Art!, Redefining Evil, Sun-Walking, Writing!

Puppies & Pecs & Pretty Girls

I’m torn between the impulse to write all about my creative happenings now, but without full access to anything I did traditionally, or to wait until I get home (in like 2 weeks) and just take a MASSIVE DUMP (sorry, but the excitement of having my own flatbed scanner back at my fingertips just brings from me disgusting phraseology).

Well, then, to tide me over, in list-format, here’s what I’m working on:

  • The Cadence of a Restless Heart pages, 17 full pages coloured and 1 in the works, with 3 more inked pages to follow
  • Redefining Evil/The Terror of Night revisions — I did most of them, but I’m still meaning to change the ending a little bit. A LITTLE BIT. Only a little. I finally figured out a good direction for the remaining characters to go in, and it’s exciting.
  • …SUN-WALKING WOOO. No I mean I guess I just opened it up and GOODNESS that story’s got the best action sequences! Plus when I reached the end of what I have written in “Sky-Dancing,” I was like ooo boy…now where was I going with that? Turns out for a change I DID write down my planned ending and I went “oooohh” when I read it, and there’s not really that much more to write and I’ll be much happier with a rough but at least finished draft of the story. 0___0
    Okay and I’m coming back to this a few days later (after my second of three finals!) and I got back into working “Wind-Running” because I had this breakthrough that sometimes I make my characters overreact where in life people would respond more subtly, so like, Isaac isn’t as angry at Levi as he was in the last draft. Also, “Wind-Running” will be almost completely told through Lucy’s journal entries, up until the point where she gets tranquilized by Keenan, where it will switch back to third for the duration of the story. This is because you really need to be inside Lucienne’s head as she transforms, otherwise it all seems too simple.
    The changes I was proposing to Sun-Walking, such as solidifying Helios and whatnot, I realized some of them started going overboard. I do want to keep that one told in third-person, so that means I don’t want to rewrite the whole thing…I will need to dig into it at some point and hone down Helios and the Sun-Creatures, but in general I don’t want to rework as much as I did before.

And now…without further ado, a sketch dump!

I mean but seriously. This is my favorite gif I’ve ever made. I MEAN BUT REALLY. Also, this was a reasonable movie.

So I JUST finished this listening to Cartel, which is one of the two or three bands I will always and forever associate with Micah. And okay I didn’t JUST draw him without a shirt on to indulge myself. Okay it was mostly that, but he wasn’t wearing a shirt in his first scene in the new draft of “Wind-Running” because Levi decides to go there in the middle of the night so what dude sleeps with a shirt on in the summer?
Anyway, this is another attempt to get the hang of lineless digital work. I’m a lot happier with it. I almost just went through with the sketch I had laid over it but finishing most of my schoolwork made me ambitious. Also lineless work is a lot easier when I can still kind of work with lines…TCoaRH helped me figure out to just use the pen tool and layer over it to blend things, rather than copping out and using the airbrush like I thought I needed to in the past.
And okay I’m trying to convince myself that my favorite part of this isn’t just his pecs because they’re his pecs, but it’s not working.
Oh and don’t worry, he’s not the only person I’ve been drawing naked lately. I did a nude of Lucienne last night in my sketchbook. o_O And on that note, I mean “nude” as in the kind of pose I did during Life Drawing, not “HUAAA HERE ARE MY TA-TAs” but…I don’t think my intentions were as noble with this picture.

ball-smooch-new

This was seriously my FIRST satisfying lineless piece I think…ever. And it kind of slipped away from me because things got so busy here what with classes ending and my uncle dying. I did it when I was doing the latest (and hopefully last) re-write of the ballroom scene of ToN (yes that’s right, I am implementing the new acronym of RE with its new name…Margaret), even though that’s not even what Ingrid was wearing in the scene. I just kind of like the fairytale effect of this picture but then it’s like OH THEY’RE BOTH VAMPIRES THEY’RE DEAD THEY COULD KILL YOU IF THEY WANTED MUAHAHAHA delicate kiss

There’s definitely more of a vampire vibe in this picture, but I’m not as pleased with it and I didn’t work on it for as long (obviously). On another layer I had a doodle of Danny getting the wind knocked out of him when Ingrid punches him in the gut right before this part in the story, but it looks like I deleted the layer. xD The rewrite of this ballroom scene reached a nice compromise of all the previous drafts. Danny and Ingrid do get a nice kiss, but no sex…Ingrid gets mad, but she doesn’t blow up at Lacy (that scene was very contrived, and long-winded, and a perfect example of what I was saying earlier about subtlety of reactions)…Ingrid gets in touch with her life back at the force because I introduce her mother, but I didn’t get carried away with that by implementing the whole huge “foster home” concept and all her rather obnoxious (and contrived) friends that were in previous drafts. Plus I got to write another scene of Micah being paranoid and sick and that’s always fun.

Then here’s Ingrid looking badass as usual. I don’t have a ton to say about this one except that I like the movement of her skirt. When I did this I almost decided to add all my other heroines but unless I’m feeling particularly dedicated, usually the thought of doing that is much better than the product.

Then here’s a biology lesson I learned. I feel pretty dumb because I really should have known that incisors are different than canines, but right after I read that in my notes on animal digestion, I searched “incisors” in my latest ToN draft and I used it like six times in relation to what I meant to be their fangs. e___e; Oh well, at least I learned it now.

Well, I think that’s the end of my seemingly endless stream of art updates. There are some more I won’t get to till I’m back State-side and settled, but this is pretty satisfying in the meantime.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *