, a point I am not too well versed in, is that of mecca or android-esq characters. He has been a great help in smoothing out the finer points, has written insanely detailed backstories and continues to guide me in the right direction regarding the characters he submitted. Zya is a concept I find very interesting. I always double check that Dan is happy and confident in how I portray her and have gained confidence in writing about ‘teks’ from that experience. Karst is another of his characters I haven’t drawn many times but have a good feel for since she is one he often uses in our role-play bounces.

Karst, far right Karst and Kale

Oh yes, in those instances I played Kale. The two make parallel foils because they are both utterly insane. Dan’s most recent addition has been a conversion of his character Fedura. To put it simply she is a prostitute and we converted her to be a drek elf by species in order to fit this universe. I look forward to working her into the mire, boy he does like to set me challenge!

As for ‘little brother,’ aka Lauri, well he is a poet no doubt. I am in awe and envy that he can phrase so well in a second language. He’s showed me Finnish many times and my brain almost exploded trying to fathom it. You win the smarts there little bro.

Most importantly Lauri, or as his screen-name was once, Adeth, gifted me a character by the same name. I can scarce predict how these additions will evolve but this one has become most involved. Whether he likes it or not (I am assured he does) the character he submitted became integral. Much like the very first submission by lovely Ross Hvidsten, who became our hero of tale bearing the same surname this character has demanded space.

Adeth

There are stages of exploration and progression with all of the main characters I create before I can really hone down who they are and how they will act or react to the planned scenarios. One thing I love about writing this way is that the characters continue to surprise me, once dropped into the given setting and social situations I cannot predict how the scene will pan out and I swear some of the things that come out of their mouths are not written by me!!

Whilst this method of writing is interesting and does delight me, it can cause obstacles that make it difficult to move the plot forward. It is very easy for me to happily scribe their idle chatter and forget that I am actually trying to tell a larger tale alongside showing all their foibles.

Art-wise it is fair to say that sometimes characters evolve in this same unplanned way, things occasionally appear out of no-where and transform into new in-world creatures and unexpected personalities.