WIP - Himni Rek-Aro

Holy smokes, two posts in one week. What is the world coming to?

I sketched this a couple of weeks ago as part of a small art challenge for myself. This is Himni Rek-Aro, a character who appears in The Rebirth Trilogy. She is the last of the four original original characters I drew when I started writing the trilogy as a teenager, once upon a time (the others being Kuma, Cenme, and Nighteye). I've wanted to draw her for a while in order to more fully flesh out her appearance. This sketch needs a lot of work before I ink it, but it's a start. In particular, I need to redo the details of her mask. The wing theme was okay, but it's not what I wanted. I do plan to ink and color this at some point.

So ... a little trivia for you about Himni, since I've been trying to do this more when I post images of individual characters and such:

The gemstones in Himni's mask are a purple-red sapphire and a red spinel, the latter of which represents "intensity" among the Laiuna people. (Side notes - Different colored sapphires, aside from the familiar blue, may also carry special meaning. And, red spinel is one of my personal favorites when it comes to gemstones)

Himni's home is a city called Juk Sul, which is located in a southern range of Genkian mountains called The Gods' Abode. The city is built at a high elevation, which means that cooler temperatures are a norm, and as such, some of Himni's normal attire includes fur lining. Juk Sul has an interesting history that involves rebelling against the Laiuna empire at one point, and one of the carry-overs of that rebellion is represented by the structure of it's citizens' names; Instead of the traditional name format in the rest of Genkai (Surname, followed by Given Name) the natives of Juk Sul use their Given Name first, followed by their Surname. I won't bore you with further details on all that, but yeah.

Okay, now - Setting aside trivia and sketches, I've also come to a decision: While I still have a number of planned works in store for the Legends of Destiny series, along with a couple other series and projects, no more new projects will be started for the next while .... like, years. I've decided that the amount of back-logged projects I have built up is utterly ridiculous and I'm going to start working through the book titles that have already been announced before I begin anything else. This means that titles such as Sovereign Soul, The Gem Duology, at least some Taloner books will be completed in their first draft form before I move on to anything else. My goal is to drastically cut down on the number of books sitting around in limbo, since some of them were announced a long time ago (cough, Sovereign Soul....)

Oh yeah. I guess that means I'd better make an announcement on which title won out as my current main project, huh? Well, look for that post soon!

NaNoWriMo approaches

It's coming. NaNoWriMo is almost here! I have always wanted to participate in it, but never had the drive and a specific story idea (and time) line up for me to do so. I'm hoping to change that this year.

For those of you unfamiliar with what NaNoWriMo is, it stands for National Novel Writing Month. Now, I'm not sure that I'll be able to get an entire novel pumped out, as I'm still working on prepping Wings of Fate for release and I'd really like to avoid burnout. However, I do have that little side project that's been trickling along, and I'd love to hammer on it and get a good chunk of it written down. I can always finish it at leisure after Wings of Fate has been taken care of.

This project is one that I've had planned for at least six or seven years, and I do already have a synopsis written up for it, which is kind of strange to work with. I'm more comfortable with a rough, general synopsis being written for a book, comprised mostly of bits and pieces of story matter. It's much easier for me to feel inspired and write a book with plenty of wiggle room left to create story details and possibly change the direction of the storyline.

So yeah, I think my November project would be ..... the eleventh book in the series. Which leaves a few others still in the planning stages or partly finished at this point. Sorry. I've learned that some stories need a long time to gestate in my mind so that I don't miss out on any important details. If I try to force the story, I either ruin it or end up frustrated. That's part of why it's taking so long to get back to Sovereign Soul. I haven't had the right energy to work on it for the past several years, and now that I've waited, I've been able to develop some important plot points for it that would have been left out, had I hurried to finish it after writing Nethbane. It's hard to wait, but it will be worth it in the end.

Alright, cutting my ramblings short, there are couple of pictures in this post for you. These are both major characters in the side project, and while the drawings are 6-8 years old and will need some revising of their own, the characters are largely the same as they were before. I thought it would be fun to showcase them here.

Have a pleasant day.

Nighteye

Another Wings of Fate character! This guy is actually one of the four original original characters that I ever drew in the Legends of Destiny. The other three are: Kuma, Cenme, and Himni. Since then, I have not redrawn Nighteye. It's good to see him again!

