Where did I go?

I went to LiveJournal (http://glockblob.livejournal.com/), in an attempt to have a system that didn't completely shrink and distort all my images (so now my drawings are terrible AND large.  Good?).  I just read all these again though and I have to say I kind of miss it... maybe I should do what I originally planned and do more writing over here, pictures over there?  Vice versa?  Who knows.  Meanwhile I am keeping up with the news over at http://westernroundtable.blogspot.com so I haven't abandoned Blogger entirely. 

Adventures

This is way easier than writing. Wait, this is writing.

Iiiiit's sketch dump time!

This is really not anything I want to see the light of day, but since the light of day rarely hits the internet, I guess we're good. My nemesis, Male Appearance, has won the day this time. Apparently in my head they're just taller, skinnier women. This points to MANY PROBLEMS.

The Crown, half-dressed. This is a pretty indecent portrait by Salish standards.

Irith turned out pretty blond in this next one when I look at the jpg, and it made the shading on her shirt go all crazy as well. (I think I'm sticking with Irith.)


But I'm really starting to feel for this character. This is how it usually works for me-- I draw a few times, then I know what I'm talking about. Quilin is an anomaly. Irith's fighting a few battles at once when we meet her. She's gradually accumulated power over five years, and she likes it, but she can't maintain it. The power she has, she holds as Salin, not as Irith. Irith never got a chance to develop an identity outside of Salin, so when she's outside that role she's deeply uncomfortable, restless, and mostly unaware of herself. She's already gone a few years past the point when she lost the ability to pass for a boy, but she's not a girl anymore and she doesn't really know what it means to herself to be a woman. She's been falling hard for her general, which bothers her on a couple levels... it's unprofessional and girlish, following up on it would mean losing her power, she doesn't know if his loyalty is to her or to Salin, and she doesn't have any idea what to do with all these emotions and thoughts anyway.
Irith's story is up in the air, as is her name-- can't even remember any of the rest besides Arrashi. But so far it's been helping to think of each character's arc individually. Right now, I'm thinking that after Ennel disappears into Hlamis, Irith knows she's in trouble. People who have wanted her out of office for years anyway see their chance with her general out of the country. So when she hears word from Hlamis that Ennel was captured, Irith goes after him, abandoning her post and leaving the country. She had such an isolated experience growing up that it doesn't even seem like a particularly bad move to her to show up at Quilin's bunker; she knows him, and after all, he'll quickly realize there is not much leverage to be had by holding her ransom. Salin doesn't want her back, they have a new Crown. She's not a warrior, because I REFUSE to go down that route, and she's not magical at all. She's an administrator. And it's possible that she might end up being Quilin's liege. I thought Ennel would, but that's a little difficult to reconcile for me even now, and while I was picturing the two of them leading Hlamis, why would Irith work so hard to avoid being dominated by Ennel and then let him have a wizard?

The trouble with Irith: This is coming down to Wizard, Weaver, Warrior, and.... Woman? I must somehow avoid this.

This is fun.

It's Obi-Wan! It's not really Obi-Wan. Does look a little like him though. I need some practice drawing older people.

Ok so I'm still working on it.

Hello void! I'm still thinking about this stupid non-conundrum. I was kind of serious about looking at druid stuff but I didn't have a lot of luck looking at druid stuff because there's not a lot out there (hello, World of Warcraft and people who show up at Stonehenge every year). Also... and no offense to any current Druids... they're kinda doofy lookin. I've always kind of hated those really short capes. But they do vaguely match a description that I made once for one of the Moers, the pretentious bad guys. Part of my trouble is that Quilin's look is really always in flux-- he's never really the epitome of his culture. If he were Roman, he'd never be wearing a toga or a suit of armor. He's an initiate, an apprentice, a captive, a slave, a spy, a rebel, and a wizard-regent. Never just a citizen. I can kind of get behind the little cloaks for the Moers... they kind of fit the model of the short cloaked Normans in Ivanhoe. Of course, shifting from an Indian model to a Celt model is hardly solving the core problem I was working with earlier. But a guilt buried is a guilt forgotten! The cloak element definitely stops the Indian effect, so I might stick with it.

Character difficulties

I think everyone who writes stories has a favorite character. Mine, hands down, is Quilin Carosin. Man, you don't even know how hard it is to put that in writing... so far it's been years of hoping nobody comes out with a character with a similar name, because this is also my favorite name. And I'm not giving it up. I fell in love with this guy right off the bat. He's what turned an abandoned one-page story into a hundreds-pages-long impossible draft. He's established as a wizard (which he protests against) of the same type that tried to steal Glem's farm (which he denies). I'm going to try against my instincts to stop writing about him. I'm already worried he's going to pull a Spike and be ruined by overuse.
So what's the trouble here? I tend to draw my characters to get a better hand on them. The Empire in my story is vaguely Roman, like all good evil empires, and Quilin's home country needed to exist in contrast to it. The main race of the Empire is pale redheads, because I wanted to see a story where they weren't an oddity by nature. Quilin's people are brunettes, with soft straight hair and tanned skin. You will recognize this archetype as "people the author was jealous of in the past." I liked the conceit of this more-acceptable complexion being what set him apart. The wizards have a closer connection to nature because I went with the pretty common nature/magic continuum; so they have long hair, bare feet, less regimented clothing. Quilin in particular has a peculiar mask of white lines across his face. This is where the problem really lies.

