My Art From The February Faces Challenge (2023) | Part One

I found out about a challenge by a Kick in the Creatives that involved drawing portraits throughout the month of February. I decided to do the challenge as a way of drawing my characters, who had not gotten a lot of attention. 

Like my Inktober posts, I will be dividing this up to into parts of 9 drawings per part, with 10 at the end. And for context, for those who don't know my characters well, all the gods (and also Ophelia)  in this post come from The Princess Arisias Mystery Series, which is my fantasy/murder mystery series. As for the non-god/goddess characters I will be saying where they are from. 

Here is the official (optional) prompt list: 

And here are the drawings for the first part: 

 Day #1 Glamorous, I decide to draw Nisis/Nyro. They're the god/goddess of love, beauty and marriage, and can appear as anyone someone loves (romantically or platonically). They can also look similar to a type of person an onlooker is attracted to without looking like a real person they know. Because of this, Nisis/Nyro doesn't have a defined form. So, this isn't exactly as they appear because their appearance will always change depending on who is the onlooker. I always when drawing them drew one side, and never did a split face drawing showcasing both sides (Nisis (the female side) or Nyro (the male side)). So I figured, I should draw that, and I like how it turned out.  

Day #2 Baby, I find babies incredibly hard to draw so I challenged myself with this one. 

Day #3 Hidden Face, Ophelia putting on her cloak for a ritual/healing ceremony. Her cloak doesn't so much "hide" her face, as it is only partially covering her face during rituals. But I thought it matched the prompt of "hidden face." This was also inspired by a Pre-Raphaelite painting of Olivia from Twelfth Night by Edmund Leighton. 

Day #4 Bored, I decided to draw Felix Moore from Dolls of Wax, Eyes of Glass for this one. He probably went somewhere and is thinking about something, so not exactly bored, but more thoughtful. 

Day #5 Sad, I drew the god of time for this one, since I figured out his design. One side of his face is young and the other is old. In the drawing, I wanted to draw attention to time passing with the depiction of one of the flowers wilting and dying. 

Day #6 Hairstyle, I drew, Salissah (pronounced sil-is-uh), the goddess of the moon, for this. She has hair with stars in it, so I wanted to draw attention to that. 

Day #7 Makeup, I drew Skunk Girl from my super hero story for this. I decided she would use green lip-stick. My backstory behind this image is that Skunk Girl and the other super heroes got brand deals for merchandizing for things such as action figures, makeup, etc. This is done in order to get money from visiting tourists (who travel to see the super heroes), and to pay for the damage that villain and hero fights cause. 

Day #8 Pouting, I drew Tesariel "Tess" Short for this one. She is from the first novel ever I finished the first draft of (Eyes in the Night). I've gotten back into drawing her, so, I decided that I should draw her for this one. 

Day #9 Tongue Out, I drew Karleon, my trickster god of mischief for this one. While most of my characters (whether they be gods, elves, super heroes, or 19th century gentlemen) would not make this facial expression because they feel it would be undignified, Karleon and Skunk Girl are the exceptions.  I already drew Skunk Girl, so, I decided to draw Karleon. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Which portrait is your favorite? Are you doing the February Faces Challenge or another challenge this February? 

-Quinley

My Animation Reels (2015-2022)

 I have some animation reels I want to share. I just got back into animating and am working on a short film (that I just finished the storyboard for, and am planning to animate in the near future). 

 I wanted to share these reels. They showcase my animations from the past (from 2015 and onwards) and my recent ones (in 2022)....

This is the first reel. Some of these I made when I first started animating. So, you will see changes throughout. 

And here is the second reel. I made this somewhat more recently from 2017 to 2022. 

This, is a more recent animation, that I made of my character, Ophelia. It was really fun to make and my plans in 2023, are to finish the short film (or at least get a portion of it done), and animate even more consistently than I did last year.

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Which animation is your favorite? Have you animated before? 

-Quinley

Miscellaneous Drawings #6

Previous parts: #1, #2 #3, #4 and #5

 Happy beginning of December, everyone. 

I thought I would start December off by sharing some old and new art. 

I did a redraw and slight redesign of an old goddess I came up with, who I am now going to use in Arisias's world. Fiáina is the goddess of nature and defender of nature, she fights against poachers.

She also lost her right arm in battle, and wears a prosthetic arm, that she carved out of wood. 

 The elves protect nature for the most part, and hunting is frowned upon.

Here is the original drawing that I reworked above. 

A portrait of Ophelia, I really like how it turned out. 

This was an attempt at drawing Fevvers from Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter. I like how her face turned out, but I feel that her wings don't look like bird's wings. 

