pyraxis | Recent Entries

It's been an unusually hot spring. We had a few weeks of snowmelt and temperatures rising to 10C or so, and then a heat wave hit 30C and it's been summer since.

The daffodils and crocuses didn't like it. I planted a row of purple crocuses down the front path last fall and none of them have flowered. There are only a few yellow daffodils, and the only star is a cluster of white daffodils I also put in last fall, that came out brilliantly.

A cluster of three white daffodils amidst woodchips, with a couple grape hyacinths with tiny lavender flowers peeking out from behind.

A cluster of three white daffodils amidst woodchips, with a couple grape hyacinths with tiny lavender flowers peeking out from behind.

( Lots of spring flower pictures )

It's from a copyrighted reference photo, so I can't actually use it for anything, but I couldn't resist painting this one.

Trying to learn more about the colour depth of dark skin. The magic of light skin is all in the subsurface scattering. The magic of dark skin is in the specular, the reflectance. It picks up all the colours of the light around it. Here, I was finding myself using colours from all spokes of the wheel in a different way than I usually do. A rich red undertone - that's the same way you work with chalk pastel, layering on a red-brown undertone and blending lighter colours over top of it. But instead of warmth in the lighted areas, here it blends to violet and blue. The brightest sunlit areas are ringed with pale yellow instead of coral. It wasn't intuitive. Still, I think it came out pretty alright.

A dark-skinned man sitting on the beach with his arms linked around his knees, with bare sand and sky behind him, and he's facing into the sun.

A dark-skinned man sitting on the beach with his arms linked around his knees, with bare sand and sky behind him, and he's facing into the sun.

There was never any question. The Magician has to be Gillian. The first person Fiona meets in Water Song, he's a merchant in the sea market who offers her uncommon kindness and shelter in his mysterious enchanted tent.

I've been revisiting the first chapter of Song of the Sons, since I've been exchanging it for feedback on a wonderful writing critique site. Gillian and his tent are the real stars of this chapter, and this painting has been sitting in the back of my head, in various forms, since the early days of developing the Water Song. Now I have the patience to render it fully.

The Magician is the first person the Fool meets in their journey. He opens the door into mystery and invites them to step through. To answer the Magician's call is to allow the potential of the unknown into your life, to look at what your deepest instincts are drawing you towards, and to accept that your unconscious has its own reasons. Those reasons are valid even if they initially make you uncomfortable and wary. Before understanding comes exploration, and exploration calls for courage and curiosity.

A brown-skinned man sits at a table, concentrating intensely on the tiny hammer in his right hand, the rod in his left hand, and the stone bead that they have just split into three fragments in a flash of light. Around him is a cluttered merchant tent, with shelves and chests containing goods of all sorts, from plants to scrolls to coloured yarn and cloth. Under the table is a half-covered basket of exotic fruit, and a large shadowed chest. In the foreground is another table, spread with meat pies of all shapes and sizes. In the background hangs a canopy made of brightly colored curtains.

Before I went into the writing Monastery for my revision course, I'd started revising the sparring scene between Fiona and Tarks in Water Song 1, based on all the new info from conversations and Ren Faire reference. I sketched it out and couldn't resist developing the sketch further than I'd planned.

A digital painting of two people sparring with wooden sticks in a rustic courtyard. The man on the left has studded leather armor, dark skin, short black curly hair, and an imposing presence as he strikes out with the stick to hit the young woman on her left upper arm. The woman is off balance, attempting a failed block with her stick, and wincing as she's struck. She has wild orange hair in a ponytail, a white shirt with the sleeves tied up around her shoulders, and tan slacks.

Procreate and Apple Pencil

Catching up on art.

This is the one I'm most proud of that I did over the holidays. A study from Mammoth Cave.

A stylized digital painting of a large cave chamber, looking down from above on a ledge, towards a winding path through boulders and rubble. Across the other side of the chamber, the path leads to a mysterious dark opening.

A stylized digital painting of a large cave chamber, looking down from above on a ledge, towards a winding path through boulders and rubble. Across the other side of the chamber, the path leads to a mysterious dark opening.

wyld_dandelyon is doing Dreaming and creativity-friendly tarot readings for the new year.

Anyone can ask for a single card draw. Tips of US $2 or more let you get a clarifying card. She's also doing five-card readings with whatever focus you like for US $25.

You can ask for a card for yourself or for someone in a game, or a protagonist or villain in a story. You can ask for inspiration for a creative project.

I highly recommend it, it's rare to find someone so open to different shades of imagination.

It was one of her readings that encouraged me to allow people to take care of me during pregnancy.

Current Music: Obnoxious toddler music videos

The World is the 21st and last trump card in the traditional tarot deck.

Sha singing the water's return.

A small dark-skinned boy standing on a desert rock amidst the crashing wave of a flooding riverbed breaking around him. His head is thrown back, his arms spread, and he's singing with all his might. He's surrounded by a round nimbus of rainbow amidst the water spray. In the background is a clear blue sky and the round roofs of mud brick buildings,

A small dark-skinned boy standing on a desert rock amidst the crashing wave of a flooding riverbed breaking around him. His head is thrown back, his arms spread, and he's singing with all his might. He's surrounded by a round nimbus of rainbow amidst the water spray. In the background is a clear blue sky and the round roofs of mud brick buildings,

I started this one a long time ago. At least before covid. I could never get Sha's pose and proportions and expression right, so after a few failed attempts at reworking it, it went on the back burner until I could figure out what the problem was.

But now the cub is almost the same age as Sha was when this happened. I have a perfect model running around my own house. So I went back to it and finally got it looking more natural. I'm mostly happy with how it's come out now.

A prison made of stone and colour.