This was a learning piece for me. I discovered several tools that I hadn't yet played with, including the airbrush tool. I'm extremely pleased with how the piece came out, although I didn't originally plan it in a nighttime setting. I didn't draw the character's trademark knife harness, either - there was already too much going on with his gear. I'm not that talented quite yet.

And again, a bit of trivia for you: The black scale pattern apparent on parts of Nighteye's body is in fact a dark coloration that appears at the edge of some of his scales. Nighteye is a squadron leader who has worked under General Cenme Duforthia for some time, making him one of the longest-standing soldiers to be employed at the Fortress of Roses at the point in time that the book takes place.

Done in Krita. As always, character and the Legends of Destiny are copyright W. A. Johnson.

Inktober - Cursed Light

Had a lot of fun with lighting on this one. Done in micron and Prismacolor brush pen.

......

I need to get an orange brush pen.

Inktober - Widow Ssiadagama

It's Inktober!! .......... And I'll be honest, I feel like my art skills are regressing. Bleh.

So, big news - As of Thursday night, the first major revision of Wings of Fate is complete! I've been taking a bit of a break from writing the last couple of days in order to recharge a bit and prepare myself before I dive back in and read through it for further refining purposes. It has officially clocked in at roughly 203,000 words, which means it should be about 600 pages in print format. I'm very pleased, and very surprised. I had no idea when I began revising the book that I had THAT much more to add!

And, yesterday was the last day of September. I totally forgot to put up anything to wish readers a Happy Rebirth Day. Go me.

Here's another character from Wings of Fate. I'll admit that through revising the story and it's characters, I've grown closer to some of them. One of those characters is Widow, an important side character who appears in the story. I always imagined him with a leather keltho, which is the article of clothing he wears draped over his legs, but I didn't have a brown marker to color it. This piece was done in micron pens and brush pens of both the Prismacolor and Copic calibers.

Here's a little more trivia: Widow is an expert knife marksman and a skilled fighter in close quarters. The majority of his armor is made up of chainmail in favor of lighter weight and increased motion. He is a native of the Laiuna city Prosperous Gate in Genkai, but due to family conflict, he left at a young age and has lived and worked in Cardmov ever since. He typically carries at least nine knives and daggers on his person at any given time.

Swift Peilos

This is a supporting character who appears in Wings of Fate. She plays a fairly minor role in the story, and I've never drawn her before now.

A little background on her character for you: Swift is a member of a family of lesser nobility. Like many of her relatives, she is skilled at cartography and navigation. She was originally exposed to work at the Fortress of Roses by her elder sister, Arathinja, who is also employed there. Her mask is blue steel, a detail not mentioned in the book.

I'd like to say that I'm super pleased with this picture, but ........ not really. My hands wouldn't stop shaking while trying to ink, so the line art is a travesty. The smooth quality of coloring that I was seeking after is also lacking. As an excuse, I claim the side effects from coming off of my meds and my nasty cold.

Started in Krita, then switched to Gimp for shading. Gimp reminded me why I don't use it much anymore -_____-

Escora the Blue

Tonight, for your viewing pleasure, I'd like to present a non-canonical character from the Legends of Destiny series. I've been wanting to draw her for a little while, and after much wrestling I finally completed a concept of what she looks like. I apologize if the color is inordinately bright; I still can't seem to tone down the saturation of color on my screen to where it looks normal on other computers. Done in Krita.

Bios:

This is Escora the Blue, sole surviving nestmate of the black dragon Shadowsilk. There was a third nestmate at hatch, but he did not survive to adolescence. Escora is about the same size as her sister, placing her at a length of one hundred and twenty feet from nose to tail tip.

Escora chose to leave the safety of her father's lair at a relatively young age and moved to the eastern coast of Kura-Cora, where she now controls her own small territory along the seashore. She is well known to her neighbors as being tenacious and fierce, having ousted a violent faction from the land she claims as her own. She is fairly adept in magic, particularly with the element of water. Her breath weapon consists of green-tinged fire. It is rumored that she can also produce a lightning breath weapon at will, an attribute which would make her unusual among dragons.

Despite her territorial reputation, Escora is known to be quite civil with parties or persons who travel through her domain for trade or protection.

Escora's name is pronounced: eh-SKOR-uh

Thinking of You

Love is in the air, and I wanted to do a fun little doodle of a couple of my characters.

Done in Krita.

