Firesongs (Echo)

Photoshop, Wacom and MotionComputing tablet

( All my disclaimers )

Anyway, it's Sha, struggling to lift an overflowing kifu, in front of Masta Ua.

This one takes a bit of explanation. It's on Karn, but on a part of it that no one we know has explored before. Shashigai found a group of explorers who were venturing as far as the Last, which is the high mountain range out past keegrah (griff) territory where the keegrah go to die. This group of five made it through, and on the other side they came out into a deep rift heated by volcanic activity.

There were people there, who called the place the Kabo. There are huge twisted trees growing in the warmth of the hot springs, and the people make their homes up in their branches. But this picture is of an area out past them, on the other side of the rift, where a few have managed to make their homes in the bitter cold. And here's the part that the grehti can't hear of: some of their shapes are different. There are still tirothi and nethik, a few keegrah, and the taigh, who would be recognizable to Daria and her people. But there are also the woji, like the guy in this picture, and wolf-creatures who call themselves the sangh.

This picture was my Christmas present to Shashigai. The girl is Mikka, one of the people in his latest story.

Evan Leda, from yonjuunana's comic-in-progress.

Blame Shashigai, who said it should be a spiderfish.

In other news, grr, the Mojang authentication server is down and I can't play Minecraft. I baked cookies instead but I need to decide what to do next.

Today's drawing of the day is for two days, yesterday and today. It's not done either because I want to add colour. Shashigai made a special request, for a drawing of the Karnese forest and the flowers you might expect to see there. It's for a story he's working on. He originally asked for a caricature, ie something simple, but I got carried away.

It's just a little one. I'm not keeping up with a drawing every day, but it's still more art than I was doing before. I think I'm going to be reclaiming life slowly, in and around all the remaining paperwork, and even the fun chores like installing shelves and organizing storage.

We're still unpacking boxes. I've built myself a desk now, of two masonite boards which I'd once meant to cut up and prime for paintings. They're braced across stacks of boxes. I could still use them for paintings in the distant future when I get a proper desk. There are a lot of things on the agenda first, like a mattress, and maybe a washer and dryer, because the laundromat is a pretty long walk away.

Meanwhile, have a few sketches.


( Read more... )

I've been working on this one for a while, but that's mainly because I started it before our move. Today I finally had the chance to put some finishing touches on it.

They are Auben and Amber, two of the people in the Water Song.



Photoshop and MotionComputing tablet

The Lovers is a card about pairs and duality. It's the sixth card of the Major Arcana. There's a sense of ambivalence about it - sometimes it features a man caught between two women instead of a man and a woman joined. The idea is that something else has to be given up, some sacrifice has to be made, in order to pursue the love that has come into the querent's life. Auben and Amber both turned away from major influences in their lives as they turned to each other. The card can mean falling in love with a person, but it can also mean coming to something which feels as if it completes you. It's a bond which is felt at a deeper level than the conscious mind.

Copic multiliner pens on paper

A drawing I did over the past few days. I'm not 100% sure it's a fox. It's from a reference photo I took of a taxidermy exhibit at the Burke Museum of Natural History in Seattle.

I did this sketch at the park this afternoon. I love drawing trees.



Sorry about the edges being cut off. My scanner isn't very good at handling things near the spine of a sketchbook.

This was a hard one.

I had to bring it together so it somehow represented both the essence of the Karnese Mother goddess, and the more ordinary scene of a nethik mother, whose people are the most pastoral of the four recognized shapes.

That's why you can see each of the four shapes in the background, even if there isn't space for much detail. The Mother protects and nurtures all shapes, and though the Grehti priests in their cosmology divide them into a hierarchy of greater and lesser shapes, those which take human form and those which don't, all of them live together in the Mother's cradle. She is the land and the magic and life force it contains.

( Nethik secrets )

Anyway, some of the nethik are nomadic and others are farmers, and they've developed the most advanced farming techniques known on Karn. (Advanced being a relative term since the culture itself is neolithic.) They have a lot of skill with herbs both for medicine and for cloth dyes.