Miscellaneous Drawings #13

Hi everyone,

My blogging schedule will be a bit sporadic in the coming months. But in this post, I plan to update you with the new drawings I've made recently. 

This is a drawing of Arisias. I finally redesigned her outfit to make her more inspired by the new setting and I think it works well. 

I was experimenting with water color pencils here. I don't know who this character is, but I hope to find out eventually. 

This is a drawing of Felix digitized from the one I drew in Inktober. I really like how it turned out. 

So, as it turns out, one of my characters (Elyerin) is a Dullahan (Irish version of the Headless Horseman), so I redesigned him to match that. 

And this is Arisias again using her magic. I wanted to create a Gothic sort of feeling in this piece. 

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Which drawing is your favorite? 

-Quinley 

My Art from Inktober 2023 (Part Three)

Previous parts here and here. 

Hi everyone, 

I have been very busy recently, and because of that I forgot to blog. So, I am going to break the silence with the last part of my Inktober series for last year. I had intended to post it earlier, however I forgot to take the last photos. 

 Here's the official prompt list: 

#21 Chains. I drew Oak with chain-like jewelry on her neck and arm. 

#22 Scratchy. I drew a cat since they are known to scratch things. 

#23 Celestial. Arisias gets a part of her powers from the goddess of the moon, Salissah. So, because of this, I felt like drawing her with the night sky behind her. 

#24 Shallow. I took this to mean shallow water and drew two ducks I had taken a picture of near water. 

Here's the photo. 

#25 Dangerous. I decided to draw a witch's secret hideaway. 

#24 Remove. I decided to draw a Halloween drawing of carving a pumpkin.  

#25 Beast. I decided to draw a sea monster. 

Due to the fact that I forgot to write down the prompts, I forgot which days each of these were for:

 However, the prompts are Sparkle, Massive and Rush, so you can try to determine which is which, since I'm not entirely sure. 

#31 Fire. And finally fire. I watched The Wicker Man (1973) for the first time last Halloween, and felt like drawing the Wickerman burning. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Which drawing is your favorite? Now that I'm back, what kinds of blog posts would you like to see from me in the future? 

-Quinley

How April's Camp NaNoWriMo is Going for Me (Part 2)

Click here to read Part 1. 

Greetings Adventurers, 

This is the final part of the series about my adventures in Camp NaNoWriMo for April 2023. Next year, I may do something similar if I am working on a project that I've already talked a lot about. But in terms of posts relating to Camp NaNoWriMo, you can look forward to hearing about the project I am working on in July, sometime soon. 

My Writing 

On April 14th I got to my word count goal! The story is far from finished and I still have a lot of work I need to do in terms of writing it. But it feels good to have a better version of it written than my first attempt at the third draft. It still needs a lot of editing and rewriting, but I am getting closer

     in terms of publishing. 

 However...I am going to have one of my standalone books be my debut novel, since this novel lands on a cliffhanger and is a part of a series.

 In the meantime, I finally rewrote the summary. The original summary I had written was from 2018, so it was outdated. Here is the new summary:

“Arisias” is the only thing Horatio remembers after waking up from a coma. He doesn’t remember who he is or what happened to him before the accident. 

At the same time in Dragons' Province, two detectives are working on solving the case of the murdered royalty. It’s unclear who the killer or killers are, for a different person is always seen leaving the scene of the crime. Will they be able to find out who or what is behind it all, before it is too late?

(Two pages from my writing notebook from 2016) 

I feel the story is becoming clearer and clearer, though it is very different from the first draft. I found the first page of the notebook I had written about the characters, when I first created them. They were so different then. And it's interesting to see how it evolved. I don't know what younger me would have thought of the story as it is now, but the fact that I've been able to work on it for so long and have not given up is an accomplishment. 

I do, however, have a to-do list of things for the story from writing this. I figured out some world-building elements, which I will now need to decide how to fit in. And I need to redesign one character's clothes--while I may end up using them somewhere else in a different project, they now seem out of place in this story. They were inspired by 18th century clothes, and most of the other characters' clothes are inspired by Ancient Greek and Irish culture. 

However, I am not going to completely forget about the clothes: they will be reused somewhere else. I have done this before with other story elements. For example, Ophelia's former boyfriend, Austen, ended up getting a project of his own, which I hope to explore sometime. And a character who changed appearance wise, but is still in the story, had their appearance used by another character in a different story.  (Admittedly if someone heard this out of context, a person using another person's face would sound incredibly weird.) 

