ups and downs, ups and downs
Some downs. Usually in the early evening for some reason. Mostly on the up now, though. :) I got my blue belt in Tae Kwon Do this morning! And the co-editorship job of the school literary magazine is starting to pick up now that we finally have enough submissions to justify our first selection meeting. The Southern Literary Festival is going to be fun.
The rest of my life is just research, research, research.
Is this sad or what? But I was attempting to draw some Authority characters, and while Apollo and Midnighter lend themselves fantastically to writing, I discovered that I hate to draw them. I ended up gravitating towards Jack and Swift. And Jack's feet. I have never, ever been able to draw feet, until I started doodling Jack and something just clicked... I don't know. I think the curves and lines of feet are really pretty, but I just couldn't construct them in my head. Until now. So I present the best of my foot doodles.
Thanks for that random inspiration, Jack Hawksmoor.
I'm involved in an ongoing D&D campaign with my parents and two cousins - Cousin R., who is more aunt-ish, and her daughter, who is my-age-ish. My dad is a rogue with a crossbow, Mom is a ranger with a sling and my younger cousin is a gnome magic-user of I forget which type, with lots of ranged spells. So, lots of range, lots of robes and basic hide armors, lots of sneaky people and excessive strategizing. And TBH, Dad's is usually the kind of character I play - I have an existing rogue character I've played before, who is chaotic neutral, uses dagger shadow attacks, and is kind of a jackass.
But. For this game, I was the last person to bring a character to the table, and I asked the DM what was needed to round out the team. She said melee muscle. And so here I am, a 220-pound lawful good paladin in full chain mail, with no motivation more complex than Doing The Right Thing, and my only weapon is a broadsword. My armor class is through the roof and my sword has a damage roll like nobody's business. (Although I have, like, negative stealth points. *CLANK CLANK CLANK*) So basically, I don't get to participate in the thinking portion of our adventure - but boy, when we get into a fight, while everyone else skirts around playing the strategy game, trying to get in good ranged shots, I just walk right up into the middle of the bad guys' lair and play whack-a-mole with the 5-8 or so lackeys that inevitably swarm me. I don't even have to move. I have been known to spend an entire fight in one spot, killing one mook per turn.
I also wanted to share the pieces that kick-started this whole artistic resurgence. Last semester I took a costume history class, in which we had to do four pairs of costume plates - sketches of costumes like we might draw if we were designing costumes for the theatre. (I got the costuming job on Midsummer based on these plates I drew for class, actually.) We went over some basic drawing techniques and got a couple of anatomy charts, and I figured that I would be rusty after so long not drawing... but apparently my brain was just chewing over all the art I'd been looking at for the last three years, adding it to my mental repertoire of references, because I found that I had a lot more familiarity with figure drawing than I remembered. I was really happy with all of my costume plates for that class, so. Here they are. :)
Set 1: Pencil only, straight on angle, unposed, unshaded.
Greek woman
Egyptian pharaoh
Set 2: Pencil only, posed figures, shaded.
Medieval woman
Knight Hospitaller
Set 3: Pencil, underpainting/monochrome shading (watercolor wash)
Mary, Queen of Scots
Neoclassical man
Set 4: Pencil, underpainting, spray fixative, overpainting (full watercolors)
1860 Princess line ball gown
1880 Promenade dress
And last but not least, a silly. Back in my sketch request meme, kiyou_hime wanted some Natasha Stark action (she of the one-panel AU in canon in which Steve and "Natasha" Stark got married).
Natasha is a fierce bitch. She likes wearing gowns that show off her metalworker's arms and her arc reactor, to intimidate people. Also, she is apparently not on the wagon. I dunno, the martini glass just looked good there. Join AA, Natasha!
And you know this is what it was like around (some applicable Avengers commune home) before they got married:
Natasha emerges from the workshop to get coffee and finds something to berate Steve about, and it turns into a round of "my face is UP HERE, Steve" and Steve is like *beet red* and Natasha can, of course, get whatever she wants from him by wearing a loose tank top and bending forward. And everyone else is like, "Get a room, you two," and they're like, "But we're just friends" until the epic trapped-in-a-closet plot where they finally make out. OH WAIT, THIS IS THE PLOT OF EVERY STEVE/TONY FIC EVER. PROOF THAT GENDER IS IRRELEVENT. (Yes, that includes the low cut tank/bending over thing. Because. Seriously.
