Rain, Pendants, & Pianos

I woke up this morning to the sound of rain tapping its musical rhythm on the rooftop. It's the first rain of the season, and so our dry spell is over. It looks dim outside, but I climb out of bed to look at the trees and plants that are thirstily drinking it all in. The oaks and acacias leaves glisten, and the jasmine seems to glow, so brilliant is its sap green.

Wrapped in the warmth inside my house, my morning cup of tea seems to taste better than usual even, when I can curl my fingers around the steaming cup and watch the dancing splatter of droplets on the deck.

I was planning to finish off a few more pendants today, but unfortunately that won't be able to happen unless the rain lets up, since I can't put the finishing acrylic spray on. However, if there are any of these zodiac designs you're interested in, now's the time to let me know so that I can be sure to set reserved ones aside (or make enough of them).

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Finished off laying out the sketch for a personal painting before the Llewellyn art director got back to me about the zodiac calender cover concept I'd emailed to her yesterday. So I'll have to switch modes to go work on that before coming back to this piece. Deadlines take precedence over my own projects.
A few titles have been rolling around in my head, but I think this one is called "The Transformative Nature of Music". For my grandmother Un-Oi Law who passed away this last week. She had a piano school and store in New York most of her life. On Friday her spirit flew off. My aunts and uncles, my cousins, and their children, took turns playing the piano for her in those last few days so that the music could fill the hospice room. She is inextricably tied to the concept of "family" for me, a strong core that binds all of us together. She was a wonderful woman who took care of me the first year of my life when my parents were both at work and school still. And I'll think of her whenever I play the piano that she gifted me with for my wedding.

Sultana Lena's Gift

Sultana Lena's Gift
Size: 10x14 inches
Medium: Watercolor

Illustration for a story of the same title by Shweta Narayan to be published be Realms of Fantasy Magazine.

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Parallel to my own blog entries on this latest painting, it's interesting to read some of the art director's process as well, which you can see in Douglas Cohen's blog over here.


Part 1: Concepts
Part 2: Final pencil sketch

Once I have the initial sketch, I procrastinated a bit on starting the actual painting. I've been locked in the mindset I had for the zodiac in the last twelve paintings where I didn't have to really think too much about color themes since they were already set by the symbolism needed for the pieces.

I say color "themes" instead of "scheme" because I did still have to plot a little bit about the details of the colors and to determine how to bring the main colors to focus. On this painting though, having complete color freedom once again temporarily stalled me.

I dug out my Maxfield Parrish book because I remembered images where he had huge bowers of roses dotting a verdant background, and decided I wanted something similar for the lower left corner of the piece. Glowing white gardenias to dot the surroundings. And to set that off and to really emphasize the viewpoint of the bird in the foreground and the more distant lovers, a velvet and lush green surrounding. The bird itself to be coppery-gold.

I started out with a wide flat brush laying down the greens in the background, fading a bit to yellows as I approach the lower left corner. The yellows to tie the composition together with the gold planned for the bird.

After that dries, I continue to build up the layers of various greens in the upper parts. It's much darker and more intense color than I usually use, but I really wanted to push that depth into it. Many many layers here. In a few places I went back with a white gel pen to dot in some bright highlights, but for the most part I try to avoid working lights back because you lose some of the luminous quality of watercolors when you do that. I reserve it for really sharp bits of light.

And speaking of white gel pens, not all gel pens are created equal! Some tend to clog very quickly, or else the white is not quite opaque. After trying many different brands over the years, my current favorite is Uni-ball Signo.

After fleshing out all the leaves, moving down into the lower left corner. The gardenias get picked out with mixtures of rosy tones and yellows. Purposely letting them fade into the light that suffuses the area. This glow, that contrasts nicely with the secretive dark shadows of the upper parts of the painting, along with the way the bird looks down into this pocket of light and flowers serves compositionally to bring the the viewers eyes down into this area.

Keeping this flow of the viewer's eye in mind, the thick trunk to the right of the lovers then serves to pull the eye back up to the bird, creating a circle of interest that keeps the eye moving around the painting.

Done with background elements, and now working my way forward into the tree branches. I use the same techniques here that I described in my walkthrough of the painting Moonbathing. Though in this piece it's more of an orange hue to contrast with the greens and tie in the golds.




And then finishing up with the bird and the lovers.

Cold Mornings & Sultana Lena's Gift

I go from one day finding myself sweating wretchedly and pondering if it's not too late in the season to consider getting an air condition unit installed in my studio, even though my initial thought was to not bother until next year since the summer was over....

To freezing in the morning and shivering as I hurry downstairs to get the heater going. Click click click it goes as it starts up, and the smell of burnt dust and lint fills the air as it fires up for the first time in months.

Nothing in between to say, hey we're moving out of summer and into cold months. Just dives right in. California weather, go figure.

