Inktober - Dragonskull Emblem

It was time to create a new emblem. Not sure what to do with it yet, but I have a couple of ideas.

Inktober - Lady In Red

Good exercise in hand-eye coordination. Done in micron and brush pens.

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.

Accepted cover concept: Wings of Fate

Wow! It looks pretty rough, but I'm so pleased to finally have an acceptable cover concept for the first book in my trilogy, Wings of Fate. I've had this sketch sitting in one of my notebooks for months now, and tonight I finally got my scanner up and running again.

For the last year and a half, I've been working on revising Wings of Fate. Tonight, I am down to the final ten pages of the manuscript, and I'm so excited to be closing in on the end of it! I have had twelve years to improve my skills as a writer (and an artist!) and completing the new draft of this book will be a monumental step in my work. To date, I have added nearly twenty percent again of the original book's volume to the manuscript, making it a full fifth larger than the first version.

The second and third books in the trilogy will eventually follow suit, but at this point I'm unsure of how soon that will happen. I know it's been driving me crazy for years, as there were inconsistencies between the first draft of the trilogy and other books that were published later in the series. I've had a lot of time to think things through and work out details in the world of Gaia. It doesn't even seem like it's been that long, really.

I will also be running the prequel to the trilogy through a revision, once I have completed Wings of Fate. The prequel had some problems of it's own, but I'll save that for another post.

Angel sketch

Random sketch as I attempt to improve my quality of human faces. The paper got rained on as I was walking out of work, so it's all wrinkly.

Went to pull out my scanner a week ago, and oh yes, the software wasn't working right on my laptop. Okay, I'll just reinstall it, right?

Nope.

My install disc now has a lovely curve to it. I'm not putting it anywhere near my reader until it's perfectly flat, if it ever does flatten out. Fortunately, my dad pointed out that I could download the necessary drivers on Canon's site. Yay! So once again, my scanner is working.

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