The Avanti and the Tha'ram

Because we're awesome, my boyfriend and I are working on a campaign setting for Dungeons & Dragons. I am certain that you are jealous.
Anyway, we've been designing races to fill this realm, and here are a couple concept paintings I came up with for two of them.


The first one is the Avanti, the garishly-garbed iguana man. They inhabit the massive floating islands in this world, and they're quite elitist. They look down on others (haha get it, they live on a floating island?! Looking "down"? I slay me.) And they take great pride in their dress and appearance.


This little guy is a Tha'ram. Loosely based on an aardwolf, these guys are very traditional and superstitious. They live in desert caves and cliff-side villages. They're about the size of a Halfling, roughly 4'-5' tall.

Our realm is slowly coming together, and it's all sorts of fun to collaborate creatively on a project like this. Thinking about the history of the world, where the continents lay, what sorts of religions prevail, designing creatures... I can't get enough of this stuff. I feel like it's what I was meant to do: designing fantastical worlds. One of these days I'll get paid for doing this stuff, haha. Until then, I'll keep creating.

A Snippet of a Story

“Yes, young sir?” The first older man said, adjusting his rickety glasses.
“Hello, yes, my name is Geire Lockart,” Geire began, using his best diplomatic I’m-a-responsible-young-person voice, “I was a passenger on a ship that docked in Summer Port not two nights ago. Under the leadership of Valian Proce, I was to be the personal assistant to Prince Kalratt. However, I was… delayed, somewhat, but I return now in hopes I may reclaim that position. I apologize for my tardiness.” Geire chose not to say anything about being kidnapped or losing Sekall. They would think he was lying, or making wild excuses. Better to just give vague details and feign apologies.
While he had been talking, the man he recognized came to listen. The man was dark-featured and stern, and listened with his arms crossed, though he seemed to be considering all Geire said. After a moment the older man said a bit sadly, “The prince has chosen a new assistant in your delay, I’m afraid.”
“A young man named Sekall Alkarium, if I’m correct,” the dark man added.
Geire froze in mid-thought. Sekall. Sekall stole his job. He couldn’t believe it. Not only had Sekall managed to get back to the Middle Building before him, but he also moved up in rank somehow… how he managed such a feat was beyond Geire’s comprehension.
“But, that—that’s impossible, he was going to be calendar boy, he wasn’t even on the list, I…” Geire stammered, losing hope with every word he said. His eyes drifted to the floor in horror.
“I’m sorry, son, Sekall had shown a spectacular effort to make something of himself and was rightly rewarded,” the dark-featured man stated.
“Are there any positions to fill? I can do it, I can learn! Anything at all, please,” Geire pleaded, leaning on the desk heavily, eyes wide with a deep-set panic. He was grasping for a lifeline in a storm, be it a thread or even a hair.
The older man sighed and leaned back in his chair, taking off his glasses to rub the lenses on his sleeve absently. “You said your name was Lockart, correct?”
“Yes, Geire Lockart, son of Alberhim Lockart.”
The old man thumbed through a pile of papers at hand. Shaking his head and pursing his lips he said finally, “it says here you’ve been dismissed.”
For a moment, silence prevailed. Then Geire spoke: “Permanently?” His voice was tiny.
“I’m afraid so, son. Valian Proce has deemed you neglectful of your role, and you’ve been dismissed indefinitely. You may catch the next ship back to the homelands setting sail in two months,” the old man said, nodding and speaking as if Geire had simply taken a wrong turn on a street. He didn’t realize the volume of this tragedy.
Geire looked down, cringed, tensed his hand into a fist, sighed, but looked up and said as calm as he could, “Thank you,” and he hurriedly left the building. Once outside the sun made his eyes throb, and he groaned. That groan turned into angry mutterings, and then to held-back violent body language. He wanted to scream, he wanted to throw and break things, he wanted to let off the steam—but in such a strange, public place, all he could do was make frustrated, stifled noises and plant himself on the corner of the stairs, staring at cracks in the stone. He pulled at his hair, gritted his teeth, shut his eyes as tight as he could.

