Saturday, September 7, 2013

The Dreaming Elf


Good evening!  I hope you all had a splendid week and are enjoying a good weekend.  It's been a busy few weeks for me.  There's been a lot of planning and preparing for Rosh Hashana this past week and now upcoming is  Yom Kippur. I wish you all a very happy L'Shana Tova this new year!

Phew, man, I didn't think I would ever finish this drawing...it has taken me at least three weeks to finish. I've been so obsessed with my current book project, that I have to remind myself to also juggle the other illustrations I have started on the side as well.  She's done with mechanical pencil and white ink.  I wanted the chance to brush up on my pencil and shading skills with this piece and it reminded me how much I love to work in black and white...and...with pencils too!  I found the pose in an old hair magazine and I knew I wanted to incorporate it in a drawing somehow as it was such an elegant and dreamy pose.

I wanted to have a background that sort of reflected what she was dreaming about.  Some far away land that maybe she had not seen in a long time, and missed.  The bird represents my own dreams where I'm flying and the egg meaning to represent unhatched ideas. (At least that's the best way I can describe it.)  An elf who has horns?! Well, I just can't help it, I love to draw horns on about everything...and you never know, maybe some elves do have horns. Right? *laughs*

Anyway, I've been taking daily walks down to the pier park in downtown New Westminster for a little inspiration and quite time to just sit and think by the water.




























Ha ha..well, I'm not the best photographer ever, but I think I need something better than just my phone one day. I love going down by the water, nothing is more relaxing than watching the water lapping against the rocks. I'd love to make it out to Stanley Park one of these days.  I haven't been there in a very long time.

Wishing you all a very wonderful week ahead! Cheers!

Sunday, August 18, 2013

The White Lady: Drawing Up For Auction


Good Sunday afternoon to you all!  Hope you are all doing well and have had a good week that's now past and headed into a new one.  The cooler weather here in New Westminster has been a very grateful relief after a nearly two month long heat wave and endless sun.  I love the sun, but I also love cool, cloudy days like now too.  Where I can curl up with something warm and watch the day slip by.

So! This lady up here will be up for auction tomorrow evening and all next week until next Monday at Femme Thou Art Collective on Face book.  This month's theme was "White Lady".  The thought I immediately had for this theme was a white elf of the night who can swoop in the moon with one twirl of her mantle.  I wanted the beads on her head-dress to mimic the stars.  The jewel on her forehead is inspired by Ozma from the Wizard of Oz books, she wears the same piece of jewelry on her head as well that very stylishly spells out "Oz".  (I have a lovely old copy of "Rinkytink In Oz")I loved it so much that I wanted to put it on this lady as if she too could have come from the Emerald City royalty.  The ram's horns just sort of snuck themselves in there...so maybe she's half ram as well. *laughs* 

I did the background digitally...in part to save some time and also in part that I thought something digital would look very cool.  This was originally supposed to be a black and white ink drawing, but I had a thought that just a single pair of red eyes would had something interesting to the black and white inks....as you can see....I totally gave way to colouring entirely!  I just could not help myself...so maybe she wanted to be in colour after all. *laughs*  This has taken nearly two weeks from start to finish.


I was going to share some photo's of a little trip I took to the Pier Park in downtown New West....but for some reason blogger will only let me up load this one drawing, so, I'll try and share those pictures with you loves next time.

Until then, wishing you all a wonderful week ahead! Cheers!





Friday, August 2, 2013

The Little Birthday Girl



Hello all and happy Friday!!!  Wow, it's August already...which means the changing of leaves into those beautiful fall colours and feeling summer cool away.  I can't believe how the year is now at halfway point...it's all going by so quickly.

Anyway, remember awhile ago I was talking about working on a middle grade novel? Well, I still am.  I've been drowning in research for it for almost eight months now and it's still growing.  I'm still developing the plot and subplots, characters, backgrounds, settings and mythical creatures for the book.  I still want to do a blog about it, which I thought I would have up this past April, but as it turns out...I wasn't ready for that just yet.  I want to make sure I know the In's and outs of my story fully before posting about it.

For now, I bring you my lead character: Sandy.  She's just turned ten years old and is a sweet, rambunctious and imaginative young lass.  She's from the town of Bagshot in England, and lives during the Edwardian Period. (If you're thinking that the town of Bagshot sounds familiar....you're right!  It's my tiny salute to J.K Rowling and the Harry Potter books, which pushed me forward to try writing again.)  She loves, sweets, bedtime stories of fairy tales and myths and will spend innumerable hours making up her own fairy lands, imagining all the adventures she'll have there.