This is a character I haven't really introduced yet, named Kira. She is a realm traveler from the real-world to fantasy worlds. I may have her exploring some of my characters' worlds in the future. 

I just got back into Death in Paradise, and decided to draw one of my favorite characters from it, Camille. 

And lastly, I drew the Greek Goddess, Athena. It was fun to draw her again. It's been a while since I drew her. 

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Which drawing is your favorite? Do you have any plans for December? 

-Quinley 

Miscellaneous Drawings #4

Previous parts: #1, #2 and #3

Greetings Travelers! 

I thought it was time to do another drawing post, so here it is: 

This drawing was actually inspired by a prompt that my writing group on NaNoWriMo posted-- which was a guest prompt by Alien Romance. The prompt involved frogs, so, I ended up deciding to draw Ophelia helping a frog get back to its pond. Since Ophelia is a priestess to the Earth elemental goddess, it seemed in character for her to do that. 

A drawing of Oceana my siren character-- I really like how her hair turned out. 

I really wanted to capture her personality in the drawing, and I think I managed to. 

I was kind of frustrated that Tinker Bell's wing was healed at the end of The Secret of the Wings. 

So I redesigned her as if she never had her wing healed and was much closer in character to another fairy, Rani. 

Austen is a character who used to be part of The Mystery of the Body Thief. He used to be Ophelia's boyfriend interestingly enough. However, I'd figured I'd redraw him (since I drew him a while ago) and reuse him but in a different story. 

I don't know which story he should go in, but I am thinking a ghost story of some kind might be fitting for his character. Given that he is in between being dead and alive-- and isn't quite dead, and isn't quite alive.

This is an old D&D character, who I decided to redesign and redraw and may use in a story of some kind. The Character's name is Sarah, and she is a warrior-- Her lower body is paralyzed so she uses a wheelchair, but that does not stop her from fighting, because she is skilled fighter with a bow and arrow. 

And lastly, I have a drawing of Elm. I've been playing around recently with drawing in Photoshop and been getting better at it. This was one of my recent attempts, and I really like how it turned out. 

Also, here's a video I made of my process of drawing her: 

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           Which drawing is your favorite? And have you ever helped a wild animal? 

-Quinley 

Using Polls to Create Art #8

                                                    Previous parts: #1, #2, #3, #4 ,#5, #6 and  #7. 

Hello everyone, 

I'm back with another installment of using polls to create art! 

To summarize what this series is about, I post a poll asking what I should draw. People vote, and whichever choice ends up winning, I draw. Unless otherwise stated, every drawing was a majority vote.  Also I should add, some of the drawings this time around are redraws of Pixton comics I made when I was a child (I was about twelve or thirteen I think?) I had voters vote on which of them I should redraw. While the others are the usual drawings you'd see in this series. 

Here's the drawing that came out of the poll in the previous post in the series. 

Felix Moore from Dolls of Wax, Eyes of Glass ended up winning. So I drew him as a merman. 

I had a lot of fun drawing details in the drawing like the suit and tail. 

I also made a video showing my process of drawing it. 

I did a poll where I redrew a painting in my style. The painting that the drawing was based on was this one. I thought it made sense for Ophelia to be using the crystal ball, given that she likes that type of magic. 

I had the voters decide on which of my characters I made in Pixton I should redraw in my style. 

Lieutenant Williams ended up winning. She is a half Klingon half human. 

Here is what she looked like in the Pixton style: 

I wrote the comic she was from years and years ago, and there were a ton of spelling errors in it.

But, I find it nice to revisit old stories and characters-- especially because they can show how different 

my stories are today than they were back then. 

 

Speaking of old stories and characters, I had the voters decide between having me redraw this Pixton comic  and another one.  The second one won, which is Edward's and Willow's wedding. I decided in the redraw not to draw them in the same pose but instead draw them in different poses. In the comic as a whole I would use real photos as the background while the characters would be Pixton characters. 

 Looking back at it now, the backstory of how they fell in love is really not romantic. The comic itself retold the story of The Little Mermaid (leaning towards the Disney version, not so much the Hans Christian Anderson one) but with dryads and wood cutters. And in this version Willow literately caused the shipwreck and then when she saw how handsome (and in pain) Edward was, she changed her mind. She didn't do this for the several wood cutters before 🤔-- 1,712,302 of them to be exact, I'm not joking: that was the number I wrote in the comic, minus 1. 😆

I don't know what child-me was thinking! 😂 Especially since Willow never once tells him that she was the dryad that did that at all. 