It's not often I have time to work on my novel anymore. But as my boyfriend lays sleeping in my tiny bed beside me, I can't find it in me to wake him up so I might go to bed in his place. So I opened Word, pumped out a couple essays for school, and then pulled up my book. I greeted the characters and apologized for my unkind absence, then got to work. A little bit of work at a time, here and there, and I'll have this book done by the time I'm 30. Haha.
I hope this little snippet has whet your appetite for more. ;)

Now goodnight. Goodnight bed-claiming boyfriend, goodnight yellow full moon, goodnight bubbly bottle of water, goodnight pile of finished math homework. See you all in the morrow.

A Brief Update

Hello, 3 followers and X anonymous viewers!
Lately I've come down with a stomach bug, or something. Either way I am feeling pretty achy and not-wanting-to-stare-at-a-computer-screen-for-too-long, but it felt right to dust off my blog and say something.
School is piling on the work all of a sudden, work's massively understaffed so I've been getting more hours, and the only thing that's keeping me going is the promise of a beautiful relationship with my wonderful boyfriend and the boundless compassion and love of my parents.
Now I shall drown my sorrows in ginger ale and soda crackers. Hoorah!
Hopefully your life's not in a rough patch as mine is.

A Collection of Enrichments

"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us." - Gandalf the Grey
"Without you, today's emotions would be the scurf of yesterday's." - Amélie
"Absence makes the heart grow fonder."
"Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart." - Confucius

"Everything will be fine. I promise."


It's days like this one that I need to pamper myself with good movies, inspirational imagery, light sweet foods, and the support of my loved ones. Maybe you'll take something from these quotes as well. I wish you a beautiful day of comfort: may you catch glimpses of uncommon beauty and cultivate an appreciation for the little things that make living worthwhile.

Another Day, Another Art Dump

And by "art dump" I mean "hey let me talk at you about some of my drawings lol".


First on my list is this piece. You must know by now that I often dive into art without a preconceived thought or plan, so things turn out like this.
See, there's a maned wolf, a Japanese woodblock print of waves, street signs, and a cat with records. Make sense of it. I dare you.
The whole reason for this collage was a) I found some cool images in a newspaper and cut them out and b) I hadn't done a collage in a long time. It sort of evolved into this odd conglomeration of imagery. It is totally open for interpretation: when I thought about it more in depth, I decided to name it "California". The waves, bright colors, street signs, street-art inspired cat, and playful sunny disposition of the maned wolf made me think of that carefree, summery atmosphere associated with California.


Here's the story behind this guy.
Every day when I arrive at my college campus, I pass the ceramics department building. The campus is very green and woodsy, so the ceramics building is crawling with trees and little patches of leaves. There's a pile of these beautiful, very rustic and old-looking bricks out back, which I am strangely drawn to. (Haha get it, "drawn"?) I always pass the bricks, all nestled underneath tree branches and white speckled leaves, and I think to myself, man I'd love to paint that sometime. Well today, our model for class didn't show up, so we went outside to draw. It was good fun, I always love a change of scenery, especially when the weather is sunny and warm.
I'm normally all sorts of terrified drawing anything vaguely square-shaped and three dimensional, so at first I was a bit hesitant with my pastel drawing of bricks. But the thing with pastels is that you just have to keep going. When you think that all is lost and your drawing is terrible and you'll never be an artist and you'll retire to the mountains to herd goats for the rest of your life because you can't draw... just KEEP. GOING. (And cancel your rush-order of goats.) Pastels are very forgiving. The more you do, the better it gets.
That aside, I came up with this drawing out of a pile of bricks. Because of the half-finished clay sculpture of a demon head on the pile of bricks, I included it, too: only I added some crazy hands and a tail. God forbid I draw something normal. Honestly.