I really wanted to get the feel of old style illustrations from that time, so I did a fair amount of research on children's books of the 1900's and found that most young girls were always coloured with very pale to pastel colours, while the backgrounds would be deep and rich.  Oddly enough, that would make the central figure stand out.   I remember as a kid myself, that I would love to read books with illustrations that were insanely detailed and would stare at them for hours trying to 'see' everything hidden in the picture.  So I intend the same this for my book, which I hope will go over, at least, moderately well.

I'll keep you guys posted on the other characters as they become finished.  Wishing you a lovely and creative weekend. Cheers and love to you all!

Monday, July 22, 2013

Two Little Mucha Babies: Splash the Sea maid and Little Su the Cook


Hello luvies! Happy Monday, I hope yours went like magic.  The last two weeks here have been crazy hectic.  Got my apartment painted and some things fixed up by the manager and building owner. So there's been lots of people coming and going.  Haven't got much done in that whole while, outside of a new paper doll and lots of sketches and some drawings that are currently on the colouring table.  Including one for Summer Of Colour run by the lovely and talented Kristin of the wonderful Twinkle, Twinkle blog. (Which I highly recommend you go check out for some delightful and inspiring art awesomeness!) Which sadly I missed because I just can't seem to draw fast enough. *laughs*

So today I bring you two little paper dolls.  I'll start with Splash, the little sea maid.  She was created for Cameron of Paint Myself Pretty during her Mermaid swap last year. I'm still so in love with the piece she sent me.  I thought I had already had this little girl up on my blog, but when I did a search, I couldn't find it.  And I'm much happier now, knowing that I've corrected it. Ha ha, yeah!  Since I've been busy with my book project lately, and had no time to create something new, I was also going to submit this to the July Auction for Femme Thou Art Collective .  I missed that too darn it! My laptop hasn't been feeling well lately, so I couldn't get it posted in time.  But I have next month to make up for it.  Splash is the largest out of my dolls, probably due to her very large tail.  Her tail is sort of based on the movements of a washcloth underwater.  You know the kind you used to play with as a kid at bath time.  And she holds a small trident, ready to jab in the bottom anyone out of line. *laughs*  The background is one that I had on my USB file and can't remember where I got it from...but it suited this little maid very well.

Second little doll I have for you is Su:


Su is from the children's manga, "Shugo Chara Chan!" (English Translation: Guardian Character Chan!) There are four of these super cute characters in the book.  I chose Su because she has to be the most girl-y and sweetest one out of all of them, and well, she also happens to be green, which is one of my favourite colours.  She loves to cook, eat and clean...but I think eating comes out on top for her.  And boy, is she ever the master little chief!  She can cook anything, a skill I can only dream of.  Now, unlike Splash or any other of the little dolls, she's my smallest.  I couldn't make her as tiny as she is in the books, about 10 inches, I think, but I could bring her about as close as.  Even with that she'd still be larger than the manga character. *laughs*

I made a little wire whisk and a green bowl, to match the egg she hatched from (yes these little girls are hatched from very tiny eggs in the story), full of whipped cream.  For the background I used an opening title page from "Curly Locks" from one of my children's rhyme books.  The saying at the bottom really goes well with Su's personality and describes her to a tee.

Well, that's all for this week my dear bloggie friends.  Thank you always for coming by to visit.  Wishing you all a wonderful, creative and delicious week. Strawberry Cheers!

Sunday, July 7, 2013

A bit of flash Fiction: Moonlit Sonata

Hi all, a good Sunday afternoon! It's warm, sunny and the sounds of sweet summer are filtering through to my apartment.  I so love watching the sunrises and sunsets at this time of year....they always remind me of impressionist paintings. So lovely...I even find myself getting up a little extra early....and 7 am is early for me...*laughs*, just to watch the cool morning sun.

So, I did this little bit of short fiction writing for something I saw on another blog, Imagine, Create, Write! , which I love to visit and read.  I always leave feeling so inspired.  She was holding a "Create a female superhero" flash fiction writing contest....which was such a great idea.  Comics could use more strong female superheros.  I didn't get my entry done on time as is was on one of the hottest days and I just could not stand my apartment, which reached over 100 degrees, so, I avoided my laptop like the plague.  I still wanted to post it and share it with all of you, though. 

I used a mechanical pencil and three different sizes of burnishing tools to buff and smooth the pencil lines and to add some small details I used a white ink pen.  I didn't have quite enough time to finish the back ground, as I thought I could still make the deadline at 3 minuets left. (Nope...got too involved with the background. Heehee) So, the background is digital.  I used some stock images, from where I can no longer remember where I got from, but it suited her nicely and finished it up in CorelDRAW.  This, in all, took me about a week to do. Which is rather quick for me.




Name of Female Superhero:  Dark Star

Name of Human Alter Ego:  Amnesia December

Superhero Appearance:  Same as Human appearance.

