New Idea- She Can Fly

Here's another new idea, conceived earlier today. I did this rough sketch pretty fast (so lots of mistakes, especially on those wings), but it shows my idea pretty well. The actual painting will be a little wider, with more of the forested area on the right and more of the open area on the left showing. Obviously she's a feathered dragon. Her coloration will be green, probably with blue markings. The background will show a very hilly, forested landscape, and I threw in some flying debris behind the dragon to enhance the feeling of speed. I might make her a little closer to the edge of the drop in the actual painting, which will be done on in acrylic on illustration board (no size chosen yet, but it will be a bigger painting).

Also, I finished the journal CSS designs for deviantART: [link]. The red one is my favorite, by the way, aside from the Nikazeme design. ^^ Next mini-project: a new deviantID. I have an idea I'm already working on, but it will be useful for other things as well.

HTML Geek

Not much happening this past week, but I did finally finish one project I've been working on for months: my journal CSS for deviantART. I went ahead and uploaded it as a submission here. The header, footer, and divider images were done in watercolor and ink, and the dragon, of course, is Nikazeme. I'm currently working on a second similar CSS that will use a different non-OC dragon for others to use. I'm currently building six color variations (pink, red, gold, green, blue, and violet), but I'll probably take requests for different colors/markings.

Not much else going on though; I'm currently engaged in a major pre-holiday season house cleaning, so it's hard to say when I'll get Windsong Ritual started. I'm still working on gathering references, but I've finished designing the vixen.

Featherdust Finished + New Idea- Windsong Ritual

At long last, the image of Featherdust is complete. I say that because although I finished this painting a couple weeks ago, my scanner absolutely ruined the image, which meant having to fix it up on the computer. While the image itself was okay, the colors were completely wrong. It's fixed now, however, so here it is!

In other news, apparently I'm not going to be starting The Steampunk next. The idea just isn't ready yet, and now I can't decide what medium I'm going to do it in. However, I do have a new idea that I might start instead: Windsong Ritual. It will be an anthro (I've been wanting to do an anthro for a while), but I haven't decided on the medium or size yet (it will be roughly around 11x14 inches and either acrylic or acrylic and ink). I was hoping to use a more exotic or unusual animal, but my creative Muse demanded I use a fox for this (I know foxes aren't exactly original subjects when it comes to anthro art). Regarding the exact species, I'm thinking it will be some sort of combination of a red fox and an arctic fox. I'm working on some drafts right now and gathering references, so hopefully I'll have some sketches to post in the near future.

2009 Coshocton County Fair Results

I got my stuff in for the county fair this week and went to the judging on Wednesday morning. I entered five paintings and three photos (I entered the photos just for the fun of it, since I'm really not into photography that much). The photos didn't stand out from the 700-something other entries, but my paintings did amazingly well. Here are the results:
Above the Sky placed third in the Acrylic, Animal Subject category.
Blown Away placed second in the Acrylic, Figure Subject category.
Featherdust placed first in the Watercolor, Animal Subject category.
A Touch of Magic placed first in the Ink Drawing, Animal or Figure Subject category. This one really surprised me. I was originally going to try and finish The Steampunk in time to enter it in the fair, but that didn't happen, so I needed something to enter in this category. I already entered this before in 2007 in the Ink Drawing, Anything category, where it placed second.
I also entered The Magic of Autumn in the Mixed Media, Any Subject category - it was the only one that didn't place.

In other news, I did obviously finish Featherdust, but for some reason my scanner doesn't like it. The digital image looks horrible, so it's going to take me a while to fix it up. :(

Also, regarding The Steampunk, it's going to be a little while before I actually get it started. I'm still trying to decide on the size of the picture and the pose to put the sprite in, not to mention design the background elements. More on that in the future.