And so I find myself huddled over a steamy cup of my morning ritual rooibos tea, feeling the hot air curl around my face and seep into the fingers that are locked around the cup. I look outside to the corner where the black acacia stood yesterday. It's just a stump now. I wonder what we can plant in the corner to take its place.

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Next phase of the Sultana Lena's Gift painting. The rough sketch has been fleshed out, and transferred to the illustration board. All set to paint!

Realms of Fantasy Sketches

For an upcoming Realms of Fantasy issue, an illustration for a story "Sultana Lena's Gift".

After reading the story, my copy of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam came to mind, with its lovely illustrations by Edward Dulac. Browsed through it for inspiration and to get my mind flowing in the right direction for the imagery.

Also key in this particular short story is a little mechanical bird. I started with some scribbles in my spare time while at Gencon a few months ago, exploring some ideas for the bird's design in a few ink drawings.

And now that the zodiac is done (with its more urgent deadline), a few months later I'm finally having the chance to go back to this project. The final rough concept sketch for the painting:

Stamp of Art Director approval on it, and so all set to move on to a much more detailed sketch and the painting! I love doing work for Realms of Fantasy, as the art director (the old one, and my so far very short acquaintance with the new one) seem to send fitting stories my way. From there, I read the story and pretty much can paint anything I want.

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Meanwhile, it's been rather noisy outside my studio window today as I said goodbye to a 50 foot tall black acacia tree in my backyard. Unfortunately it has suffered from root rot after the previous owner of the house put in extensive landscaping terraces in the backyard just before selling it to us. It's taken two years for the results to be evident but a few months ago Dana and I had to reluctantly admit that the tree was dead and would need to be taken down. It'll be sad to see that large gap in the sky where it used to be. Even mostly dead and only as bare branches it had a stark grace and was nice to shield us from the neighbors.

I'm sure some something will quickly grow in that space though. If the black acacias in the yard had their way, this whole plot of land would be an acacia grove, from all the saplings I'm constantly finding popping up in awkward spots.

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Also, a new art book to add to my bookshelf arrived in the mail today. I've never actually played guild wars, but after seeing some of the artwork in this shown on other blogs, I ordered one. It features all digital artwork, but I find often that some of the art that I enjoy looking at the most is that which is most different from my own.

Back online, and Zodiac series complete!

Feels like it's been forever since I was able to scan and upload work. In fact I was starting to get a bit worried that if my string of bad luck and misfortunes here regarding my computer weren't fixed soon I'd start running into deadline troubles.

Fortunately I had sketched and scanned all 12 of the zodiac pieces and having art director approval before starting. Not my usual mode of working. I prefer most of the time to sketch one at a time and go from sketch to finished painting before starting a new one. Which for this instance proved to be a very lucky thing!

And so after computer trials and tribulations, UPS angst, scanner incompatibility issues, more UPS angst, it looks like all systems are finally good to go!

Just the cover left to do now.

Also, new zodiac bookmarks available here.

Pendants with these designs will be available hopefully in a week or two when I have a chance to make some. They'll be posted on etsy.

On Computers, Productivity, and Unicorns

*grumble* Well, my new computer is delayed STILL. It was supposed to be shipped out on the 18th, but at this point it doesn't look like it will be shipped until the 28th at the earliest. Which leaves me very grumblesome.

On the bright side, without computer distractions I have been extremely productive. Can't scan any of the art yet, but I'm down to the last two zodiac paintings. There will be big pile of new stuff to upload once the new computer gets here. I might possibly be done with all of them by the time this mythical "new computer" ever shows up on my doorstep. So patience for your next fix of art -- this famine will definitely have a feast at the end of it.

Also, all pre-orders of The Art of Shadowscapes Tarot have now been shipped (up to 10 business days for US orders, up to 8 days for international, so if you ordered yours more towards the end of the pre-order period, it might be a couple of weeks before you see it yet), after a flurry of sketching all of the past two weeks, and marching many armloads of books up and down the two flights of steps from my front door to the street. Dana is convinced that I'm having him shuttle the same box up and down the steps each morning and evening as a thinly veiled ploy to exercise him.

And finally, I heard from a little bird that The First Last Unicorn book by Peter S. Beagle might actually see the light of day, nearly 5 years after I did that painting (and the series of pencil drawings I did for the interior as well). I had thought that the publisher decided to scrap the project completely when a long period of silence ensued completion of the art, but they contacted me last week to let me know that it would possibly be released early next year. I might be adding a few more pencil drawings for the additional stories that had been appended to the collection in the intervening years.

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71 boxes, 1500 pounds

*pant pant pant*

Well, 71 boxes of books now sitting in my garage. The Art of Shadowscapes Tarot has finally arrived here. Pre-orders: I'll be sending your books out over the next two weeks, in the order that the orders were placed, so please be patient. The books with sketches will probably take at least another week or two before going out.

I've got a lot of sketching ahead of me.