This is a drawing of Elm. I had the voters vote on what I should draw her wearing out of several options for outfits. This outfit ended up winning. I really like how the outfit looks. However, I feel her arms are a little too short proportion wise. But other than that I like the drawing. 

This is a character from the same fanfic that I wrote years ago. I had another poll, about which character I should draw in my style, and she won. She is called the EEH (Emergency Engineering Hologram). I was inspired by the Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager when creating her. I wondered why there were no holograms for emergencies involving engineering. (That we can see in the show). 

In the (Pixton) comic she is an enemy of the doctor on her ship. They don't have a particularly good relationship. And she was activated when most of the crew on the ship was kidnapped by aliens. So, she plays a similar role that The Doctor in Voyager plays.

This actually turned out to be a drawing that came out of a poll, and I somehow forgot that I had drawn it for that reason. This drawing was actually included in this post, though I combined it with a drawing that didn't come out of a poll. 

Anyway, I had the pollers vote on which character I should draw, and what they should be doing. And Oak doing archery won. 

Now for a new poll: 

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Which drawing is your favorite? And would you like to have a wedding out in the woods? 

Or did you tell any funny stories when you were little? 

-Quinley 

How Camp NaNoWriMo Has Been Going For Me (Part 2)

                    

                   Click here to read part one                        

   I'm back with part 2! This will be more of a wrap-up post of my Camp NaNoWriMo experience compared to the first post-- which was talking about what was actively happening during it. Also, if you have not read it already, I recommend going back and reading part one for context. 

Also, one quick blog update: if you want to check it out, I have made profile pages now for my characters: Cerawen here and Vonivera here, since they didn't have profile pages before.

                                                              Let's begin: 

My Writing 

  And now I am going to talk more about of what I've been writing this month. 

The first news I wanted to share is that I reached my word count goal! 🎉 🥳

(Just want to point this out--I love how the winner badge is making an allusion to Don Quixote)

Here's the winner certificate by the way, I really like how it looks Fantasy themed: 

And if you're wondering what "BOTBT" is, it's the title of my book, Becoming the Body Thief in acronym form. For some reason NaNoWriMo's certificate wouldn't allow a long title. In the past it has allowed to put my other book title: All Is Not Lost For All Will Begin Again on the "author of" section. But I digress. 

However, even though I got to my word count goal, I still had plans to work on my novel this month because it is far from finished. In other news, I did three guest prompts in a writing group I'm in (not running but in). One of them was a picture prompt I came up with: 

The painting included in the post (though there are others not seen) is Ophelia by John William Waterhouse. 

I'm currently running my own group and am trying to get it to be more active (believe me running a group is hard work, but worth it). It is fun to have a really active group using one of my prompts and to see people's responses. There is just something about seeing people respond to something you have written yourself. It was cool, because people shared so many beautiful excerpts from their novels-- one person even wrote a whole song in response to the prompt. And this honestly reminds me why I like teaching workshops. You get to see people's artwork, and knowing that you inspired them is always a good feeling. 

In even more exciting news involving the same writing group: 

(My character Annabelle (left) and A.J.'s version of Karen from D.C. Super Girls (right)) 

I was talking with a member of the writing group I am in, and we decided it would be fun to do a crossover between our stories. We have plans to publish it once we publish our novels. We have to wait until then, because it is set during the time of my novel, Becoming the Body Thief and two characters from A.J.'s novel, The Protector are involved in it. 

Anyway, this has been fun to write because it allows me to explore my characters in an alternate universe. When Karen/Bumble Bee (A.J.'s character) appears some things that happen in the original story change a bit in the new universe. And our crossover is way more lighthearted than my novel is, which is fun because it gives my characters a break from all the torture I'm putting them through. My cowriter on this project, A.J. actually has a blog, so if you want to check it out, you can do so here. 

And...world-building! (Switching back to talk to you about my current novel writing.) I came up with a monster that was inspired by Medusa. Like Medusa (depending on the version of the myth you hear) she was cursed to be in this form: A water snake/maid form, forever. 

There hasn't yet been a hero that has defeated her, since her wounds in battle will be able to heal quicker than normal. As for her origin story, she was cursed by Nisis (the female side of the god, Nisis/Nyro) to be the trapped in this form forever, after defying the god/goddess by doing something unspeakable in their temple. I should also add, I was inspired by water snakes when creating this monster. Her snake tail and her hair are actually based on two real water snakes. I will be getting into her backstory more in the future. 

