The Not-So-Usual Suspects...

Yesterday while reading the techniques section in my new favorite book (The Fantasy Artist's Figure Drawing Bible, hereon known as TFAFDB) I had an idea while looking at page 44 and 45 on relative proportions of fantasty characters, it reminded me of a police lineup...so here are the suspects, a female drow Elf, a dourhand dwarf and a dark wizard....I don't even want to imagine what the crime was ::shudders::

I took a break from the water colors and used my Faber-Castel artist pens (less pretentiously known as markers).  I'm reasonably happy with the outcome, but I'm most pleased with the dwarf...I'm apparently better at drawing people shorter than I am....which considerable limits things  seeing as I'm 5'3", so I will work on taller beings some more.

From the Sketchbook: Dwarves

Another day another page of the sketchbook, this time two pages actually.  Once again, I used the Fantasy Artist's figure drawing bible, this time to work on drawing dwarves.  Here are two excerpts I'm fairly proud of, once again I used pencil and watercolor:

From the Sketchbook: Wizards

Some more sketches using  the Fantasty Artist's Figure Drawing Bible, this time Wizards...I'm less happy with them than I was the hobbits I made yesterday...but it's progress...wizards are much harder to draw than I thought they'd be:

From the Sketchbook: Hobbits

I apologize for my brief hiatus, my birthday was Saturday and Easter was the day after, so Hubby took time off and from work and we traveled a little and bummed around watching SG-1 the rest of the time, It was fun.  For my birthday I picked out a book called "The Fantasy Artist's Figure Drawing Bible" by Matt Dixon and it is wonderful.  I used his character guidlines on halflings to create the doodles on this page:

The sketchbook I'm using is for multimedia so I decided to experiment with watercolors on my pencil drawings, I like the effect, here is the closeup of the female hobbit:

Try, try, again...

Mermaids seem to be the one bit of fantasy art that gives me the most trouble, I'm not sure why...so today I decided to get help on it in the form of a tutorial I found on elfwood and while I was at it I joined elfwood and made a profile.  Without further ado, here is the mermaid...looking at least a bit more normal than the others....I pencil drew her and then experimented with brushes in photoshop:

The Salamander

The Salamander is a legendary beast who seems to have two identities, there are ordinary salamanders that are quite normal (for lizards) and then there are the mythical salamanders that erupt into flame, there is a long list of accounts of fire salamanders on wikipedia, but one of my favorites is by Leonardo da Vinci who wrote this about the salamander: 


"This has no digestive organs, and gets no food but from the fire, in which it constantly renews its scaly skin. The salamander, which renews its scaly skin in the fire,—for virtue." 




 Today I made a piece of jewelery with wire and beads to represent the salamander:

Everyone's favorite bookworm...

Unless you're some sort of muggle I guess...but seriously who doesn't love the character of Hermione Granger?  Today I drew her in a classic Hermione pose...I was going for a more comic book feel but got a children's book illustration feel instead...wonder why? lol
 Oh and once again I used Deviantart as a resource for finding the reference.

Riddles in the Dark...

Another piece of Tolkien fan art! This time in honor of the fact they have finally started filming on the Hobbit! Yay!!! (I've sprung an exclamation point leak, hopefully that'll be plugged up by tomorrow, lol)

 This is my vector representation of Riddles in the Dark the scene between Bilbo and Gollum, my new desktop! ;)

Playing in the Sand...

My siblings and I grew up near the ocean, summers consisted of fishing from a boat with our father in the Long Island Sound and frequent trips to the beach, many sand castles were built and many children were buried (relax, only up to the neck). Today, my sister and I went to one of the beaches we frequented as children and drew in the sand.  First we both sketched out mythical creatures, me a dragon and her a mermaid:

Then Cris started writing quotes in the sand:

It was a beautiful day for the beach! I've missed taking photographs and I'm thinking of opening a stock photography account on deviantart.

Fire Sword Pendant

Very simply a wire wrapped pendant of a fantasy sword....I'm still having some trouble making my wire wraps neat but I'm working on it.

Some days I hate technology...

Yesterday my computer almost ate my photoshop, today my scanner has decided it's not really hooked up to the computer, even though it clearly is.  So I had to take a photograph of my drawing of an elf with a bird....I'm so over it right now....looks like tomorrow I'll be doing a digital piece...maybe.

Sculpey Jade Dragon

Today I wanted to work with sculpey...I was searching dragon images when I stumbled upon some sculpted Jade dragons by Donn Salt, some of his first sculptures in the 70's really intrigued me and I wanted to see if I could recreate them in polymer clay....the result is no where near as beautiful as Donn's but still pretty interesting:

The Two Trees of Valinor...

And on the 100th day of this blog I FINALLY do a piece of Tolkien fanart....about GD time!!! Seriously!
 The Two Trees of Valinor are Telperion and Laurelin, the Silver Tree and the Gold that brought light to the Land of the Valar in ancient times. They were destroyed by Ungoliant at Melkor's behest, but their last flower and fruit were made by the Valar into the Moon and the Sun.

Fanart: SG1

My husband and I have been obsessively watching SG1 on Netflix (we are on season 7) and it's to the point I couldn't view anything from Ancient Eygpt at the Met without referencing the show or talking about Daniel Jackson, sigh.  So here is a Ha'ta, a Goa'uld mothership.

I may eventually digitally rework this but right now I can't, I'm having some minor dizzy spells today and I'm either gonna take a nap or go get a Rita's Italian Ice (never been there, but I heard they have a Swedish Fish flavor).

Foreshadowing Perseus

Perseus is the the Ancient Greek Hero who slays Medusa; I had the idea to show him as a young man slaying a much smaller less formidable snake.  I wanted to draw this scene but ten sheets of paper later I decided on a photo manipulation, images are from deviantart:

Comic Book Fairy

Today I was practicing foreshortening techniques and created this little fairy.  I decided to experiment with pointillism shading...not sure how I like it, but here she is:

Quiet Moment for Athena

Athena is the Goddess of wisdom, handicrafts, war and agriculture.  Of course popular culture tends to focus on her warlike side...however one of my favorite stories about Athena involves the young maiden Arachne.  Arachne was said to be the best weaver and even claimed to be better than Athena herself! Of course Athena challenged Arachne and when she lost to Arachne she became enraged and beat Arachne with the shuttle of her loom and Arachne hung herself with it.  When Athena realised what she had done she felt remorse and sorrow and brought the girl back to life as a spider and to this day her daughters weave and spin all over the earth.  This is why we call spiders arachnids.  In hid a daughter of Arachne in this drawing.  Also, I have included a young owl which is a symbol of her wisdom.

Faerie Babe...

Decided to have some fun today and just do a more painterly technique in photoshop...