A Calendar of Tales: January and July

Well, I went and got involved in yet another contest-type thing, despite a complete lack of time, but but but... It was Neil Gaiman's Great Big Group Project! So I wanted to play, too.

It's the Calendar of Tales project. Neil gave twelve prompts, and people wrote tweets inspired by the prompts, and then Neil wrote stories inspired by twelve of the tweets, and now people are making pictures inspired by the twelve stories... There are links to all the stories here.

This is my illustration for the July tale. A tale of a lonely wilderness of books and bears and Aurora Borealis... (There are snatches of Homer in the northern lights, barely visible... I figured the celestial stories in this world should be something ancient, and it's hard to get more ancient than Homer, right?) This was one of my favorite stories of the bunch because, well, World of Books! (It reminded me very much of my apartment. Heh.)

This was my illustration for the January Tale, which has soldiers, and sharp scary things, and peril in every second. I did most of it in a frenzy of productivity on the last day before the deadline, and finished it around six a.m. and I was fairly delirious by then, so yeah, it got kind of crazy and experimental.

This is the dude I drew for the January illustration, I wanted to post him separate because you don’t end up seeing very much of him in the final image. This was totally an excuse to mess with traditional media ink and play with big sumi-e brushes (I love my sumi-e brushes, can you tell.)

And just for larks, here's the crazy mess I made for the bands of spiky stuff in the January illustration. It was meant as a texture sort of thing but looks kind of neat by itself. I wanted something gritty and messy and layered and sort of abstract-expressionist-looking, so what we have here is a lot of acrylic and cut-up bits of paper bags all glommed together into a… well, mess. Gotta admit that was fun.

I also got carried away and did some life studies for this, which you can see here...

The Wayward Queen Cover Art: "Moving Target"

So I've survived the hurricane, and surprisingly still have power so far! I'm lucky to be in a neighborhood with almost no flooding risk, but we do have a lot of big trees down in the park. These past few years have been terrible for trees. I'm worried about everyone I know in New Jersey and Long Island, I hope things get sorted out soon there, it sounds really bad...

Anyway, with all the excitement and worry, of course I haven't been updating this thing as planned. But I may as well update now. Here's the cover art for Chapter One of my webcomic "The Wayward Queen" - posted on time on Monday despite the onslaught of hurricanes! This cover is all digital for the sake of getting it done quickly.

There were also a lot of life studies made for this thing (loads of hands!) Here's a batch of hands, and here's a bunch of unused poses based on the first set of drawings, and here's the final poses that were used to make the finished painting.

Here's some close-ups and details, since you can hardly see them all in the cover as posted on my comic site:

As with the main cover, I tentatively started this some years ago before getting interrupted by life and everything else. So the first three sketches (below) date from around 2005/2006, I think.

Then I dug it up some years later, did new revised sketches, and finished the painting this year - here's the later drawings and progress states of the final painting:

The Wayward Queen Webcomic: IT BEGINS!

Special announcement! My new webcomic is now LIVE! Check it out: http://www.queengwenevere.com/wayward-queen/

Today's post is the fancy-schmancy cover that took forever to paint. Actual pages will be black and white, with occasional covers and splash screens in color. Be warned that the first sixty pages or so are gonna look really reeeeeally old compared to my current stuff - I started drawing the backlog around 2006, with interruptions. But after that, the art rapidly catches up with my current work. Think of it as a little stroll back through time, with time-skips where I suddenly level up!

The cover is oil on canvas, 14X17 inches, and in retrospect I should probably have either painted it a lot bigger or used something smoother than canvas, because, THOSE DETAILS. SO TINY. ARGH. Trying to paint them on a textured surface was something of an ordeal. Panel would have been perfect, I think. Oh well, live and learn! Life studies for this painting are posted here, here, and here. Up-close details below!

Here's the sketches for the cover, a digital color rough, and progress shots of the acual painting - the first rough doodle was drawn eons ago (2004? 2005?) and then it sort of sat forgotten for a while until I revived it some years later. Then I did the more finished drawing, and started the underpainting - and then it sat AGAIN for a few years, until I hauled it out this year and finished it.

Whatever Wednesday: WIPs

Not really Wednesday, but whatever. It was 100 degrees on Wednesday, I didn't even dare turn on the computer. TOO DAMN HOT. My computer would melt and so would I.

Anyway, in spite of (or because of) the heat, I've been getting a fair amount of painting done. I'm trying to finish the cover for my webcomic first of all, so I can launch that thing... Of course I planned something ludicrously complicated, so it's taking forever, haha. Here's some details of the WIP... WAY too many fiddly little columns and arches, as you can see. Worse, I made the boneheaded decision to paint this on canvas, at a small size, with tiny details. The smallest columns are maybe 4 millimeters wide; one canvas bump is maybe 1 millimeter across. This means I'm fighting the canvas texture every inch of the way, and it's slow going... I should really have used board or something, but too late now, I just wanna get this thing done. Getting there... About a third to go!