In the traditional Rider-Waite, a hand comes out of the clouds, offering a fourth cup to a person who has found no succour in the three they have. Here, the hand is made of cristal, and anything it might offer is laced with corruption. Nor is there escape to be found in water that's iced over.

The only way out is through.

A young woman curled up on the floor of a cave, with her arms hugging her stomach and her knees drawn up to her chest, a careworn expression on her face. Her long dirty blond hair hangs loose around her shoulders and she's dressed in dark-colored rags and furs. In front of her are three wide shallow bowls, glowing deep blue-purple, either iced over or laced with lightning. Behind her on a rock is a crystal formation, its prongs holding up a fourth bowl, this one with a swirl of rainbow liquid inside. The cave is lit with sickly yellow-green light, with areas glowing teal and purple.

The card of treachery and betrayal.

A night scene of a woman with her back to the viewer, looking back over her right shoulder. On her left shoulder she's hefting a bundle of three swords, holding their blades with leather gloves over her bare arms and hands. She's dressed scantily with a jeweled red cloth over her hair, draping down to cover her breasts, and a golden brown jeweled cloth over her hips and buttocks. The rest of her pale skin is exposed. Behind her and on the left are two fallen men crouching in the grass, clutching bloody wounds, their swords lying useless at their feet.

Lots more flower pics.

(Can you spot the other visitors? :D )

( Read more... )

A digital painting of two white lilies with deep red speckles, seen from below, with a canopy of trees and clear blue sky behind them.

Digital painting. iPad, Apple Pencil and ProCreate.

This is from j-t's housemate:

Ah, well if it's non-profit names you need, you have indeed come to the right place! The director of the organization I work for is from India and has most of his family still there - he shared these names of organizations, along with the specific initiatives they're running for oxygen, PPE, food, etc, with our org's staff to help guide our donations:

SEWA International - Medical Oxygen
American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin - Medical Oxygen
Khalsa Aid - Medical Oxygen
CARE India - Mainly PPE Kits
Akshaya Patra Foundation - Food Relief
Project Mumbai - Health Infrastructure and supplies

I really look forward to our storytelling, and, I'm so sorry to hear about your partner, my friend. What a full universe of lives you lived together.

With love,
Shea Skywalker :)

Current Music: Angela - Shikabane Hime

Watch on YouTube

I couldn't think of a better title for this one. It's from the second book of Water Song.

Qi, again, being her wonderful self. But a few fronds of plants in salty soil feel futile at the edge of the wasteland.

A young black woman with close-cropped hair and concentric gold rings around her neck, kneeling in dry dirt with her palms pressed to the ground. Behind her is a bare salt flat with a few scrubby bushes, fading into a dusty haze, and the silhouettes of hills rising from the haze. At her side are two tall wood and hide drums. From her fingers are snaking tendrils of green, which rise and blossom into leaves.

Current Music: Peia - Blessed We Are

One of the characters from the third book of the Water Song, possibly the Rabu himself.

A portrait of the head and upper chest of a regal man with African complexion and a short beard. He wears several strings of beads around his neck, in indigo, red, and random earthtones, and a single strip of yellow and black kente cloth holding a bronze pendant shaped like a crossed diamond. Underneath he wears a simple white shift with textured embroidery around the neckline. His eyes are squinting against the sun and his mouth has deep lines around it, and he holds an expression of pride.

Trying to get it out of my head so I can focus on writing. Not sure if it will be successful. Today was a miserable failure possibly to the point of self-sabotage. (Self-sabotage still counts as luxury, I know, but couldn't bring myself to work or write.)

A close-up portrait of a grim-looking young redheaded woman staring into the distance. Her curly bedraggled hair is loose around her face and the whole image is suffused with pale blue-grey light that matches her eyes.

A close-up portrait of a grim-looking young redheaded woman staring into the distance. Her curly bedraggled hair is loose around her face and the whole image is suffused with pale blue-grey light that matches her eyes.

Nobody is Coming

A little sketch that started as an angsty exercise in disturbing skin tones (he's not dead, just very ill, and she may as well be a ghost). Been working on it bit by bit as an antidote to loneliness.

A stern and regal-looking black woman with a gold circlet over short, swept-back hair, the sun haloed behind her head as she drives a chariot pulled by two beasts that look like a cross between an exotic deer and a horse. One has a deep grey coat and the other light tan, but both have brownish-red stripes and patches of white and tan on their faces. They have large ears silhouetted against the light, two curving horns each, and leather harnesses attached to reins held by the woman.

ProCreate, Photoshop, iPad and Apple Pencil

Ua'lin... being Ua'lin. How seriously you take her is up to you.

This is actually taken from one of the first pictures I ever drew of her. ( Read more... )

A grimacing woman dressed in ragged furs, kneeling in a puddle of water in the grass and surrounded by eight stacked goblets, brimming with a reddish-brown liquid. In an abstract misty background, the blurred shapes of two deerlike creatures are fleeing out of the frame, and in the two places where their hooves touch down, they meet the surface of rippling water. Each creature has a curved and slightly luminous horn, and behind them is a round disc reminiscent of an eclipse, patterned with reddish brown tribal markings.

ProCreate, Photoshop, iPad and Apple Pencil

Watch on YouTube

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Firesongs (Echo)

Adventures climbing the fourth wall

Recent Entries

Spring flowers!

Colour and light study

The Magician

Tarks and Fiona

Cave Study

Tarot readings

The World

Four of Cups

Five of Swords

The garden is coming alive

There are not enough beautiful things in the world right now

Doctor, Heal Thyself

Canadian Pandemic Anthem

Preparing for Gatherday

Exploration

More Water Song angst art

Forgotten

The Chariot

Eight of Cups

The Hu - Song of Women

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May 2023

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