(Image from wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_De_Morgan#/media/File:Cassandra1.jpeg)

In the writing group I am in, there was a fun exercise to "post artwork that reminds you of your project." It reminded me how much of my project-- character wise was inspired by Pre-Raphaelite art. Besides being inspired by Tauriel from The Hobbit (movies), Arisias took some inspiration from a painting when I first created her. And more recently, there are paintings that remind me of her, one of which is posted above. 

(Image from wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_William_Waterhouse#/media/File:Waterhouse,_JW_-_The_Sorceress_(1913).jpg)

I even found some paintings that remind me of Ophelia, in particular this one by John William Waterhouse. 

The writing challenge I mentioned in the previous post has helped a lot with understanding my characters more. I not only figured out the relationship between Karleon and Salissah, but I also figured out the inner workings of other relationships that they have with other characters-- which is great. 

What I've Been Reading and Watching 

While in the past I have read fantasy and murder mystery books to get into the mood to write, now I am mostly reading classics. I'm currently rereading Jane Eyre. It's fun to delve back into it since it has been a year since I read it. (The last time I read it was for a book club.) It's nice to read about the characters again, and I also am appreciating the descriptions in the book, upon rereading it. I particularly enjoy the gothic elements spread throughout, with the red room, and Jane thinking she sees a figure in the mirror.

I've also been reading Middlemarch and watching the BBC adaptation. I love George Eliot's writing style, and it makes me want to read more books of hers. I will have more to say about it on a later date. 

And I've been loving watching the Sleepy Hollow tv series. I started watching it recently and am on the second season.

(Fan art I did of Abbie). 

 I love Abbie's and Ichabod's friendship. While the main story is nothing like Irving's story, they sprinkle elements of the original story back into it. 

I also love the aesthetic of the title sequence. 

So, from reading Jane Eyre and watching Sleepy Hollow I may have gotten ideas for my gothic novels. 

Anyway, that's the end of my posts about April 2023's Camp NaNoWriMo. I am looking forward to July's. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------How has been April been? Have you been reading or watching anything good recently? 

-Quinley 

How April's Camp NaNoWriMo is Going for Me (Part 1)

Since I have talked about the story I am writing for April's camp multiple times, I think I will talk about my writing process in this post. If you want an (up-to-date) post about the details of my novel, The Mystery of the Body Thief, you can check it out here. 

This Camp NaNoWriMo I am focusing on the third draft of my novel, The Mystery of the Body Thief. I had initially planned to write the second book, Becoming the Body Thief's second draft. But I realized I did not plot out the second draft's plot, which could cause me to fall into one of the pit-falls of the first draft--having the characters aimlessly wandering. (I usually plot out my stories, but in that case I made the mistake in forgetting to plot and improvised it most of the way.)

My plan instead then is to work on Becoming the Body Thief during NaNoWriMo in November, so as to give me time to re-plot it and create connections between episodes. And in July, I will be working on The Haunted Sketchbook.

My Writing- 

There are two storylines going on at the same time, which I ignored in my first and second write through of the story. This time around, I am giving the characters equal attention. There is a mystery in both of the plots, and I need to give clues to the reader in both of these without revealing too much. So, I am using detective shows I've seen with plots like that for inspiration. 

 Since the first day of Camp NaNoWriMo was yesterday, here are some things I've been thinking about while writing this draft. My goal for this camp is to write 20,000 words worth of rewrites for this story, and so far I've written 3,218 words. 

I have been looking at Greek and Irish castles as models for the castle that Arisias lives in. Greek and Irish culture were the inspirations for my elves in general, and their religion. I don't want it to look fully Irish or fully Greek but a hybrid. I don't want someone to react to it like "oh, the elves are Irish" or "oh, the elves are Greek" but instead for there to be a mixture of both cultures, so that it becomes its own thing. This is a challenge, but it's going to be a fun one. 

(Fiáina the goddess of nature in festive clothes). 

I've been also working on a holiday related to the goddess, Fiáina. I only have one holiday figured out for that world, and that is the Festival of Magic. I want to make another one. It's not simply there to show world-building; rather, it has a purpose to the plot as a whole (that I can't reveal because of spoilers). So, I want to pay attention to what rituals would happen during that festival and what mythological importance it has to the goddess. And, I should add, this song by Spiral Dance was an inspiration to me for the holiday: 

Spiral Dance's music in general has reminded me of my fantasy world, so it is neat that it inspired a holiday for my world as well. 

