Sorry, for the long disappearance in December. I was finishing some important things I needed to do. But now I am back, and I have some drawings to share. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season.
In this post I will be sharing new drawings along with two older drawings I had not posted before. And I plan to post my final part of 2023's Inktober sometime soon.
This is a redraw of a drawing from this post in 2022. I decided I wanted to fix her pose and proportions. I don't draw frogs often, so it allowed me to go a little outside my comfort zone in getting the details right.
This is my new header. The drawing was taken from my intkober post (you can read the backstory behind the drawing there) and digitalized. I had a lot of fun playing with the lighting around Arcasia and the sword.
A drawing of Fiáina. I drew this drawing of her for May Day/Beltane, and never posted it. But I felt like I should post it now. I had a lot of fun drawing the braids in her hair and making it look as if she were wearing them.
Given my fantasy world's change to being Ancient Greek and Irish inspired, I wanted to change Karleon's design, since it resembled Lord of the Rings elves too much. While Lord of the Rings was my starting inspiration, it's not the end. So, I took some time to redesign his overall appearance, and I am much happier with how it turned out.
This is an older sketch I did that I never posted of Salissah. It is inspired by a painting called Moon Nymph (1883).
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Which drawing is your favorite?
I have a lot of new drawings to share, so I thought it was time for another drawing post. I plan to do a Using Polls to Make Art post soon, also.
This was the first drawing I ever drew of the god of time. I like how it turned out.
A still life drawing I did of a candle for an art class.
I had a lot of fun figuring out how to draw the reflective surface.
Here's a photo of candle that I was using as a reference.
This is a drawing of Oberon, Arisias's father. I like how his hair and clothes turned out.
Someone on NaNoWriMo suggested that I draw the Phantom from The Phantom of the Opera (the musical). So, here is my drawing of him.
I thought I would draw Fiáina without the prosthetic arm. And I like how it turned out.
So I drew her prosthetic arm wrong in previous drawings (in the February Faces Challenge and another post). But I got it right in the first drawing I ever drew of her. It's supposed to be her entire arm, not only hand and wrist. But I blame that on reading myths about the Norse god Tyr, who also lost a limb but instead of an arm, he lost his hand. That made me get confused when drawing Fiáina.
These eyes, like the candle drawing, were also done for an art class, and I like how they turned out. They were fun to shade.
Finally, here is a drawing I did of Ferdinand and Cecile from The Haunted Sketchbook. This was difficult to draw, but I like how it turned out.
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?
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?
I figured it was time for another drawing post. I have a lot of new drawings to share.
Let's begin:
This is The Mother of the Elements, the mother of the gods from this post.
I had not drawn her before, and her design took me a while to figure out. I like how her dress turned out, and I decided give her a different body type than the other gods.
I figured it was time to update Detective Inspector Time's profile photo. In the original drawing, I had made his hair the wrong length, and it didn't fit the current version of him.
Fiáina and Mother of the Element doing each other's hair. This pose was tricky to draw, but I enjoyed drawing it.
A drawing of Ferdinand Diggory from the Haunted Sketchbook.This is the first time I've drawn the character, and I like how his appearance turned out.
You will be hearing more about his story soon...
Fiáina's hair changes depending on the season. Since she is the goddess of nature, I thought it made sense for her hair to change during the seasons. The idea came from this drawing I did of her in the past:
I was uncertain when I first created her, whether I wanted her hair to be red or brown. I wasn't sure I'd make her have red hair again, but thensomeone suggested I should have her hair change based on the seasons. So, that is what ended up happening.
This is what Fiáina's hair looks like in the winter. I wanted her to have icicle-like hair for the winter. She wears an evergreen dress during the winter seasons, rather than a leaf one.
A drawing of my dog, Toto. I'm almost done with the children's book about him. I thought I would draw this quick sketch, as a sort of "I'm almost there, yay!" celebration.
I wrote a song about my character, Karleon. He is a character who I have talked about before, and you may recognize him as the blue haired elf who wished you a happy New Year's. Karleon, if you don't know already is the god of mischief from the Fantasy world I'm world-building. And this song, I envision being played in a tavern, and would often be played during the Festival of Magic in honor of him.
And below is the audio for the song without the lyric video. When I posted a song through SoundCloud previously, there were technical difficulties. This time around I have included both the
Soundcloud and Bandlab audio versions of this song. So if you're stuck and they won't play you can click on either, or click on the link below to be taken directly to the pages where they are posted.
I decided it was time for another installment of Look Into a World. This post is centered around two gods, one of which I introduced in this post.
By the way, in the first installment of Look Into a World, I posted a song that inspired a part of the world-building. I should say this cover of a song inspired a part of world-building for this post:
You'll see which part when reading...
The War in the Sky
In the world where Arisias lives, the humans and elves believe that the sun and the moon are in a constant war, where each night/day one of the gods wins, temporarily.
The moon goddess represents strategic warfare. Mortals who worship her call upon her in battle or when they looking for a strategic way to win. The moon goddess does help people outside of war, as well, with philosophy and non-war related activities. In contrast, the god of the sun, represents bloody warfare, and doesn't care about strategy only blood-shed.
During the night, the moon goddess overpowers the sun god by using his own light against him. In the daytime, the sun god uses his light to overpower the moon goddess. Hence, while the moon may appear in the sky during the day, the moon goddess did not win that fight.
The times we would consider the winter and summer solstice, are the times when holidays around victory of a certain god are considered. If the day is shorter than the goddess of the moon won the battle for the meantime and is making the god of the sun weaker, if the god of the sun and it is the summer solstice and the day is longer, it is believed the god of the sun won the battle for the meantime.
And when there is a solar or lunar eclipse, it is believed the gods are fighting in closer quarters than usual.
(Salissah and a comet).
Salissah (the goddess of the moon) and god of the sun choose warrior spirits to fight alongside them. They are warriors who died in battle, and are chosen to fight. So they fall in a second battle for their selected god. When they fall, they are represented as shooting stars/comets and are then sent to the afterlife.
The war between the two gods was foretold by Karleon. However, the sun god did not believe this prophecy, for he believed Karleon was tricking them somehow. Salissah believed she could find a way to avoid the consequences. It is unclear what event exactly caused the war in the sky, however, one answer tellers like to say is that the fay and human war is what caused it. For every god had to pick a side in that war. Because of their opposing sides, the sun god and the moon goddess were destined to be enemies afterwards. It is often modified by the teller what the true cause was, depending on the place or time period.
Relationship Between the Devotees
(a devotee to the moon goddess (left), a devotee to the sun god (right).)
Interestingly compared to Karleon and the god of time, the devotees in this case are rather nice to each other. They have a hope that one day the war between the sun and the moon gods will be resolved. And while they don't agree on everything, and fights do sometimes happen, most devotees don't get into heated debates over this.
However, other devotees are not very calm about the human and fay war, and they always ask "which god are devoted to?" in order to gather what side that person may be on. However, because the war related to the humans and fay is so complicated that even knowing the gods that the person is devoted to, may not tell you their opinion on the war as a whole. This is especially true since the person may disagree with their gods' opinion.
It happened that Elyerin (aka Detective Inspector Time) fought in the fay and human war before becoming a detective. He was on the side of the fay during the war. And while he ended up being devoted to neither god (he instead ended up being devoted to the god of time), his side of the war strongly honored the goddess of the moon.
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.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
