Tomie dePaola Award Submission

It's done.  Now I am going to sleep before tackling Heart of Worship Camp prep tomorrow.  Oi.

Sea Gypsy Value Sketch

Here's the value comp for the Sea Gypsy piece I'm doing for the SCBWI scholarship contest.  Any thoughts?  Speak now or forever hold your peace!

An Update

Hello everyone!  Sorry I've been so bad about updating - I'm trying to get back in the swing of things, I promise!

For starters, I don't think I'm going to be able to post the sketch from the prayer room today (shocker, I know), and for the next two or three weeks thinks might be kind of quiet.  Heart of Worship camp starts the 17th and I have lots of stuff to prepare. So, if you want to find out what's going on, you can check out my Instagram.  

For those interested, prints of the Heart of worship artwork will be going on sale next Monday (hopefully)!  If you're interested and you're in Houston, shoot me an email and we can work out a delivery so you won't have to pay shipping.  If you're out of state, you can order in the store and your print will ship out to you in 1-3 days.  

Also, be sure to keep checking back in to see the progress on my first ever sequential piece!  I'm entering the SCBWI Tomie DePaola contest to try and get a trip to the January conference in New York - we'll see!  Either way, I'm excited to try this new format and maybe even a new medium!

If you're on Instagram, you know that this is my sea gypsy character that I wasn't going to feature for a while.  But when this contest came to my attention on Monday (thanks, Jen Betton! :p) I said i already have a full plate, what the heck? I already had an idea for the story - just took some tweaking to fit the parameters of the prompt, so there you go.  It's due June 15th (eesh) so that's why things will be a little hectic around here. 

Coming Storm is on hold until after HoW, so check back in a couple of weeks to see where that is.  

ALSO, I still need to post on Spectrum Fantastic Art Live 3!  I've been sitting on the post - but with everything being so busy, I haven't had time to really edit everything and make it coherent.  

Anyway, lots of stuff in the works, I'll try and post something to let you see a little of what's going on, but no promises!  

TTFN!

Some Truth for Today

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:Its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness; but still will keep a bower quiet for us, and a sleep full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

                   John Keats, Endymion

From the Prayer Room Week 5

I know, I know, six weeks and I've only gotten one week finished the way I initially proposed.  Sigh.

Things are a little busy here on my end.  I've decided that For the next few weeks, I'm only going to worry about the sketch portion of this project.  I'll finish "Here be Dragons", "Surrender Unto Hope", and week 3 (which I'm going to call "Ruah"), but after those I'm going to pick and choose the ones I end up painting until my schedule settles a bit.  So . . .

For weeks my mind had been turning over the character of Tulkas - one of the Valar from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion.  Nienna, Tulkas and Orome are have always been my favorite of the Valar, but the explanation of that would take to long.  Anyway, here's some excerpts from The Silmarillion about Tulkas:

But in the midst of the war a spirit of great strength and hardihood came to the aid of the Valar, hearing in the far heaven that there was a battle in the Little Kingdom; and Arda was filled with the sound of his laughter. So came Tulkas the Strong, whose anger passes like a mighty wind, scattering cloud and darkness before it; and Melkor fled before his wrath and his laughter, and forsook Arda, and there was peace for a long age.  And Tulkas remained and became on of the Valar of the Kindom of Arda; but Melkor brooded in the outer darkness, and his hate was given to Tulkas for ever after." 

"Greatest in strength and deeds of prowess is Tulkas, who is surnamed Astaldo, the Valiant.  He came last to Arda, to aid the Valar in the first battles with Melkor.  He delights in wrestling and in contests of strength; and he rides no steed, for he can outrun all things that go on feet, and he is tireless.  His hair and beard are golden, and his flesh ruddy; his weapons are his hands.  He has little heed for either past or the future, and is of no avail as a counsellor, but is a hardy friend . . . Tulkas laughs ever, in sport or in war, and even in the face of Melkor he laughed in battles before the Elves were born." 

So I went into the prayer room and this image of a laughing warrior God had been humming in my head for a few weeks.  At some point, someone read Isaiah 64 (specifically verses 1-4), and I couldn't get the idea of Tulkas out of my head for the rest of the night.  So I went with it.  Psalm 2:1 & 4-6 (thanks Rene!), Psalm 3:3-4 and Psalm 18:28-36 were also read over the course of the evening . . .

So I started trying to draw Tulkas - or the aspect of God that Tulkas embodies: a storm of righteous anger that casts down evil to make way for joy.  So I'm calling this week's sketch "Tulkas Astaldo".

I had this epic idea of what Tulkas would look like - helmet, armor, the works.  A mighty, big picture with a man like figure clothed in everything strong and imposing!

And it wouldn't work.

I nearly shredded the page drawing and redrawing the sketch.

So I went back to Tolkien to reread everything and found myself caught on this concept of Tulkas as a wrestler.  My two brothers wrestled in high school, so I know a few paltry facts about the sport, and I knew that helmet I kept trying to draw would get in the way of any wrestling.  The armor, too. So I went back to the drawing board (so to speak) and tried to put my human imagining aside in favor of the work.  And then, as if by magic, I found the sketch.  Go figure.  Goes to show that simpler is better sometimes.

Initially, I wasn't sure that I liked the final product - there was a lot of struggle even after I found the sketch.  But I think it's growing on me.

Some Truth for Today

Playing it safe in fantasy art means macabre, violent and, at times, terribly sexist imagery. To me, it's just lazy and uncreative. The struggle between good and evil never ceases to be exciting. But when the grotesque is glorified and beauty is seen as childish or weak, then we've taken a serious misstep.

- Cory Godbey

From the Prayer Room Week 3

Woohoo!  All four weeks' sketches are done! I am caught up - now to finish the paintings . . .

This piece is going to be a full painting once I finish "Coming Storm" and a couple others.  It's kinda cheating to not do a painting in a week for this one, but I think the idea is strong enough that it deserves a full scale effort.  So.  No title as of yet.  But I have a model in mind, hopefully she says yes; I hear she's a bit camera shy . . .