Inktober - Asenath

I like machines.

Inktober - Phantomfire

For your viewing pleasure, I decided to do a before and after of the coloring so that the line art details are visible. He is very shiny because I didn't want to cover up ALL of the details. The woes of black creatures.....

This is a dragon who appears in Legends of Destiny. I may still change his look a little, but it's been fun to flesh him out.

Kuma card - version 2

I wasn't entirely satisfied with the previous version of this card. I decided to redraw it, and while it didn't come out quite as well as I'd hoped, I'm still much happier with this version.

Ignore the outdated copyright in the bottom corner. I have become thoroughly irritated with the program Gimp and couldn't stand to fight it a second longer today.

It seems appropriate to redo this card during the month of September. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I've always kind of felt like Kuma's birthday would be this month, if I were to get down to the fine threads of my book series. This is probably because the first drawing I ever did of Kuma, as he now appears in the series, was done in September. It was the 4th, to be precise. Like a few other early characters in the series, Kuma has his roots in an archaic picture I drew when I was sixteen or seventeen, but the current version of his character is eleven years old.

Happy Birthday, Kuma!

Noemus card

Lei Mai

My latest attempt at humans. This is a major character who appears in Predecessor, a future project that I would like to write. It takes place about one thousand years before the events of The Rebirth Trilogy, and as you can guess, it features at least one ancestor of the characters in the trilogy. Predecessor is the code name for the book (the actual title will be different) and it will be only one book long at this point.

This character came out looking a little older than I intended, but I drew an Asian face without it looking horrible, so I'm not going to whine. I very much enjoyed the details of her wardrobe. I based a lot of it off of period dress from both China and Japan, as the character, Lei Mai, comes from a culture where this is common.

For ten years she's always just kind of been a character floating in the background of my world, and I've really wanted to develop her more. Over the past several months, I've been blessed to be able to figure out exactly what her personality and background might be. She hails from a class that is very similar to the current-day Japanese geisha. I won't say more, but I am now in the process of researching geisha so that I have a better idea of this special class. (I admire the geisha, anyway, so it's a win-win)

My darling scanner insisted on cropping this for me every time I tried to scan it, and of course I encountered Washed Out Syndrome, the bane of all scanned images. Ah well. It's a learning process.

Done in micron pen and colored pencil. As always, I own the character. Thanks for looking! :)

Ulf card

Finally got this guy done. I need to make some hair texture brushes, because painting fur really should be more fun than that.

This is a villain who appears briefly in one of my Taloner books. I wish I had been able to work with him more, because I quite enjoyed his personality and abilities.

Denlupis card

How appropriate that I would complete this card on a night with thunderstorms.

Hanedoe Card

Fun fact: In nearly twelve years of writing my fantasy series, I have never drawn this character. Not once. It is such a pleasure to finally have the skill and inspiration to draw her correctly.

Drawn while listening to Tiesto's In Search of Sunrise 7: Asia. In particular, the track "Wasted" seemed to fit my mood for this piece. Done in Gimp.......I need to reload Krita on my machine.

Stellia Card

Dangit, Gimp! Why do you keep getting rid of the fonts I like?? I thought we were still friends?

Hmph. Jerk.

Here's the first of the line art cards! I've stopped putting so much detail into the text, as the format of these will change somewhat when I prepare the files for printing at some unknown point in time.

This character is actually one of my favorites, even though she's only appeared in a short story, to date.

Accepted cover concept - Path of a Hero

Here's the final cover concept for the redo of the second book in The Rebirth Trilogy - Path of a Hero. This is the copy I will be working off of as I create a digital painting for the cover art.

I would like to have a final product that is of high enough quality for a large digital print I can display on my wall, so it may be some time before this image is finished.

This cover features the character Terezom, the Hero of the god Kem. In the background is an army of mixed creatures, which has to do with a particular scene from the book. Let the coloring begin.

Blayde

Practice piece done (for now) I am getting more familiar with my new tablet, as well as the program Krita. This is the colored version of a sketch I did of one of the gods from my fantasy series.

On to book covers!

Character sketch 24

Here's a sketch that I actually drew a few years ago. This is a character that shows up in my current writing project. I have been looking forward to working with them for a long time, now, and I'm excited to finally be working on this book.

Don't mind all the smudges and debris in the margins. That's just my smudgy hand and the scanner making sweet music together.