First of all, he's pretty effeminate what with his long hair and his skinniness and the fact that I can't draw guys' faces and his open, flowing tunic. But much more importantly, he's an Indian. Not a specific culture of American Indian, but the archetypal magic Indian who's in touch with nature and ends up getting captured and killed by the big Empire due to his inherent meekness and goodness. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN. I am an accidental racist again. This puts a stick in the spokes whenever I try to get a better picture of Quilin by drawing him, because he's impossible to draw without evoking the same reaction. It's better now than it was (the biggest change is robe/tunic --> pants, although a lot of it is helped just by drawing in color so the lines don't overwhelm his face) but it's still problematic. And every decision that I try to make from here just makes it worse. Oh, his hair is too long, maybe he should put it in a braiDANGIT, NO. I'm not sure what to do about this. I don't want Quilin to be conflated with this identity. I certainly don't want wimpy early Quilin to be associated with it, and then have him come into his own by leaving it behind. It's probably telling that it's so much easier to draw him after he's been stripped of his own culture. I'm not sure-- usually writing these things out really helps but this time I still don't know. Maybe I'll start looking for more of a druid look. Eh? Eh? Eh.

sketch time

Got one of those little model guys for Christmas, so practicing with it a little bit to try to get full-body poses. Eh, we'll see. It's a male model, so I can't tell if the shapes of hips, etc. are screwy because of that or because I've been conditioned to make WW voluptuous with a capital V.

sketch sketch sketch

Trying out some Harleys. She actually came out a little too blonde in this first one now that I look at it-- I've always pictured her blond pigtails being as much of a manufactured identity as her costume. So first, Harleen Quinn, Arkham psychiatrist spending some time on the inside. Really, I find both Harleys to be incredibly sad. I mean, there's no more abusive relationship than a Joker relationship. At the same time, she's just so dang happy. You get the sense that her ridiculous affection for Mr. J is just so weird that Joker is the only one who could even potentially understand it, let alone go for it.

So Harley's a little rushed here and she doesn't look quite right, but I do kind of like how endearing she is (or is trying to be, at least). Harley's just not that intense-sexy. She's a mess and a screw-up and she'll kill you if she thinks it might be a good laugh... she's such a jumble of broken bits and I picture her getting pretty depressed and angry whenever she's forced to be rational or see any reality other than her preferred one. So naturally, it's much easier and much more fun to just go with the crazy. And for Batman and others, much safer to play along.

Recent Developments

This exists:

So life can start again! It's been a long time since I've drawn so I just went with some super-sketches. I was inspired by the 5-Minute Marvels blog but it's just me, so rather than the nice contrast between enthusiasm and skill mine come across as some abandoned middle ground.

First, unintentionally grayscale Batman (still workin out those Photoshop defaults)
That cape is freakin inconvenient, despite its inherent awesomosity. I hate using words like "warm-up" because they make me sound like I think I know what I'm doing but hey, peanut league teams warm up. So that's what this is. With bats, the challenge is usually drawing a male figure that's imposing and comic-y without being cartoonishly Goku-esque. Mostly: How to avoid tiny legs. In this case, avoid drawing them! But seriously, I think the side-shoulders work ok in this one and his ridiculously square jaw looks ok, if not great. Flattening out the whole face might be the way to get that to work for me. It's such a balancing act to try to get the key elements of the character from other people's art and fit them into the way I draw, especially when the way I draw seems to be "crappy."
THIS JUST IN: PERSON WHO POSTS DRAWINGS ON THE INTERNET HAS LOW OPINION OF OWN WORK. I will stop. From now on: relentless positivity!
So on to Wonder Woman. I'm not sure exactly what she's doing with the Lariat of Truth here, which seems to be more of a scarf. I tried to get a dynamic pose for WW to contrast with Batman's standard "standing" pose... I do like the feeling of action in this one though it's not really clear what's going on. Nothing, really. She's threatening somebody with a scarf.
Honestly, I feel like a scarf would be a much better tool for WW. She's always getting tied up with that unbreakable lasso.

Next for some crazy!
Tried to take a different approach on Ivy this time. Still thinking in terms of my Poison Ivy origin story that will take the world by STORM, I tell you, I was also thinking about something the writer of She Has No Head! on Comics Should Be Good said about Poison Ivy never wearing anything but plants. So I tried to figure out a way to make that less exploitative, more other, and came up with this trailing grass skirt idea, where everything is in various levels of drying out. Not a lot of attention given to how decent or indecent it might look because it's not arranged according to someone else's idea of sexy, and it probably serves some function--it's like her utility belt. I like sexy Ivy as much as anyone but especially the way I think of the character, there should be an undertone of danger to that-- not danger like "ooh, sexy danger" but danger to the social system. There's a reason Gotham has an asylum and not a jail. More on that later. But Batman villains should threaten cultural and social sanity. So she's just wearing some dead plants around her waist. That and a leaf corset, because my messages are CONSISTENT.

Hot dog I'm actually not too unhappy with this one! This Power Girl is the reason I started doing the Project: Rooftop sketches to begin with. I can't BELIEVE no one has linked her to the power symbol before. It fits so well. Now, this is nowhere near the same character as I think Power Girl currently is, so it's not a good fit for P:R. But can you think of a better use for x-ray vision than never having to stop reading the internet? I just like the idea that she hangs out a few hundred meters up, reading the comments on AVClub, while she waits for a distress call to come through. Her little surfin' glove is a little screwed up in the colored version but I think her hair ended up ok, actually.

Man. They're not perfect but it's nice to see how much more comfortable I was getting by the last one, and dang did it feel good to get the tablet out again.