Watercolor Wednesday: A Fantastic Water Balloon

I seem to have been hit hard by a summer cold and the congestion is making concentrating on anything but the inside of my eyelids quite difficult.  However, I still managed to get an image done and I'm mostly happy with it, I'm just not sure weather to outline this guy in black marker or not and I'm afraid of ruining the image so for now I'll leave it be.  This little boy was strongly inspired by boyhood pictures of my husband and this pose.  The fish in the balloon idea popped into my head as soon as I saw the pose and when I started drawing the boy he started looking like my husband.  My subconscious must have taken over, because my husband has a zany and incredible imagination as an adult, so I can just imagine the things he came out with as a child:

From the Sketchbook: Shields and Dragons

Today, I was doing a little research on medieval shields to make a logo for my husband's blog and out of nowhere a dragon popped into the drawing.  These are just sketches:

Flattery Friday: James C. Christensen

I know, I know, the original purpose of this blog was to post image made by ME every weekday.  But I really really want to share some of my favorite fantasy artists with everyone and give an insight into the people who inspire me.  Today I want to share an amazing modern American artist, James C. Christensen whose focus is on fairy tales, mythology and  folklore.  James Christensen's paintings are so whimsical and detailed, for me his paintings are a perfect example of modern folklore.  I love the jewel tone shades he tends to use and the way he exaggerates the roundness of many of his characters. It is hard to just pick a few painting to share but I narrowed it down to five, they are all available for sale here and you can also follow his blog!

Icarus Bound

If Pigs could Fly

 Outside the Box

 Poofy Guy on a Short Leash

The Blind Leading the Blind

Dungeons and Dragons Character: Fiona

Last night I started playing my first D&D campaign and I have an awesome Human Slayer Fiona she has an AC of 17, max hit points of 25 and her Melee damage with great sword is 1d10+7, I love her she kicks ass...so I attempted a drawing of her, which I mostly like but I need to work on the face drawing skills.  I may rework this digitally later, she'd probably come out better that way, everything seems more polished when I draw in Photoshop.

Watercolor Wednesday: Mystique

As in the mutant from X-Men.  I was never a comic book junkie, and then I met my husband.  I'm still not obsessive like he is but I share his love for the X-Men and Batman, those two remain the favorites.  So, when a pose showed up on posemaniacs that reminded me of Mystique I went for it...I hope I did her justice, she's actually harder to capture than I thought:

Molly Weasley's Enchanted Knitting Needles...

It's no secret that I'm obsessed with knitting, I'm knitting all the time and I love to knit for friends and family....however there are not enough hours in the day to do everything that needs getting done AND knit everything I'd like too.  So you could imagine I'm more than a little jealous of Molly's magicked knitting needles that do the work for her, not fair.  And I love that Hermione learns to knit both manually and with magic because she was knitting elf hats in the summer and couldn't use magic.  So I played around in Corel Painter with the "oil pastel" brushes and came up with this:

It's a bit rough looking but that's on purpose, I wanted it to look more like an old masters painting, like Van Gogh's bedroom studies. Below are two photos, one of the living room in the burrow I used as reference and the other is Van Gogh's bedroom to show you what I mean:

It's Dark In Here....Lumos!

I've seen cute maternity tees (No I'm not pregnant, I was just browsing, no one get excited) that illustrate things the fetus may be doing in there...and this idea sprang into my head, hope you like it!  Oh and I will probably offer this on tshirts and maybe expand to some other geeky fetal images, so if you're reading this and would like to comment I'm interested in knowing whether people like cafepress, zazzle or spreadshirt best.  Also, if you'd like to suggest geeky things go for it. ;P

This Gnome takes his job seriously...

Just a quick little sketch I did using DA Muro, my hand is sore from all the drawing and knitting I've been doing so I wanted to do something quick and fun today.