It is a well-known fact among my friends and family that I am never farther than 10 feet away from my sketchbook. I draw all the time. This habit is especially handy when you're stuck at Les Schwab waiting to have your car's tires rotated. I sketched myself a quick little slindragon, then wondered what I was to do after that. I had no colors, no pens, no nothing-- save for my pencil. And by then I was too art-ADD to keep sketching. So I got up, poured a cup of complementary coffee, took a sip, gagged, grabbed a stir straw, and sat back down. Using the straw I placed the coffee on the paper like I would with watercolor paints. I attracted the attention of a woman passing by; she thought it was the coolest thing that I was painting with a straw and cheap coffee. We chatted a while (turns out she knew Rob, my old art teacher) and I ended up giving her one of my business cards. Cha-ching!

I suppose that is all, for now.
Thanks for reading, hopefully your eyes aren't bleeding at this point. Thumbs up!

Blow Out the Candles

When canines get scared, they appear angry and defensive. They're just trying to protect themselves and fend off potential danger.

I fear certain changes in my life, currently. This painting was basically me telling myself "It's alright to be scared, but things will be fine. Patience."

I always turn to maned wolves when I need to do inward reflections. They're the easiest and the most stress-free thing I can draw or paint, and when I draw/paint, I am focused.
So thanks, maned wolves.

Random Acts of Kindness...

...selfless acts of beauty.

Today I came home from a particularly frustrating day at school. I made myself some microwave Mexican food and chai tea, only to catch a glimpse of this little sloppy magnet poetry on my freezer door.

It reads:
slow walk the winter
kiss inside morning rain
sing high and turn me through summer
answer to grown-up together
we're always here

I do not know who constructed it. It could have been my mom, dad, boyfriend, or any of my friends. But whoever did it had every intention of creating something beautiful and surprising. It caught me off guard and warmed my soul: made me smile.

I leave you with this task: do something beautiful today.

Giving a Big "Screw You" to Art-Hating Taggers

For the past, oh, five years or so, I have been paying frequent visits to a neighborhood book store called Browser's Books. They're a used book store that also specializes in fantasy art like Amy Brown, Stephanie Pui-Mun Law, and my old art teacher Rob Carlos. If it weren't for the awesome people at Browser's (Greg, Kathi, and Rob) I would likely be only half the artist (and human being) I am now. Those guys are such an awesome part of my life. I love going to hang out there, chatting with Kathi and listening to one of Greg's many zany stories about his life.
On the back wall of the building, Rob did a really cool mural of a dragon and some fairies reading books and just recently, this happened to the mural.

When I first saw this photo on Facebook my mouth dropped open in shock. How anyone could have the nerve and destructive mind to destroy such a cool piece of art is beyond me. I practically grew up looking at that mural, and now this!
Immediately, Rob, his wife, Kathi, and Greg organized a giant re-painting get together, sort of a community event. All sorts of people showed up: friends, fans of Rob's art, patrons from the store, and me! I had to be a part of the re-painting, being an artist and devoted fan of Browser's.
Instead of re-painting the old mural, though, Rob pumped out a whole new idea almost immediately after the unfortunate tagging! Here's his original sketch of the mural:


He did this so fast, and set to work on it early on Saturday. Since Rob is a painting machine, he pretty much got most of it done before I got there at 11-ish.
But I had a different job to do!

Greg gave me a small space to paint a little dragon next to the back door. I was extremely excited about it and after a short preliminary sketch I set to work on a little dragon. Everyone seemed to enjoy how smiley and happy he was. He's been fondly dubbed the "Guardian Puppy Dragon", though I think "Dandelion" is a cute name. Everyone was saying how he's guarding the building from being defaced and acting as a really cute "graffiti deterrent".
Here he is!

I started with a black outline and some lighter shadows, then went over it with a really thick and awesome yellow color. Purple accents were a must, as well. I am very happy to have contributed to this big slap-in-the-face to the taggers who defaced Rob's mural.

Here is a photo of the mural, all completed and wonderful!

Everyone who worked on the main wall got to paint their own butterfly, too. How poetic, am I right?
Also, my friend Bri painted a dragon along with mine! They're BFFs, totally.

CUTE, RIGHT, OH MY GOSH.
Anyway!
I am glad that I could share this wonderful artistic community event with the world. Thanks to everyone who helped on it, and especially thanks to Rob, who is an amazing, dedicated painting machine who took the whole thing very graciously and even-tempered.