I am in the middle of watching the Firefly series for the second time, it has to be one of the smartest science fiction shows I've ever seen. Joss Whedon's wit and his cast of characters make this show a truly special thing which was unfortunately cancelled only half way through it's first season. I started drawing the ship "Serenity" which is a Firefly class vessel and I suddenly remembered seeing naval portraits of sailors with the ship they served on, So I drew the Captain Malcom Reynolds with his ship. I'm pretty pleased with the result.
No, I have not lost my mind....well maybe I have a little. I have been playing a ridiculously easy and cute (and free) online MMO that seems to be designed for 10 year olds, but I'm having fun. It's called Wizard 101 and the basic idea is you are in a young apprentice Wizard who is helping rid the campus of evil. There is more to it, but right now I don't care. My stomach has been hurting all week and I'm just not in the mood to do anything serious. There are quests with such titles as "Saving Private O'Ryan" and "Help Dorothy Gale". It is campy to the extreme, but that seems to be what I need right now. So, enough talk here are the sketches and some screenshots, if you want to join me on there look for Tatiana DaisyTamer. ;)
Tomorrow morning at 12:01 AM I will be at my local movie theater witnessing the last movie in a series of 8. For many devout fans of the Rowling series it feels like the end of an era, the end to their childhood even. I can understand that a bit, though I did not discover these books until I was an adult (though technically the main characters were my age, I was born in 1980 like Harry was). However, when reading this story I was definitely transported back and became a child a bit, relating to the children in the book and watching them learn and struggle with spells and relationships. When reading a series like that it is inevitable that your mind wanders to "Who can I relate too the most?" For me that is a mixture of Hermione Granger (I was that annoying girl in Science class who was first with her hand up to answer a question) and Moaning Myrtle. Middle School was less than kind to me, actually that is a major understatement, I went through hell, from having glitter dumped on my head to having my purse stolen and later found smothered in green paint and other more personal and physical attacks I don't want to get into here. It took a very long time for me not to feel anger towards those classmates. So, when I read that Myrtle was teased about her glasses by Olive Hornby and then ran to the bathroom upset and was killed by the Basilisk, I didn't really blame Myrtle for haunting Olive. Sure, it wasn't Olive's fault that Tom had let the Basilisk out, but Myrtle did not know what killed her really...no one did until the Chamber of Secrets was opened again. Also, it sounds as if it wasn't the first time Olive had teased her, Myrtle's fixation on Olive Hornby may have been irrational and blown out of proportion, yet it was understandable at the same time...especially when you realize that ghost or no Myrtle is still a child.
So....now I'll tell you a little about the art! I was tempted to draw an image of Myrtle, and maybe I will in the future, but it's been a loooong time since I did a photo-manipulation and ghost photo-manips are so fun, so when I saw stock images on Deviantart by Kristina Horner of the Parselmouths I just had to put her in a bathroom!
"Nobody missed me even when I was alive. Took them hours to find my body- I know, I was sitting there waiting for them. Olive Hornby came into the bathroom- 'Are you in here again, sulking Myrtle?, she said, 'because Professor Dippet asked me to look for you-' And then she saw my body...ooooh, she didn't forget that until her dying day, I made sure of that..."
Today I want to share with you a sketch I worked on last night while playing Dungeons and Dragons, it's based on a concept my husband shared with me nearly a week ago. I'm doing things a bit differently today because I'm going to show you the initial sketch, the lineart and the coloring. I wanted to keep this one very, very simple with the shading. I wonder if I oversimplified it though, maybe I should add a little more shading...thoughts?
Things have been pretty hectic in my life lately, it seems everytime things settle down there is another injury or illness to someone in my family and I've been pretty distracted by it all. I've been meaning to work on this comic idea my husband Allan came up with of Roland the barkeep. This is a first attempt, the advice probably won't be in that chalkboard in the future and it will most likely be in strip form and longer bits of advice, but I think for now this illustrates the concept pretty well and is quite cute. I hope you all enjoy it and I also hope to resume a more normal schedule soon:
This week has been a rough art week, I don't want to get into it but there's been many distractions, so here is the third image of the week, I'd like to say I'll make up for it over the (holiday) weekend, but I'd probably be lying. Anyway, today I had fun with Corel painter 11. More specifically I had fun with the pens in Corel. I've missed drawing with pen and ink, but it's so messy, this had that rough scritchy-scratchy look I love without the black under my finger nails, win! I especially had fun with the Coit Pen 3, which as near as I can tell means 3 pronged or rake, it was fun. I created a tunnel with it and the most logical thing to put in the tunnel? Alice of course! Oh, and another thing, I used NO REFERENCES for this, I was inspired by Lewis Carrol's Alice in Wonderland, but I avoided looking at the images, I drew the rabbit and the girl completely feom my head, I didn't even get help for her pose, I am very proud....and her feet were a pain in my tush.