I have been continuing to improve the descriptions of my elves.(I mentioned last time that I was working on this.)  I've been avoiding mentioning that they have pointy ears. While it may eventually be mentioned off hand, the part of my elves that is important is not that they have pointy ears, but instead that they are deeply connected to nature--even if their duties do not lie in the protection of or caring of nature. So far, it has been going well, but like the writing I have done with description for my other stories, I am going to make several revisions before I get a perfect draft. 

This year, I am also doing a writing prompt challenge, which involves getting to know your characters better. The characters I am doing it for are: Karleon (The God of Mischief), Salissah (The Goddess of the Moon), and Ophelia. 

Responding to the prompts has been helpful in understanding the characters more and also allowed me to get into Ophelia's backstory. I felt as if I had not thought a lot about it, which is strange, because I feel I should have given it more attention, since she has been alive for so long (being an elf). What I've found out about her backstory has added nuance to her character in the current story, and how her past affected her, since in hundreds of years a lot can happen. And if some humans aren't comfortable with events that happened in their past, elves are likely to have some past regrets too.

I am also exploring Karleon's and Salissah's friendship. When I first made them, I thought they'd be enemies, but they ended up becoming friends. (Karleon is not on good terms with Fiáina; however, when around their devotees, they act more as colleagues even if they're not on good terms.) In regards to Salissah's and Karleon's friendship, I guess they became friends because wit (what Karleon has) and wisdom (what Salissah has) work well together. 

While I am not currently writing  All is Not Lost For All Will Begin Again, I am working on the characters and the world.  I've been doing a ton of research for it, but I've been thinking about two characters: Veraly and Seth. The story has many main characters (as opposed to only one), so, it is going to be a good challenge to plot out the series. The world itself is still in its early stages in terms of world-building (unlike Arisias's world). I have an idea about what I want to do with it, but I have not figured out everything yet.  

(Moodboard for Veraly. Images from Wiki commons, Pixabay, and Pexels.  The template I used to make this mood-board was made by Ayzrules). 

As for the characters, Veraly is a performer and Phoenix's (adoptive) sister. She has water magic and enjoys performing arts of different kinds. I've been thinking about what creative things she does and how those creative things affect how she views the world. 

And Seth is a shapeshifter spy. He's also incredibly religious, and the reason why he is doing that is due to that world's religion. An object important to their religion was stolen, and he has to find it. 

And I want to figure out how he feels about being a spy given that he is religious: how he handles it, whether there is guilt from it, and things like that.

Both these characters I am trying to develop more, so hopefully I will learn more about them too, along with their world. Even though I am not writing their story at the moment, I thought I would share. 

Playlist for The Mystery of the Body Thief 

And also since I shared the playlist I made last year's camp, here is the playlist for the novel I am currently working on. 

  Fun (Non-Writing Related) things- 

 * In March, I went to an online S.J. Tucker concert: it was so fun. And as a songwriter myself, it was fun to find out that she too was inspired by books in writing her music. Since the concert was collaboration with a library,  there were a ton of book recommendations that came with the songs she sang. 

I've previously never found a way to go to concerts for the singers I love (since they are either in a different country or don't do concerts at all), so finding out about this was so fun and I am glad I went. It was a fun way to celebrate spring equinox. She ended up playing "Rabbit's Song," which was a song that served as an inspiration for Karleon's myths in the myth collection and was one of my favorites of hers. And I was introduced to some new (and unreleased) songs that I had never heard before. 

One of these was "Kashkash," which was inspired by a book, In the Cities of Coin and Spice. 

*

(Image from wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_You_Like_It#/media/File:Rosalind_-_Robert_Walker_Macbeth.jpg)

 I attended and participated in a dramatic reading of As You Like It and read some parts in it (Rosalind, Celia, Orlando, and a few others). I had not read or seen the play in a long time, so that was fun. It was fun to perform with a group again and to play different roles. It makes me want to try to get Rosalind or Orlando as a part in a full production of As You Like It sometime. 

And that's the end of part one!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------How was your March? Are you doing Camp NaNoWriMo or another fun activity this April? 

-Quinley 

Announcing My NaNoWriMo 2022 Novel: The Mystery of the Body Thief

During this year's NaNoWriMo I am working on the 3rd draft of The Mystery of the Body Thief. So, here is some information about my project and my plans ahead for the 3rd draft (and other drafts) in general. 

As a quick update, I'd like you to know that I've updated two pages. I've added a new character for Dolls of Wax, Eyes of Glass which you can see here. And, I've updated the page for the characters from The Princess Arisias mystery series here. 

