Started out drawing some funny faces. Just trying to improve my expressions. The eyes and mouth are the only things that actually change, so no noses. Then I did some figure sketches to try to improve on that. Someday I’ll take life drawing and really peg this. For now, all I have are the stock pose galleries on DA.

Just a speedpaint landscape tonight. I need to get back into the swing of painting regularly. This is Walpa Gorge, Australia, painted from this reference. I painted it in a high key, meaning lots of light colors and not many dark ones. It makes the shadows on the cliffs and on the path really pop out, doesn’t it?

I also kept in mind that “Shadows are not the same color, only darker. They are a different color.” So, reddish brown local color, and purple/blue shadows.

Just a silly sketch for tonight. My werewolf character tends to wear gangsta-style clothing, five or six sizes too big. But hey, it fits when he transforms.

My Best Friend Griff, by Sakimichan

I just had to feature this. It gives me warm fuzzies.

So I seized the opportunity to sketch some stuff. A guy in my story critique group mentioned that he had dragons that looked like Jurassic Park raptors with wings. I’ve been drawing that for YEARS so I had to give it a go.

I tried to dragon them up a bit, along with a few sketches of his other dragon species. They do look quite interesting.

Here’s how my vectory dragon is progressing. Doing big chunks of shading inside the lines is tricky. However, vector drawing makes scales and spikes easy! Draw a few, copy and paste over and over, and you’re done! I’m resizing spikes and scales a little as I go, so they don’t look too obviously copied.

It’s still very rough, but you can see where I’m trying to go with it. I don’t want it to immediately look like a vector pic. Those hard lines, though … those are what give it away.

So here’s my crappy mouseart sketch.

A dragon running away from a sword-wielding knight of some sort.

Here’s the beginning vector trace:

My dragon started out green, then I put the trees in there and he vanished. So he’s orange now. I haven’t messed with the knight yet because the dragon gave me such fits. See that fold on the back of his knee on his near back leg? That took like fifteen minutes.

We’ll see if I can make this look as cool as it looks in my head. It definitely has promise at this point. Also, laugh at my crappy trees. They’ll be better later on. I just scribbled them in so I could see how the composition would go.

A tiger in vector. I traced over a photo and felt like a terrible artist for doing it. Usually I trace my own sketches in vector, but I was too brain-dead to do that tonight. Also thunderstorm. Makes me leery of pouring my heart and soul into artwork when it’s stormy and my compy might fry.

So here’s a tiger. He’s kind of spiffy looking.

I have so many things bouncing around in my head tonight. Life and all its little stresses.

One thing I’ve been pondering on is this argument that goes on in Christian fiction writers circles: the question of How Much of the Gospel Do We Include?

Some people take Jesus’s command to spread the gospel to its extreme, and say that every story has to have Jesus in it, or a Jesus figure who is a redeemer.

Other people go to the other extreme and recommend no religion at all, unless the story absolutely has to have it.

Seeing as this argument goes on between writers of fantasy/sci-fi/paranormal etc., it does raise interesting questions of how you have Jesus when you’re writing about elves fighting aliens on another world. I’ve toyed with writing Christianity in fanfiction for years. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. (The only time it seems to work is when it’s laid in with a feather touch. Anything heavier and it just goes into a sermon, or worse, Bible verses with the nouns changed to something more ‘fantasy’ sounding.)

I’ve been reading from the Amplified Bible every night. I’m enjoying it hugely. Anyway, I came across Luke 12:8:

And I tell you, Whoever declares openly [speaking out freely] and confesses that he is My worshiper and acknowledges Me before men, the Son of Man also will declare and confess and acknowledge him before the angels of God.

Notice that Jesus doesn’t say “whoever declares me in all of his stories, or at least has an Aslan.” He says “Whoever declares openly … that he is My worshiper”. Like, in person. To real people. Face to face.

Think about the life of an author for a minute. Once they write books and people start reading them, they start getting fanmail. People want to meet the person who delighted them with a good story. That’s the place for the author to make a statement of faith. I know that I’m always appreciative when a person of a different faith says so on their website, but keeps it out of their book. I feel like that writer respects me as a reader.

So why do Christians think we can save people by sneaking “Jesus saves!” into our books? We can’t save anybody. Only the Holy Spirit can do that. But we can tell darn good stories. We don’t even have to have Jesus (or any religion at all) in them. I think it’s more respectful for the author to drop the “get people saved” agenda and just tell the darn story.

Google image search supplied these two basic ideas. First, the two symmetrical wings. Second, the single swan wing. I’m not sure which I like better. They’re both pretty sweet looking.