New Idea- The Steampunk + Fall Into Art

I've had an idea swirling around in my head for a while now that I came up with while I was working on Blown Away, but it was unfinished until now. The idea generally involved another sprite in a tree, and it's going to be done in black and colored inks. My original idea was to give it an Oriental look, but that just didn't want to work. Then I thought about giving it a steampunk theme (love steampunk), and that idea clicked right away. No sketches yet, but I'm going to start it as soon as I'm finished with Featherdust, which isn't quite done yet.

The Coshocton County Fair is coming up very soon; I'm going to enter several paintings and a couple photographs, and I'll have the results from that next Wednesday (Sept. 30). I also attended the Fall Into Art event last Saturday. The weather was very nice, and I spent most of the time painting. Below are some photos from the event, including some of the other artists there.


-Here's my set-up. I shared half my canopy with my mom (her art is on the right, mine is on the left). My advice to anyone setting up outside is: wind-proof! I get a little crazy with that; I even screwed some metal rings into my easels' legs so I can stake them down, and my signage is being held down by little sandbags I made.


-Some unusual art by the peoples set up next to us (you don't see very many paintings done on window sashes).


-A sort of candid-looking shot of local artist Barbara Hill-Rickman with her husband.


-I wasn't the only artist working on-site: this is animal artist Christy Mosier, who is working in pastels.


-The very fabulous set-up of Esther Marie Versch (whose art is on the right) and Christy Mosier (her art is on the left).

Featherdust WIP

Work on Featherdust is now underway, which meant having to dust off my skills in watercolor, breaking out the masking fluid, and buying a new pallette with depressions. This is actually the first watercolor-only fantasy painting I've ever done, and it's a nice change from working in acrylic.

Pictured top is the final version of the linework - I started with a rough sketch, traced it onto the tracing paper (pictured), and then transferred the linework onto the painting surface. On the bottom is a WIP. Modifications to the overall design involved removing some of the tree's branches, playing with the dragon's right wing, and adding clusters of little blossoms to the tree - the tree is dead, and the dragon is actually causing the flowers to grow.

Blown Away Completed

Blown Away (the remake) is finished! I really like the way this turned out (except for that third leaf, it's a little hard to see). The process of trying to finish this was really drawn out, mostly because I kept playing with the sprite's face. A little trick I did with this was making the final highlights on the edges pale yellow to match the color of the light source.

I'm also getting Featherdust started. The painting is going to be 12x14 inches, and I've made some minor changes to the design. Hopefully my skills with watercolors haven't become too rusty...

Also, I just finished updating the design for the Dragonling Calendar, but deviantART pulled a fast one - the calendar year used to switch over in September, but apparently now they don't switch until October, so the 2010 Dragonling Calendar won't be available until then.

New Idea- Featherdust

Introducing the idea for my next painting, Featherdust. The idea is still a work in progress, so changes will probably occur, but the sketch below shows generally what it will look like (the foreground anyway). To the left is a crude little pixel drawing showing the dragon's coloration and markings. I think I'm developing an attachment to feathered dragons... they somehow seem more elegant and graceful than regular dragons.

This painting is going to be done in watercolor, but I don't know what size it's going to be yet. The colors are going to be pastel, with lots of pinks, purples, and blues, and the background is going to be a greenish abstracted forest scene. The dead tree is extending out from placid water - I still have to gather references for the wood texture.

Update and Blown Away WIP

I haven't posted for a little while (life's been kind of hectic), so here's an update of what's been going on.

First, here's a WIP of Blown Away. The background and tree are finished, but again, this is a photo, not a scan, so a lot of the detail is lost. The strange thing about this was that the background was unusually difficult to paint and the tree was fairly easy (I love the way the tree turned out). I've had to work on this almost exclusively outdoors (in natural light) to get the colors to blend well.

Upcoming events include Fall Into Art on Sept. 19, not to mention the Coshocton County Fair, always fun to enter in. I also just came up with a new idea for a painting that I LOVE - I'll discuss that more next week (hopefully I'll have some sketches drawn up by then).