                                                                        Synopsis- 

                 Genre: Fantasy | Murder Mystery Series: First book in the Princess Arisias mystery series 

Horatio wakes up from being in a coma, but he doesn't remember anything that happened before he fell into unconsciousness. All that he remembers is a name, "Arisias!"

Also... Detective Inspector Time finds himself having to solve a case without Princess Arisias. Murders have been happening throughout many different kingdoms, and no one knows who exactly is behind it all.

                                             Characters- 

A lot of things have changed about the characters since I last made a post about them, including some of their names, so here are the characters: 

                                                  Horatio- 

Horatio is a servant who works in the castle, and who has amnesia. 

He is still discovering who he is, and wants to know more, 

for he feels very lost and confused.  

                                        Princess Arisias- 

Arisias is a princess, who never woke up from her coma, unlike Horatio. 

Before the coma she worked as a detective part time, while also fulfilling her role as a princess. 

                                                                   Ophelia- 

            Ophelia is a healer and a priestess (to the goddess of the earth and the god of air). 

             She is a quiet, but very kind person. Though she doesn't talk a lot, when she does she always has something thoughtful to say. 

                                                                                         

                                       D.I. Elyerin Time- 

He is called "Elyerin" by those who know him well, and "Detective Inspector Time" when he is working. He is an elvish detective with time related powers from the god of time. D.I. Elyerin Time is currently working on solving the case of murdered royalty. 

Cerawen & Vonivera 

Cerawen and Vonivera are Arisias's ladies-in-waiting. 

Cerawen- is from another kingdom and was sent over to Dragons' Province for undisclosed reasons. 

Vonivera- is a fay, who used to be close to Arisias before the accident. 

Marigold- 

Marigold works for the civil guard and is training to be a detective. She has not gotten there, but she is working towards it. She hopes one day to be a detective like her father. 

My Plans for this NaNoWriMo- 

I decided to take a long break before working on the third draft. When I finished the second draft, I took some time for reading to get into the mode of writing the third draft. One book I found particularly helpful was Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. I usually don't find self-help writing books useful, but this was really inspirational for me. 

In fact one piece of advice King gave was to embellish references/imaginary. King referred to his book Carrie, where he used blood related imagery, which he embellished more in later drafts. 

This made me think about the imaginary/references in my own work, that I plan to embellish more this time through. 

Since I wrote my post about finishing the second draft, I've come up with fantastical names for the characters: Cerawen, Vonivera, etc..  At this point only one character still needs a fantasy name, and that is Marigold. She has two names, an elvish name and a human name. Marigold is the name she goes by as a human, but since she lives among elves and was raised by an elf, she also needs an elvish name. 

I'm also rereading  Lord of the Rings for inspiration, and I'm thinking about ways to describe my elves without immediately saying that their ears are pointed. They are pointed, but I don't want to just rely on that imagery to define them as elves. I need to capture that something which makes my elves different than humans, and I want to show that without directly saying that they are elves all the time to my readers. This is something that will take several drafts to figure out how to do, but it is something I've been thinking a lot about recently. 

 My fantasy world has been built much more, since I last wrote about it. 

I'm actually working on a side project, a collection of myths involving the myths of the gods and goddesses of that world.  I realized the stories and the myths are very important to that world. And while I have talked about the myths in blog posts, I want to steadily build a collection of short stories. I should add, I was partially inspired by Bardugo's Lives of Saints, for the Grishaverse series. While hers is much shorter than this is going to be, it definitely served as an inspiration.

 I've found that it helps to understand the world, because the world will effect the characters' actions in ways, whether unconsciously or not. 

So, those are my plans for this NaNoWriMo. I hope NaNoWriMo is going well for everyone else!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Are you doing NaNoWriMo this November? If so, what are you working on? If not, have you re-read any favorite books of yours recently? 

-Quinley 

A Look Into a World #3: How the Power of Prophecy Came To Be (+ P.2 of the Q&A)

So, in this post, I wanted to talk about an aspect of my general process of writing but one that is still related to Becoming the Body Thief and Arisias. So, I decided another installment for A Look Into a World. If you want to read the previous installments, here is #1 and #2.  

A Look Into a World: 

How the Power of Prophecy Came To Be

The Myth

Before Karleon had power over prophecy, the power belonged to the God of Time. The prophecies were very direct and to the point. They did not have any rhyming nor were they hard to decipher. Because of this a lot of prophecies came out sounding like threats rather than prophecies. Since a lot of people were not pleased to find out when and the exact date and time of their death, prophecies became less and less like a thing that people would travel to receive. It seemed prophecy was becoming a dying art. However, Karleon the god of mischief decided that he must steal the power. 

