Progress on Drawing an Elf

Eilidh and Taliesin: Changes

Addendum: Taliesin is over 130 years old...time between the two planes--human and elf--has been messed up for a long time. Elves are not immortal, but they do have very long lives, provided they get to live them.

Update: Good progress but more work needed. It's funny how when one sees an image of what one is drawing, one sees areas for correction better than when one just looks at the original. Inntinneach...

And then one does not wish to utterly destroy what one has created, so one must find a way to make corrections--say to the longish nose and the resulting longish face (but, oh, that cheekbone, like a blade, and the perfectly good mouth...) sigh.

I used the eraser as a drawing tool for the hair, softened Eilidh's profile, put more shading on Taliesin's face, and generally wasted a lot of time I should have used doing other, less interesting things. Why aren't there jobs for people like me?

and...with a bit more work: shading.

...and then I ruined it completely. I'm not going to post the final version. It was an interesting process, however.

Surfers, Blue Water, and a New Story

Tilted view of the blue surf off the east coast of Kaua'i, Christmas, 2011



Just a song, just a story...just a random post.

On the 5th of April, I was riding a school bus to Portland with nineteen of my art students for a visit to the Portland Art Museum. It was a good trip and inspired me to prepare to make some changes in my life, one of which includes retirement...But, that isn't what this post is about, really.

It's about a story. On the way there I wrote two sentences: the first lines of a new tale: Eilidh was a witch. She had always known this, even as a child....

The words sat in my notebook for a few days, maybe even a week or more, before I typed them into Word. As stories go, I think it's probably my favorite so far, about a witch and an elf. Where it came from, I can't begin to say. From whence do any stories come?

Well, here's what happened: I started writing, and before too long I was building my characters, describing my two protagonists, Eilidh and Taliesin. She would have black hair and intense blue eyes, a Solitary; he:  ripe-barley hair, tall and thin, with golden-greenish eyes and a libido--but that's not the point either.

Back to the description: So I depicted them in words first, as I always do, and wrote some more, and then, in a moment of writer's block, I randomly searched the web for images so that I could draw them, because I like to know what my characters look like. It helps to solidify their personalities. So I typed in "guys with blonde hair." Here's the perfection I found:

Owen Wright, goofy-footed surfer from New South Wales, Australia.
Awesome, no? 6'3", lean, blonde...

 Looks like an elf to me...

And this is probably Eilidh...

And so, I have around ninety pages now, a tale full of intrigue, betrayal, lust, war, love, death, and...sex.
Stay tuned--this one might actually get finished!



Writing With Light

So, Blogger has decided to throw a curve ball and make me learn something new...


Well, all I wanted to post was this:

The secret to good writing is learning to write an interesting sentence. Write another, and another. Do it differently. Say the same thing a number of ways. Pracice, practice, practice.

Sin agad e...There you have it.











When I have time, I'll learn to navigate this new (again) Blogosphere. Thanks, Blogger, for making my life even MORE complicated.