Anne Bonny

Anne Bonny was an Irish woman who became a famous female pirate, operating in the Caribbean. What little is known of her life comes largely from A General History of the Pyrates. I know she isn't technically a fantasy but like Paul Bunyan and Davy Crocket she has become more of a myth and a legend than just a historical figure, many of the stories attributed to her are fabricated or elaborated.  While she was a fiery and passionate red headed woman who was a female renegade for the times she did NOT murder her maid, lol.  So, here's my comic book like portrayal of Anne Bonnie, drawn in pencil first and then rendered in photoshop.  Oh this wonderful pose is thanks to Posemaniacs which I'm now addicted to, it's 30 second drawing exercise is helping me, I recommend it.

Female Ranger

Disney Style Chimera

In Greek Mythology the Chimera is a fire breathing creature with the body of a lioness, a tail that ends with a snakes head and a goat's head coming out of it's back.  It's siblings are Cerberus and the Hydra.   The term Chimera has developed a more general meaning of "impossible" or "foolish" fantasy.  There is also something known as a genetic Chimera where one organism can have multiple sets of genes, which is utterly fascinating to me, a person who is a Chimera is technically more than one person, there is much more to it and if you want to learn about chimerism go here.  I started drawing this Chimera in the style I used for my alphabet, but then I had a lightbulb go off...a lion, a goat, a snake....those were all in Disney movies right?  And so I made a Disney-fied Chimera, because that's the kind of thing crazy people who draw do, lol.

A Boy and His Dragon

The inspiration for today's artwork name is Eli, he's a young second cousin of my husbands and was at a baby shower I attended yesterday.  The weather was nice enough to have the shower outside and the yard we were in had a scenic, but very steep ravine...don't worry this story does not end badly..it ends comically. Eli had a stuffed dragon and while presents were being opened he decided to throw his stuffed dragon down the hill/ravine.  Luckily it did not fall far and his mother retrieved it.  I asked her when she came back "Did he think it would fly?" and she said "No, he was trying to feed the bigger dragon that lives in the ravine."   This really tickled me, to the point I can't stop thinking of Eli and his cannibalistic dragon, this drawing is a little scary and a bit reminiscent of Puff the Magic Dragon.  I used photoshop for the lineart and Corel draw for the coloring.

Lightbulb Joke: Fairies

The Crownless Again Shall Be King

Today I drew Aragorn in Photoshop, it took about 3 hours, which hurts the hand a bit, so excuse me for not typing too much:

All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be blade that was broken,

The crownless again shall be king.

Everyone's favorite Gorgon...

...that is if you  like being turned to stone.  In all seriousness the image of Medusa's head  was used in antiquity as a symbol of protection, this stems from a legend involving Perseus, who cut off Medusa's head and used it as a weapon against the Hydra (who I drew awhile ago).  When he was done with the head he gave it to Athena (I'm assuming he did this because it didn't match his drapes) and she put it on her shield as protection.

When Pigs Fly...

Today I had fun with polymer clay and made these adorable winged pigs...really that says it all. I'm having fun with the three dimensional art, but I'll probably be back to two dimensions tomorrow.

Book 7, Chapter 32, Page 656....in finger puppets!

Warning,  for those of you who only watch the movies and do not want 

to know what happens before July 15th, do not read on! Spoiler Alert!

I've mentioned before that I'm a knitter but have never shared any of my knitting.  I'm part of something on Ravelery called the Harry Potter Knitting and Crochet House Cup (I'm in Gryffindor) and the latest Quidditch match includes making potter pals...previously there was only crochet potter pals but thanks to Holistic Creativity.  So, I cranked out two potter pals today, Lord Voldemort and the Dark Prince, Snape.  And because that wasn't enough I decided to recreate their last *ahem* interaction.

Elemental Dragon: Water

Where I live the current high is in the high 80's...considering that last month our average high was around 40 it's a bit of a shock for the human population around here (and the doggies and kitties too).  So, water is an element I've been thinking about quite a bit this last week...visiting the beach, drinking, showering...water is nice when it's hot...so I drew a water dragon in photoshop to practice some free form drawing...I did not sketch it out first, I had no reference photo and I didn't use vectors for my lineart, it took about two hours which is quick for me...it could probably use some touch ups but I've gotta go make out with my fan.