Human Alter Ego Appearance:  A young woman of 18 who stands at six feet tall.  Her hair is long and shiny black with a slight wave to it ans she wears half of it up in two small buns with short kiddie bangs.  Her eyes are white with little pink flecks in them that turn blood red when angry.  Her skin is has pale and white as bleached bone and an icy skin temperature.

Costume:  Black lace corset, black pants and a long black hooded cape. She also has a set of black crow wings.

Personality: Aloof, strong, sarcastic, yet is soft and kind deep in her heart, honest, intelligent

A Brief description of how the super heroine gets her powers: She's a dampyre or half vampire.  She has no memory of where she has come from, who she really is or who or even how she came to be cursed as a halfling. She does suspect that she has always been this way, however. She simply awoke one evening on the floor of an abandoned hospital floor, the entire town where she lived, all mysteriously murdered.

Powers:  Can throw her blood into multiple flying razor blades.  Can fly with crow wings from her back, which disappear when not in use.  She is also telekinetic and can move things or break things simply by glaring at them.  She can summon fire with a snap of her fingers and direct it at her attackers.  She uses a long silver sword that she acquired from a sword master in Wales.  She can also sing a siren's song to hypnotize those around her.

Anything Else Important:  She fights all sorts of underworld creatures to find a cure of the illness before it consumes her, body and soul. Leaving her a full vampire.  She has a haunted past and a very haunted presence.  To solve the mysteries of her past and find those who broke her, she will have to search far and wide before looking to the clues of things beyond her own grave.


Moonlit Sonata
 
 
 
Moon. Bright, beautiful, pale, red moon. Moon...floating softly, serenely through the dark starless sky.  Enchanting moon.  Making everything drunk with rapture as her ice chilled, luminous fingers of bare light caresses every inch of the dark earth within her grasp.   Even me, as I alight upon the highest tower possible, in this country that is awash with endless neon orange artificial lights, spilling out, and stretching eternally away below my feet into the pitted black of the distant night.  Just the wind, the glorious, fat golden moon and me.  Cherry blossoms, with their blushing faces, whirl exquisitely past me, away to their dusty death in the cool spring air.  Just the wind, the moon, the blood-drunk cherry blossoms and me. Ah! How sweet is the smell of fresh, new spring!
          I stand, gazing dreamily up in reverence at this glowing, pocked marked rock that has served as my false sun for the last few hundred years.  Its soft light shines down upon me, illuminating those odd, night eyes, causing them to glow unnaturally green like a cat. The moon is as bone white and dead as I, although, it is not a monstrous, dark thing as I. If anyone dares but wonder the kind of creature that I subsist as, I am a Dampyre; or a half vampire. How I came to be this way, I do not know.  Some of my kind, who are proud to be what they are, prefer the term Lilin, Dark Prince Charming or Strix over using the term “Dampyre”.  The sound is far less vulgar, and threatening, making it a great deal more elegant, as well as exquisitely beautiful.  Nothing scares off a potential prey more than saying that you are “Dracula” when they ask what you are, before you kill them.  Akin to most of my kind, my looks are charmingly deceptive. A cunning, vicious wolf wrapped in a fine human skin.  Most human beings construct us to be genuinely ugly, repulsive, senseless devouring fiends.  Salivating, drooling and stupid just waiting to eviscerate the next human to cross our path, also, for some odd reasoning, extremely hairy. I myself, hate overly hairy things, I find body hair particularly repulsive.  Hence, my deep hate for the Werewolves, which have far too much for my liking.  This human folklore about us I find extremely funny, as do most of us. For if, we actually looked like some horrid, inhuman demon, how would we lure the leery into our pretty web?  No one human would dare trust us, let alone come even a foot near us. Who would trust a monster that truly appeared to be one? Armed and dangerous, but only to those weak enough to trust our carefully lying eyes.

  The moonlight tracing and retracing the cut of my figure, fresh evening air caresses my skin, sending my carefully coiffed, long black hair dancing madly around me.  The sudden gust caught and blew free some of the coal black feathers on my exposed, lone wing, on my right side.  I lost the other in a violent battle many years ago...but that...is an entirely different story.  I watch as they drift slowly down into the blinking lights below.  Wondering if they sent a signal to the other Lilin’s, that a foreign night walker had entered their territory.  All the little feathers I shed are singing, as are all the other night things.  I can hear them, singing to the moon of all shapely newness.

