Abbess Morgana

Lord and Lady Stark

Finally got around to colouring this :). The texture is by Princess of Shadows @ dA; the letters were Photoshopped in.

A Song of Ice and Fire

So! I started reading A Song of Ice and Fire early May and have progressed to the fifth book in the meantime. Since I started reading this series, I haven't read a newspaper or a comic. It's All ASoIaF, All The Time XD. Yep, it's that engrossing. On the tram. In the train. In my bath. On the toilet. At the table. Even in the street on my way home from work, I'm reading. *sigh* My life is at a standstill because of the Starks, the Lannisters, the Tyrells, the Greyjoys and their ilk. This is really why I don't read a lot of novels anymore: if I don't like them, I can't finish them. But if I do like them, they swallow me whole.

"Why do you even read the books? Watch the tv series!", I have been told. But you see, a tv series can never be as engrossing as a book. I never fall in love with characters from tv. I cherish and adore characters from books. On tv, a character always gets an existing face. Tom Hiddleston. Benedict Cumberbatch. Alan Rickman. Sean Bean. Oh yes, they are excellent actors and they take me along for a fun ride. But they are real people in costumes. And much though I love Hiddleston's Loki, Cumberbatch's Sherlock, expect to love Sean Bean's Eddard Stark, and did, um, not love Rickman's Snape, I will never feel compelled to draw actors. I mean, there's no need. Turn the tv on and you can see them. They are already presenting an image of a character; there is no need for me to add to that. To be sure, I can be perfectly content with a tv series and enjoy it (a lot). I loved Boardwalk Empire. It was great! But do I feel the need to draw Nucky, one of the most enticing characters I have seen on tv lately? No.

Is 'wanting to draw' a quality measure? No! But if I want to draw something, that means my imagination has been engaged. I have been inspired to create something. Books engage my imagination far, far more than any film or tv series ever does. If a series or film is good, I do come away with a sense of something, with certain feelings that may inspire me. But I never live with characters from films like I do with book characters. Because I cannot make them mine. They are the actor's, the production designer's, the director's. And you cannot look into their heads. They are too much action and too little thought. And the best thing about books, for me, is that they allow you to look into people's heads. Plus, you get to give them a face all your own.

So, why read thousands and thousands of pages instead of watching tens of episodes? Because reading, and imagining, is so much more fun. And inspiration is such a wonderful feeling.

Now, forgive me, I have to end this post and continue reading...

Last page of my mini-Moleskine: Gawain!

Gawain, for once with a beard :). A knight without a beard is like - well, say, me without shoes. Because knights say things like, "By my beard!" Therefore they need to have beards.

Gawain remains the most difficult character to draw right. This is sad because he's also my main character, but kind of normal because I want him to be perfectly like the Gawain in my head, and perfection is by definition hard to reach. *sigh*

From my sketchbook: Lokiiiiiii!

Kundry

It's my favourite snarky lady, Kundry! This is an exercise, drawn/painted in my mini Moleskine watercolour notebook. It taught me that I actually like working with my good old Staedtler pens best, but for some reason I like the result of the brush pens better :/. Sometimes with my Staedtlers I drift towards a kind of half-baked realism, whereas I prefer a more stylised drawing style. I'm just no good at realism - of any kind.

I like the colours in this one. About the rest I'm not so sure :p.

Scanner! :D

Double post because the new scanner has arrived and I've just made my first scan! :D That means I can share a better version of 'Bluebell Spring' - much brighter than the photo I posted last time. I have noticed that if I use the Photo Correction function on the scanner, the colours are much better. Yippee!

Florie

I finished Florie's outfit last weekend :-). She's turned out better than I expected!

Gawain, doll version :-)

Gawain, lacking only a belt. I have found some suitably-sized buckles yesterday, so I hope to make a belt soon. If he hasn't got any shoes, that is mostly because I love his feet so much that I don't want to cover them. Gawain's feet are sculpted in greater details than Morgana's or Little Gawain's, even though they were all made by the same company.

Bluebell Spring

I still haven't got a new scanner, so I tried to take a photograph of this drawing. The lady is Florie, daughter of the Carl of Carlisle in the eponymous romance. She is Gawain's second wife and one of my favourite characters in the (future of the) comic. Then again, I am ridiculously fond of every single one of my imaginary people. Even the villains are beloved.

I love drawing feet XD... Yay toes! Few things in art irritate me more than artists who can't be bothered to draw feet properly. Some seem to think that as long as the boobs and the hips look good, they have put down a proper human figure. Well, no. And I am the living proof that you don't need to be a great artist to draw nice feet, so 'too difficult' is not an excuse. There.

;-)