Excerpts from Becoming the Body Thief 

 

I realize I have not really shared excerpts for most of my novels recently except Dolls of Wax, Eyes of Glass. So, I thought I would share some excerpts from my novel. These excerpts feature the characters Venus and Ophelia; however, they are in different scenes, and the characters are from very different areas of the world's society. But I thought I would go for a common theme, which would be magic that comes from the gods: 

When Venus (as she called herself) performed, she performed in a way that was so mesmerizing almost like the sirens, who would lure sailors to their deaths. She would perform songs of old to a rowdy crowd, one of: criminals, gamblers, and some rich people who seemed to get themselves involved in the mix, for hardly good reasons. 

She would dance along the stage, her red loose fitting dress flowing along with her, she moved fluidly like water. And used her magic, which came in whenever she sang. For she had learned her magic from the god of music and in performing used it to bring people into the tavern. It was in the very least, as the owner of the tavern said, a way to attract customers. For everyone was soon enticed by her beauty, her singing, her dancing, and her magic that they would come in hoping to see that, and then stay for a drink or more. 

 

* * * * 

This was one of the very few spells that required one to have magic from both gods, usually spells required just one. For gods, like humans and elves, tended to get into arguments quite a bit, and it was rare to have them both work together. But in this case, the gods had a very neutral and generally friendly relationship with each other. 

Ophelia had been working on the spell for months, and still had not managed to get it right. Every time she had tried it, it seemed to fissile out. Like it wasn’t strong enough. 

Why this was happening she was not sure, for she was able to hold a wind storm and even make plants grow without them dying down suddenly or wilting. But perhaps, it was because this was her first time combining both earth and air magic together. Even the simplest spells she had done, the healing spells for example, she had only used one element at a time. 

But now, she focused on it, she needed something to take her mind off of her wild thoughts. She opened her hand, and tried to envision the spell— it was a mixture of earth and air. She felt like she needed to think of what would combine those two things— the trees leafs blowing in the wind to and fro on a summer’s day, the...she stopped, the spell she had felt beginning to grow in her hands suddenly diminished. 

* * * * 

Books I've Been Reading 

This is continued from part one of the blog post. I have a lot of updated thoughts on the books I've been reading, as well as thoughts about books that I didn't mention in part one. 

(Images from Goodreads, here and here)

This year I've noticed I've read a lot more poetry than before. This time, I'm actually seeking poetry out rather than reading a poem every once in a while. Recently I read "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (excuse the fact that the image has the title wrong) I love the allusions it makes to Greek mythology, and my favorite line from it has to be this one: 

  "In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

       What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

               What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy"

I will also say some of the lines from the poem were inspiring for my own writing. If you can't tell already, the world my series is set in is Greek mythology inspired (and Tolkien inspired as well). So, certain lines stood out to me. Also, here's the link to the poem. By the way it's in the public domain, so the Poetry Foundation is able to post it. Also, the site has a lot of Keats's poetry on it. 

And, I am currently rereading Hamlet. I am doing this in a dramatic reading with a group and at the same time reading my own edition of the book (because the reading was abridged). So far, in the group reading I have read for/played a variety of roles, including Polonius, King Claudius, Ophelia, Horatio, and Player 1. 

Hamlet has been inspiration for a lot of my writing and acting. In fact, the first monologue I memorized (and performed) was "To Be or Not To Be." It is always fun to revisit stories like this-- because I know the characters so well, and they are like old friends. 

(images from Goodreads here and here) 

I have a lot of thoughts about Dracula, but I'm probably going to talk about these more in later posts. 

I have a lot of thoughts about Where the Crawdads Sing. The plot-twist was really surprising. Even though I partly figured it out, it really made the story more intense. Also, I liked how the images of nature were used to foreshadow the murder. 

 The writing itself is very poetic, and the way that scenes are described in it is very well done. 

I really enjoyed the book, and I want to reread it again in the future. I also love how poetry is weaved into the story, with Kya quoting poems throughout and relating them to certain events/emotions.  

Lastly, I have just begun reading Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter. I had previously read Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales, so it is fun to read one of her other books. I like all the references to Greek and Roman mythology in this book. Fevvers refers to herself as a "Cockney Venus," and there are references comparing Fevvers's wings to Cupid and to Icarus. 

Some Fun Things 

I have three fun things to share this time around. 😃

The first is, I ended up dong two (one-shot) Dungeons and Dragons campaigns.

But I will discuss only one of them, since the storyline for that one has finished. It was basically a continuation of another one shot, so the same people from the prior campaign were in this one. Anyway, I role-played as my D&D character Jinx, who I talked about in this post. At the beginning of the campaign, Jinx did not have the best experience. He literately almost died because he was attacked by his what he decided to be his holy symbol (ravens) (The number of near death experiences Jinx seems to have is astounding.) Anyway, he may or may not be be scared of ravens now. Adding onto that, Jinx had the worst possible fate that could befall someone with his charisma level. He got a large amount of stinky mud dropped onto him....which was very unpleasant.