(Karleon catching the god of time in a form of a firefly (he's not a real firefly, so his glow wouldn't be yellow but instead silver)). 

So Karleon insulted the God of Time and challenged him to a shapeshifting contest. They took on different forms of different animals, until the God of Time turned into a firefly and Karleon caught him in that form and extracted the power that way. 

As a result, the temples that housed the God of Time's oracles suddenly became Karleon's temples of prophecy. And devotees to the God of Time were still devotees to him, but they had suddenly become devotees to Karleon as well--and not in the typical way which would happen during The Festival of Magic. 

This caused Karleon to get in trouble with the King and Queen of the gods again. But they were unable to remove the power from Karleon for he threatened that the power would cease to be in use if they removed it. Since he could see the future, they took what he said to be fact (though variations of the myth told by the God of Time's devotees, say it was one of Karleon's lies). 

But, even though they were not able to remove the power, the King and Queen tasked the God of Time with punishing Karleon. So Karleon was temporarily frozen in time. 

The Oracles & Their Powers

                                                            (An elvish oracle in a trance foretelling what is come) 

There are many oracles across the different kingdoms. When an oracle uses their power, they go into a trance. Their eyes glow a bright vibrant blue, and they talk in a voice that sounds unlike their own. 

The prophecies of course are told in rhyme and also are very ambiguous in meaning. In regards to prophecies related to heroes, some people in the world believe in "chosen ones." Others believe that the people mentioned in prophecies relating to quests are just descriptions of people who could fit the criteria, but not an exact person.

 But it does all come down to a belief in fate, and what power it has over actions in the world. 

The Relationship between the Devotees 

  Nisis/Nyro's and Karleon's devotees are on somewhat good terms. (The gods aren't exactly enemies, and despite their disagreements, they have teamed up more than once). On the other hand, the God of Time's devotees and Karleon's are not friendly. 

This is because some of the devotees, think that the power should have been left with the God of Time, as prophecy foretells the future and is related to time itself. They are also upset that they could have received the ability but the god of mischief, Karleon stole it from them. 

It is not unusual that arguments--even heated debates--would happen between them. The devotees to the God of Time would like the power back, whereas the devotees of Karleon think it is rightfully theirs. 

                  Part two of the Q&A For Becoming the Body Thief 

Now, we're back with part 2! If you wish to read part 1, you can so here. Many of the questions that were submitted related to the 2nd book in my Fantasy murder mystery book series, Becoming the Body Thief, and there were other questions relating to the world in general.                                      

Questions from Diane at Always Crave Cute :

I'm wondering how far Arisias will go with her ruse. Will she hold back just enough to not commit an actual crime?

Without spoiling anything, Arisias does admit she has had a lot of regrets from having to do things because of her alias in the 2nd book. She actually said that in this post (note, that I called her "Annabelle" then, so the post is a bit outdated in terms of names but not content), in response to the question "what is the hardest thing you've ever done?" So, I will just say-- she has a lot of regrets. 

                          Will she change the behavior of the real criminals?

                     You shall see, Arisias may be able to, or she may not. It all depends...

                 Does she use costumes, disguises, to hide her true identity and intent?

(Arisias in disguise) 

         The criminals Arisias works with, have no idea they're helping Princess Arisias. So, yes. She's in disguise, and she is using an alias, so no one actually knows it is her. However, that is not to say that someone won't discover that she isn't who she says she is. 😉

                                                  Question from Anonymous:  

                           Will Arisias find friends among the criminals?

 She will have to be allies with them, even if not close friends. Because if she is enemies toward them that will not help her get to where she needs to go. 

         Will she turn these in to the police when she sees the crimes they commit?

This is one time, where she cannot turn criminals in to the civil guard (police) because, she herself has become a wanted criminal. So, by doing that, she would risk being arrested just for the sake of arresting a criminal. At this point, she is at the same level of the criminals so cannot do much to go against them-- unless, she wants to end up arrested, too. 

                                               Questions from Fleming: 

What made you decide to change the character’s name to Arisias, especially after living with Annabelle for so long? 

(Still from the video where I announce Arisias's name change). 

When I named this character "Annabelle" back in 2016, the name fit her character at the time. However, when she was developer further, it stopped fitting her. So, it felt appropriate to call her "Arisias" as was drafting it now. 

