pyraxis | Entries tagged with illustration

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.

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.

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.

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

These are the treehouse paintings I did at the art fair.

Three treehouses clinging to the trunks of huge trees in the dappled sunlight of an old growth forest.

Three treehouses clinging to the trunks of huge trees in the dappled sunlight of an old growth forest.

Oil on masonite panel

The big one. Two smaller ones under the cut.

( Read more... )

This is the painting I was working on throughout pregnancy. It was my challenge to stick with only pregnancy-safe pigments - ochres, siennas, titanium white, ultramarine blue, a couple translucent yellows, and (I cheated a little bit; they're scientifically untested for pregnancy) quinacridones. Finally got it finished today.

It's Walkie the herbalist in her stall next door to Gillian's in the Tapolith market.

It's special to me because it's inspired by a photo that Walkie sent to Shashigai and us while he was in the ICU, of her in her garden that she nurtured from tenement weeds. I'm imagining it as two paintings, hanging side by side. This is the one on the right. The one on the left, which doesn't exist yet, would be a literal interpretation of another garden photo. Together they would be called Walkie/Ua'ke, and if there were a description hanging alongside them, it would talk about the things that exist on both sides of the fourth wall. I've never painted them in direct parallel before.

A brown-skinned grandmotherly woman with a halo of greying curly hair sits in a sun-drenched canvas tent, chopping herbs on a table that also holds bundles of flower cuttings and a mortar and pestle. Around her hang terracotta plant pots overflowing with greenery. Dried herbs are hanging from lines suspended from the tent's rafters. The faint silhouette of another tent is visible across cobblestones outside.

Acrylic on stretched canvas, 2017-2018

I made one of these for the doula, and it both came out so well I wanted to do more, and the colours were so wrong that I wanted to do more in order to fix it. So I've been on a chalk pastel binge, of my new favourite subject, using the awesome high quality pastels and paper that Shashigai once got for me. (Sennelier and Rembrandt pastels on 9x12 Sennelier pastel paper, if you're curious... this is what I was taught at art school anyway, and I think they're right, the pigment is beautifully dense and the textured paper just grabs it and holds it with the lightest touch.)

( Pictures under the cut. )

A lightning-blasted tree stump in a storm, seen from the side, with a cross-section of the ground underneath. A dark figure is curled in fetal position in the ground beneath the tree, with roots growing down from its stomach. The figure glows with mottled green and blue light. At the foot of the tree stump are three broken bowls, and deep under the ground, below where the roots have reached, are two small glowing pockets filled with pools of water.

Photoshop and Wacom

Current Music: Mari Boine - Idjagiedas

Two figures embracing as they fall from a stormy sky, trailing a shower of bedraggled black feathers. The woman's figure is nude and has captured the fading light of the sun in her belly. The man's figure is half-transformed into a wolf, with his face obscured under a wolf's-head mask with yellow eyes that stare directly out of the painting.

Photoshop and Wacom

Current Music: How Great Thou Art - Pentatonix w/Jennifer Hudson

A deerlike being standing in a dark foresty place, with head lowered over a shallow bowl of water. He is staring directly into the viewer's eyes and his long tongue is lapping the water. His ears are cocked as if listening and there are dark circles of fur around his eyes. On his head, instead of horns, is a crown of living tentacles that coil and spiral like a halo around his head.

Photoshop and MotionComputing tablet

Concept was inspired from a sketch by the Spacerobots

There is a lot that could be said about the Nethik King, but very little that he will let me say tonight. Maybe the image can speak for itself.

Current Mood: lonely

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Firesongs (Echo)

Adventures climbing the fourth wall

Entries tagged with illustration

Colour and light study

The Magician

Tarks and Fiona

Cave Study

The World

Four of Cups

Five of Swords

There are not enough beautiful things in the world right now

Preparing for Gatherday

Exploration

More Water Song angst art

Forgotten

The Chariot

Eight of Cups

Tirothi treehouses

Walkie

Chalk pastel portraits

Five of Cups

The Tower

King of Cups

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May 2023

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