So it’s been a heck of a busy week, but somewhere amid
all my full-time work and my ambitious nature to take classes while doing said
full-time work, I actually managed to do quite a lot of personal work this last
week!
Faux Stained Glass Piece
First up, while this piece has been up on my wall for nearly a year, I still
haven’t gotten decent photos of it, but I wanted to make sure to post it up
here since this piece means a lot to me.
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| Photo taken on May 26, 2013. Project completed on June 12, 2012. |
This is a collaboration and labor of love between Cynthia Reep and myself. She supplied the amazing art, which features two of my story's main characters: Oberon (the Friesian stallion) and Sashah (the werewolf enchantress). You can see Cindy's gorgeous art below:
I then worked for a few months to create a faux stained glass piece out of it. It's
extremely heavy and a massive 48"x24".
The piece features two of my story's characters,
and pretty much any time I sit down to write about my world or do art, I turn
it on. It's incredibly inspiring and comforting to me, and I love it to bits.
Also based on the total cost of it and the sheer effort it took to bring it to
life, it’s quite unlikely I’ll ever be subjecting myself to trying to make
another. ;) It was a lesson to me that saving up and spending the $600 on a premade lightbox would
have actually been a bargain in hindsight. Ah hindsight, you are a cruel, cruel
mistress.
New Short Story Begun!
This week I also began work in earnest on an entirely new
short story which will be the first one I aim to publish up online in the
coming months. I’ve figured out the tone, arc, and notes I’m aiming to hit, and
it’s been really weird but fun working with side characters rather than my
usual crew of main characters. That said, I feel the story should make for a
really recent public introduction into one of the vibrant cities of my “world.”
When all was said and done this week, I got over 12 pages (6,000+ words) into
my new short story, which is roughly halfway through this first (extremely
rough) preliminary pass. I’m hoping to get the final draft to somewhere around
15,000 words or less, but I’ll just have to see how that goes as I move things
around and heavily edit future drafts.
It's certainly rough at this
point, but I feel like it will be a solid entry-point for readers unfamiliar
with the world of my story, and it's fun fleshing-out side characters. Since
it is a bit of a flashback with side characters, I'm also enjoying trying to see
how I can fit in little references and subtle hints to larger adventures, characters, and arcs that play into future books.
It really is a ton fun revisiting some characters I haven't written for in years and
years, as well as dipping my toes into writing for entirely new ones. It's so much fun! It's
even better realizing that once I'm done, I'll be able to share it with
everyone!
It also is likely to afford me the opportunity for another illustration of one
of my mechanical critters. >_>
Sunning Gryphon Work in Progress
This week I also continued work on my Sunning Gryphon piece. I didn’t get
terribly far along with him in the hour I had and I'm still not happy with the wings or
composition, but it's getting closer with each iteration. I'm trying to do some
forced perspective on the nearest wing as well. Additionally I enlarged the tail area since the previous version didn't make it look as if it
would contribute much to lift.
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| Sunning Gryphon - WIP - May 31, 2013 |
He's still a ways to go, but I want to keep
prodding the composition before I go head-first into detail. Still: progress is
progress, and if I'm not doing writing, I best keep busy with some art!
The Loirin and the Loirin Plate
This weekend I also spent some time with my mom painting
pottery and continuing work on the Loirin plate I started last month.
The image is actually based off an incredibly tiny inked “sketch” that was the
size of a postage stamp (one inch by one inch) that I made in 2010. At the time,
I scanned it and then toned it in Photoshop to tighten it up a bit more. I
wanted to make something sweet for my grandmother that was cuddly and
fantasy-ish, and I liked the idea of there being a touch of a story (that the
Liorin and the bunny are watching the first blossom of Spring). Sadly, my
grandmother is no longer with us, but this piece was one of her favorite pieces
of art I ever created for her.
The Loirin is a very old character of mine who is sort of a cross between a
lion and a kirin (oriental unicorn). I have rendered this fella many times over
the years, and one of the first ones I really liked was done way back in 2006 (although I have sketches of him as early as 2001, I believe). The character's been roaming around in my head, but aside from a few short lines of text, I really haven't written him into the world of my story yet. I figure when the right moment arises, he'll make himself known and slip into the midst of things. He's very calm and collected, and I view his race as a true and elusive rarity.
Years later I wanted to commission him to be made into a plush by the
ever-talented Kim Rhodes, so I put some quick color over top my original image
so she had a guide of his coloration. She did a fantastic job on him!
In any case, this weekend I was able to finish-up painting my Loirin plate
which I free-handed based on the original 2010 image. I’m really excited to see
how the colors turn out after it’s fired, since even during the painting
process I had to try to use my imagination to try and figure out how it will
all come together after firing. Here’s to hoping it turns out close to how I
envisioned it! His colors should be fairly bold against a background of fallen
snow.
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| "Loirin and Bunny First Blossom Plate" - Sketch - May 12, 2013 |
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| "Loirin and Bunny First Blossom Plate" - First Day of Painting - May 12, 2013 |
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| "Loirin and Bunny First Blossom Plate" - WIP Paint - June 5, 2013 |
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| "Loirin and Bunny First Blossom Plate" - Ready for Firing - June 5, 2013 |
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| "Loirin and Bunny First Blossom Plate" - Ready for Firing - June 5, 2013 |
In any case, I'm hoping next week is similarly productive. I'll admit I feel like I'm juggling quite a few different projects, but it's awesome feeling like I'm making headway with so many of them. I'm really excited to see how that plate fires-up next weekend, and I'm hoping to make a fair bit more writing progress this coming week.
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