Also, I realized the name "Annabelle" sounds very strange when there are other characters with names like Cerawen and Vonivera. And also since she is the main character, it felt weird that the other characters had fantastical names, but she did not. 

In the first book, Horatio only knows the character's name, rather than her as a person when he first wakes up. I thought "Arisias" as a name held more mystery than "Annabelle."

 The name Arisias also seemed closer to who she was, and as for the background in creating the name I talk about it in this post here. 

 Also, are there any characteristics of the fairies, elves or dwarfs that you feel are completely original to this world?

(Image from Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_mythology#/media/File:Riders_of_th_Sidhe_(big).jpg)

I wouldn't say anything is completely original. I am taking a lot of elements of my story from mythology from thousands and thousands of years ago (Greek, Norse, Irish, etc.), along with inspirations from some more modern fantasy stories. But, I would say they're different in some ways from other elves, dwarves, and fairies I have seen in the media. 

For my fairies I actually took some elements from Irish mythology. Because of that they're more trickster like, not someone you want to anger, nor someone you can completely trust which is why they have a bad relationship with the humans. They have the ability to make themselves "invisible" (go to  another dimension), and realm-travel. Both elves and fairies came from another realm, but fairies have the ability to actually magically get themselves there if they want to, whereas for an elf it would be harder. 

The elves are more trustworthy. They have been there for thousands and thousands of years. They are able to detect gods from within a crowd more than a mere mortal (human) could. And elves believe themselves to be made in the likeness of the very gods they worship-- which is why they're so ethereal and live longer than humans. 

Dwarves I'm still working on. At the moment, only two have shown up (the two criminals that Arisias has to work with). So their culture, beliefs, and society are things I'm still working on building as a whole. But, I will say that not all dwarves are miners. There are some who are, but while wealth is important to the culture (particularly jewels and gold), not all dwarves are miners.  

....And that's the end of the Q&A. Thank you to everyone who submitted questions. They were fun to answer. 😁

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------What would you (or your character) do if you could tell the future? What's your favorite Fantasy creature? 

-Quinley 

My Art from Inktober 2022 (Part one)

I am back with another Inktober series! This year is my second year doing Inktober, I did it for the first time last year. Continuing the theme of last year, I will be dividing the series into three parts-- 10 drawings for each part, and then 11 in the final post.  If you wish to check out my Inktober posts from 2021, you can check them out here: part 1, part 2, and part 3. 

Also, as a reminder, I am doing a Q&A on this blog for novel. If you wish to leave questions for the second part of the Q&A (if you haven't already) you can do so here.  But back to this post, let's get started with the drawings: 

                                                       The Official Prompt list for Inktober: 

And here are my drawings... 

Day #1 Gargoyle, I thought it would be interesting if someone (a spy/rogue), was hiding amongst gargoyles waiting to make a move. 

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Day #2 Scurry, I drew of a dog character from a children's book I'm working on, whose name is Toto. This isn't one of the drawings for the book, but I thought it would be fun to draw none the less. 

Day #3 Bat, I drew an (elvish) vampire, since that was the first thing that came to mind. She has a tattoo/face-paint of a bat on her left cheek, and I gave her red eyes. 

Day #4 Scallop, I had to look up what a scallop was to make this drawing. Once I figured it out, I decided to draw a mermaid with a scallop as a necklace. It ended up turning into Arisias as a mermaid.

Day #5 Flame, Since Karleon the god of Mischief gives his devotees blue fire magic (along with sometimes the gift of prophecy, but that will be talked about later), I thought it would be fitting to draw him.

Day #6 Bouquet,  This drawing was inspired by a John William Waterhouse painting "Gather Ye Rosebuds While You May (1908)". I took the life drawing approach and only drew the lower part of the body (not the face), so that I could focus on the hands. 

Day #7 Trip, This reminded me of my characters traveling in my novel, Becoming the Body Thief. So, I drew something inspired by that. Since the writing on the sign got a little messed up, I'll tell you what it says. It says "The Woodland Tavern." There is an also an altar to a god off to the side with coin offerings from travelers. 

Day #8 Match,  The first thing that came to mind was lighting a match. So, I decided to draw that along with a candle. 

Day #9 Nest, It's been a while since I did a drawing of a bird! So, I decided to draw a bird sitting in its nest. 

Day #10 Crabby, For this I thought I would reference the mermaid theme from earlier, and draw a mermaid sitting with a crab. I really like how it turned out. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Which drawing is your favorite? And are you doing Inktober this year? 

-Quinley