From the Sketchbook: Persephone....

   Ever since the first hearing of her story I've had a soft spot in my heart for poor Persephone (I even dressed as her for Halloween one year) and her mother Demeter...even though Persephone unwittingly screws everything up by eating those pomegranate seeds.  Okay, I just started with the ending, rewind:

   Demeter is the goddess of harvest and nature, she controls all growing things.  She has a beautiful free spirited daughter, Persephone.  One day Persephone is picking flowers in a field and Hades (who is technically her Uncle, eww) becomes infatuated with her and steals her to the underworld.  Well, Demeter is understandable distraught and goes to Zeus and pleads for him to intervene...and he agrees that Hades should return Persephone to Demeter on one condition, Persephone cannot eat any fruit from the garden.  Before Persephone hears of this she opens up a beautiful pomegranate and eats 6 seeds from it.  The compromise is for 6 months Persephone has to stay in the Underworld and the other 6 months she is with her mother Demeter. And that is why in the fall everything goes to sleep and leads to an unfruitful winter and then nature awakens again in Spring and Summer.  I did a quick little stylized illustration with prismacolor marker of Persephone about to unwittingly break this unknown rule.  I just told this whole story from memory and may have forgotten some details, if you're interested in more go here.

In other news:  To those paying attention I've been gone for 21 days....no I don't have some dramatically good excuse like I was in traction after a horrible car crash and I'm thankful for that.  Life just got in the way, I moved into a new apartment and there have been constant changes and activities this whole summer and I'm VERY easily distracted.  I'm not sure if I'll continue to do this blog daily even though it's called Every DAY is Fantastic, because I really need to devote some more energy to new projects and schemes.   This has been very fun though, and I may try to make it a bi-weekly occurrence instead.

Watercolor Wednesday: I'm Just Wild About Saffron

Saffron is a spice that comes from the dried stigmas of the Saffron Crocus. Today I painted a faerie inspired both by the purple and mauve crocuses and the color Saffron has imparted on food and clothing for years:

From the Sketchbook: Malcom Reynolds

  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.

From the Sketchbook: Tatiana DaisyTamer

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. ;)

Moaning Myrtle the Photo Manip

   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..."

—Myrtle to Harry Potter^[src]

Stock Credits:
Moaning Myrtle: Kristina Horner
Background:  ColdStock

Oh and by the way I will be going to the movie in costume.....as Moaning Myrtle.

Edit: Forgot to add a video with a song from an amazing Wrock band called The Moaning Myrtles, 'And Then I Died':

The Dragon's out of the bag...

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?

Original Sketch:

 Lineart:

 Colored:

Advice from Roland the Barkeep

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:

The White Rabbit at the End of the Tunnel

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.

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.