Saturday 26 March 2016

2013 Fictional Character Portraits

As promised more character sketches, there are so many! I guess I had a lot of fun with these though I suspect I should not have drawn every little bit-character I decided to give a name.


2013 was my last glut of fictional character portraits. A few stragglers have appeared as time has marched on and I am sure more might appear in the future. Not quite as many in this post as the 2012 Fictional character post but I will still drip-feed them as best I can. 

As stated before you can read fictional interviews with these characters on my sister site here: http://blackwednesdayisle.blogspot.ca/

My fictional interviewer however isn't the nicest of fellows :P 


Above we have a re-imaging of Jet (top left) who is based on my husband and also top right the character my mother-in-law invented. 

Top right then is a character named Bea who is based on a polar bear. The lower two are a fox named Sable (left) and a drow (dark elf) named Alanor (right) who is the aunt of Tomor O'Mahryn. I thought Alanor was important to draw because she is the sole female figure in Tomor's life and Tomor, despite being a terrible romantic, does play quite a large part in my narrative.



Above are two characters that were created in words by friends of mine.

Both have separate forms they can transition into. 
The top character named Nico is pretty much an atypical lycan. He is a wolf lycan but there is nothing in my narrative that fits the werewolf stereotype of changing into a wolf upon a full moon. Nico can alter his shape to be the right hand wolf form as he chooses, no moons involved.
The bottom character is named Aeric and he is what we call a Fachin. This is one type of fae in my narrative. This particular type of fae are able to grow feathers, or rather a feathered mane. If you want a better visual reference for this just think of Howl from Myazaki's film Howl's Moving Castle.


An almost purely eleven four pictures above. The top two are brothers to my main character Dirzryn and they are drow by species. Though Dirzryn's brothers don't feature in the story I felt compelled to draw them. The lower two are different species which aside skin colour is also apparent by the ear shape. Lower left we have Zak who is technically a fae but Ven-Faer type fae are very closely related to elves. Lower right the girl Dioxa is what I would term a 'metal' elf or what we would call in-tale a drek. Our elves are categorized in name by elements and all the species names start with the prefix 'dr' which means 'of,' ergo drow would mean 'of fire' and drek would mean 'of metal.'

I have only two major languages in my story - so of course the one the fae and elves use is unnecessarily complicated :P 


A mixed bag in this four-set. Top left is a character named Saffron who is an elf of Drenma (earth) variety. Top right is yet another drawing of Aeric and his fabulous feathers. Bottom left and you might be wondering why that picture is so very tiny compared to the others... well that character named Tarene is an imp so she is very small and almost without hair. Bottom right we have Xio - I am never drawing spiders again! >.< 


Last up for this entry we have a mostly fae allotment. Top right is Nenigin, he is brother to the ludicrously red Naiad and also visually based around a damslefly. Bottom left is not a fae but rather a goblin named Hite (Hee-tay in pronunciation) Again I designed the ears to help differentiate species.
Last up then are top right Dhei (day in pronunciation) and lower right Karyf. These two are both fae of different types. Dhei has bird wings as opposed to insect wings and the two are devilish together!

Well that's all for this entry, hope you enjoyed browsing ^_^




Saturday 5 March 2016

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 :)