I pause atop Tokyo Tower in Japan; my ardent search has shepherded me here. I stand, unkempt waiting for some strange reaction. To what, I do not even know myself.  Gifted with wings, albeit only one, in addition to being able to travel at an inhuman speed, I arrived here in only a day from my home in Wales.  Ah! Japan!  A city of buzzing neon lights, noise, contradictions and offerings of every pleasurable temptations and delights ever imagined; all under the rising crimson sun.  All exists here.  From the most sadistic, Hellenistic acts, to the annoyingly fluffy, cute and pure.  Here on this tiny spit of land, is where tradition and the freaky, anime-fuelled pop-culture collided seamlessly together.  The smell of the mortal beings rises up to me like vapours, making me dizzy, hungry and angry.  Angry knowing that I came here not to taste, or hunt, however to end my pursuit. I have travelled this far, to this place to find my death or the cure of the illness that eats at me.  My beautiful, final death.  There comes a time in every Lilin’s life, where they become life weary.  The constant night, in and out of boredom, the loneliness that wells up and crushes what little is left of the soul, tired of the hell we achieve by our own brutal acts upon ourselves and the human lives we touch.  Weeping as the past falls away without footprints to follow back upon and our future always the same as the century before, immortal life soon feels like a cancer, eating away what little human remains in us; until life is like a hollow ledge with a little tepid pool left there by the sea, dying inward from the edge.  When we reach that point, we long for death to take us away upon its dusty wings, and feel the thrill of something different happening to our bodies.
 
Oh wow! That took a lot of writing....but very good practice.  I haven't created a female superhero in a long time. It was fun! And I hope fun to read, albeit, a little macabre.  I don't normally go for vampires as they are everywhere these days, but I couldn't resist just this once.
Thank you for reading my lovely bloggie friends! Wishing you a happy creative week! Cheers!
 
 



Monday, June 24, 2013

Life From Decay


Hello there, Happy Monday! Like promised here is the drawing I did for the auction over at Femme Thou Art June auction on facebook . The auction ends today at 7 PM.  We're already deciding on next month July auction...can't wait to see what it will be!

Oh man, this took me three weeks and four days from start to finish.  I'm a slow artist, so something this detailed takes me a super long time.  I put everything else I was working on aside to get this finished.  Next auction I'm doing only a very small, Art Trading Card size work, which will take me far less time than this one did.

I used a mix of my trusty watercolour pencils, which I always use dry on Deleter paper, because it gives this wonderful airbrushed look. I also used some gold pens to finish off her beads and then pulled the finished work onto CorelDRAW and added in the butterflies, moths, assorted flowers, rocks and ferns. The final file was huge!  I'm glad I saved along the way as my laptop kept crashing on me due to its hatred of my art programs. *laughs*

I am not sure if I handled the theme right, but, my original thought for this was a beautiful spring fairy emerging from the decay left behind by the melting of winter snows. A fairy that brings life to all she touches.

So, can anyone spot the squirrel hidden in the trees? Or the bunnies...oh, well they're pretty easy to spot. *laughs*

That's all for now my lovies.  Wishing you all a creative, brilliant week! Cheers!

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

I Will Wait For You: Coffee Sketch


Good Wednesday to you all!  Hope you are having a good week.  So far so good in keeping myself to stick to a proper schedule of blogging at least once a week, woo to the hoo! I've been so busy in getting the drawing done for the upcoming June Auction over on the Femme Thou Art Collective Face book page, that I've quite left behind my other projects for the moment.  I've never been apart of an auction before, so I'm equal parts nervous and excited.  I have until this Sunday to have it done and up, and I'll be posting it here with a little link as well.

Anyway, I feel a little sad that I've just left the last end of the short story unfinished in the editing stage, and, still have put it up for you wonderful people to read just yet.  Once the auction is over for this month, I'll get right back to it.  The poor prince has just been left to sit quietly on the sea, I am a cruel writer.

As a thanks to you all, my bloggie buds, I took some time out to quickly paint a "Thank You" picture....as, well, a thank you for waiting and always sending me honest and cheerful comments.  I truly admire all of you....you are the butter to my bread. So thank you!

I know it's not much, but, I had some extra coffee grounds laying about in the cupboard.  They were too small to even make up a small cup, so, I brewed it and set about painting with it.  This is my second venture into painting with coffee...it always smells super nice for a few days when it's done.  I added some dark brown to the coffee to help darken some areas and taking a separate tiny paint brush, started brushing in white for highlights.  The coffee removed some of the ink I had laid down earlier, so, I had to add those back in after this was totally dry. I also used heavy Arches Paper to avoid too much paper wrinkling. Later, I dragged this onto CorelDRAW to clean this up a bit more and to smooth out some stray lines.  I would love to turn this into a journal notebook cover, but I have no idea how to do that. *laughs* Something new to learn! To the Library!

Psst....I hope you enjoy the new banner.  Felt like a change was needed.

Wishing you all a creative weekend ahead. Cheers!