However, things got better later for Jinx and the others. The characters (Jinx and the others) started bugging one of the NPCs (None Player Characters) who was their close friend. They bugged by telling him that he was in love with the person they were trying to find. Actually, it turned out they were right. Because of this, at the end of the campaign, Jinx initiated the wedding for the NPCs as...kind of the priest. He's pretending to be a god, so it makes sense. 

(Jinx and the Goblin)

And to make things even better for Jinx. Jinx made a friend with a goblin, who now throughly believes Jinx is a god (a god of mischief, that is), and wants to go adventuring with him. 💖 Anyway, it's really fun, and I love playing D&D and hanging out with the groups I'm in. 

Continuing from part one, the second thing I've been doing is building rooms for my characters in virtual worlds. Webkinz actually had a challenge where you could win a stage. 

And I ended up winning it. This helped complete the second part of the tavern from my novel. I'm going to make a third part that looks closer to the first part, since it is a pretty large tavern. But for now, I feel good because I finally have the stage where Venus performs laid out which really helps me envision the scenes. (Of course without the animals-- given that there are no anthropomorphic characters in my story). 

Also, it is great that I was able to find a stage in Webkinz, one that even looked like the one from my story. Because a lot of the stages in Webkinz were either retired or something only Deluxe members could get. So, thank you, Webkinz, for creating that challenge so I could make that part of my tavern. 

And lastly, I recently created a Soundcloud account, which you can check out here. On Bandlab, I usually show my songwriting process, so on SoundCloud I thought it made sense to upload the fully finished songs. I just thought I would let you know, given that I didn't want anyone to think that someone else was uploading my music. 

And...that's it. That was my experience this month at Camp NaNoWriMo in July of 2022. And I'm now looking forward to November Novel Writing this year. 😃

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How was Camp NaNoWriMo for you? Have you read any of the books I mentioned or had any fun D&D experiences? 

-Quinley 

Miscellaneous Drawings #3

Previous parts: #1 and #2 

This post will contain a mixture of old and new drawings.

And as an update, I will be posting the next part of Using Polls to Create Art sometime in the near future, but in the meantime you can still vote on the poll at the end of that post here. 

Let's begin: 

This was originally drawn for a Halloween post, however, that post didn't end up working. This is a drawing of Matilda in a wizard/witch Halloween costume. I drew this before I knew her very well, so thinking about it now she would probably dress up as a heroine from one of her favorite Gothic novels. 

A drawing of Deet from The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. 

Deet was one of my favorite characters from the show, and I hope someday someone decides to bring the TV show back. I am still sad that it was canceled. I drew this around the time that the show first came out. 

 

This is one of two drawings I created for a prompt on NaNoWriMo which was "what would your character's zoom background be?" However, I took this a step further and decided to draw how my characters would react if they had Zoom. 

This comic is for my novel, Dolls of Wax, Eyes of Glass. In the comic Matilda is talking to her mother about the haunted estate that she and her brother just moved into. Since this is Matilda at the beginning of the story, she is enjoying the idea of living in a haunted castle, without realizing what dangers it will hold... Also Matilda's and Felix's mother, sadly, is having a bit of difficulty with Zoom, so can't turn her video on. 

Side note, I feel as if the horrible things that happen in my story would be prevented if my characters had modern technology and long distance communication that didn't take a long time to deliver. 

Here's an old drawing I did of Kira from The Dark Crystal. She was really fun to draw. 

This second response to the prompt was inspired by this video. 

This is for my other novel (though I have many I'm working on), The Mystery of the Body Thief. 

Basically, this woud happen if Ophelia and D.I. Time had Zoom:

D.I. Time would accidentally turn on a dragon filter, and since shapeshifting exists in that world, he  does have to clarify that he didn't get magically turned into a dragon. 

I realize I haven't made many posts on my blog relating to Sebastian. He only has a few posts in which he's featured, which were a drawing of him included in a tag post, and posts I made all the way back in 2016. To give you some background on the character, Sebastian is Oak's twin brother (like her, he is a half dryad). He works as a healer, and gets his healing powers from the Greek god, Apollo. And if you're interested, here is his profile page. 

This is a drawing of Iris I created a while ago, but I really like how her veil turned out. 

And lastly, here is a recent portrait style I made of Riona "Fire."

I like how her hair turned out. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Which drawing is your favorite? And how would your characters react if they had Zoom? 

-Quinley