And now, back to real work. :)
-rave
The rest of my life is just research, research, research.
Is this sad or what? But I was attempting to draw some Authority characters, and while Apollo and Midnighter lend themselves fantastically to writing, I discovered that I hate to draw them. I ended up gravitating towards Jack and Swift. And Jack's feet. I have never, ever been able to draw feet, until I started doodling Jack and something just clicked... I don't know. I think the curves and lines of feet are really pretty, but I just couldn't construct them in my head. Until now. So I present the best of my foot doodles.
Thanks for that random inspiration, Jack Hawksmoor.
I'm involved in an ongoing D&D campaign with my parents and two cousins - Cousin R., who is more aunt-ish, and her daughter, who is my-age-ish. My dad is a rogue with a crossbow, Mom is a ranger with a sling and my younger cousin is a gnome magic-user of I forget which type, with lots of ranged spells. So, lots of range, lots of robes and basic hide armors, lots of sneaky people and excessive strategizing. And TBH, Dad's is usually the kind of character I play - I have an existing rogue character I've played before, who is chaotic neutral, uses dagger shadow attacks, and is kind of a jackass.
But. For this game, I was the last person to bring a character to the table, and I asked the DM what was needed to round out the team. She said melee muscle. And so here I am, a 220-pound lawful good paladin in full chain mail, with no motivation more complex than Doing The Right Thing, and my only weapon is a broadsword. My armor class is through the roof and my sword has a damage roll like nobody's business. (Although I have, like, negative stealth points. *CLANK CLANK CLANK*) So basically, I don't get to participate in the thinking portion of our adventure - but boy, when we get into a fight, while everyone else skirts around playing the strategy game, trying to get in good ranged shots, I just walk right up into the middle of the bad guys' lair and play whack-a-mole with the 5-8 or so lackeys that inevitably swarm me. I don't even have to move. I have been known to spend an entire fight in one spot, killing one mook per turn.
I also wanted to share the pieces that kick-started this whole artistic resurgence. Last semester I took a costume history class, in which we had to do four pairs of costume plates - sketches of costumes like we might draw if we were designing costumes for the theatre. (I got the costuming job on Midsummer based on these plates I drew for class, actually.) We went over some basic drawing techniques and got a couple of anatomy charts, and I figured that I would be rusty after so long not drawing... but apparently my brain was just chewing over all the art I'd been looking at for the last three years, adding it to my mental repertoire of references, because I found that I had a lot more familiarity with figure drawing than I remembered. I was really happy with all of my costume plates for that class, so. Here they are. :)
Set 1: Pencil only, straight on angle, unposed, unshaded.
Greek woman
Egyptian pharaoh
Set 2: Pencil only, posed figures, shaded.
Medieval woman
Knight Hospitaller
Set 3: Pencil, underpainting/monochrome shading (watercolor wash)
Mary, Queen of Scots
Neoclassical man
Set 4: Pencil, underpainting, spray fixative, overpainting (full watercolors)
1860 Princess line ball gown
1880 Promenade dress
And last but not least, a silly. Back in my sketch request meme, kiyou_hime wanted some Natasha Stark action (she of the one-panel AU in canon in which Steve and "Natasha" Stark got married).
Natasha is a fierce bitch. She likes wearing gowns that show off her metalworker's arms and her arc reactor, to intimidate people. Also, she is apparently not on the wagon. I dunno, the martini glass just looked good there. Join AA, Natasha!
And you know this is what it was like around (some applicable Avengers commune home) before they got married:
Natasha emerges from the workshop to get coffee and finds something to berate Steve about, and it turns into a round of "my face is UP HERE, Steve" and Steve is like *beet red* and Natasha can, of course, get whatever she wants from him by wearing a loose tank top and bending forward. And everyone else is like, "Get a room, you two," and they're like, "But we're just friends" until the epic trapped-in-a-closet plot where they finally make out. OH WAIT, THIS IS THE PLOT OF EVERY STEVE/TONY FIC EVER. PROOF THAT GENDER IS IRRELEVENT. (Yes, that includes the low cut tank/bending over thing. Because. Seriously.
And now, back to real work. :)
-rave