And on the 20th day of my project I post my third piece of Harry Potter fanart, seeing as how obsessive I’ve been since I saw Deathly Hallows I think it’s impressive I’ve held back this much. Here is one of my favorite moments from the first book, I’ve always loved the idea that even as children they had some say in their destiny and deciding who they will become. Seriously, I don’t know anyone who sees that Sorting Hat and doesn’t fall into awe over him, he’s just too cool, fascinating with a touch of creepy.
Archive for December, 2010
Finishing up aquatic week I could think of nothing but another mermaid, today I used my new pastels I received for Christmas and my imagination for the image…the idea was she’s swimming downwards, not sure how clear that is, but shading with the pastels was fun. Merry Christmas everyone! Oh and I loved having a theme this week, if anyone has a suggestion for a fantasy theme please feel free to give it. 😉
Continuing the aquatic theme I decided to do another watercolor with spirulina powder (which by the way is a bit difficult working with the powder) because I like that it smells like the sea and the color is perfect. If my poor brushes could talk they’d probably say “Painting with seaweed AGAIN? Can’t we switch to coffee or something?” So I did some research on mythical sea creatures and found the Grindylow. The Grindylow is originally an Old English bogeyman sort of creature who was reported to live in the bottom of lakes and pounds and statch children from the shore. This fellow has become very popular after his appearance in “The Goblet of Fire” the fourth movie in the Harry Potter series. My version is based on that because I liked the look of him.
Resources:
Going with the apparent theme of the week I went for another marine image. This time I did a watercolor of the sea serpent/dragon beast from Hebrew Mythology, those Hebrews had some serious beasties.
“Once we went in a ship and saw a fish which put
his head out of the water. He had horns upon which was written: ‘I am one of the meanest creatures that inhabit the sea. I am three hundred miles in length, and enter this day into the jaws of the Leviathan'” (B. B. l.c.)
So, the Leviathan can make the water boil with heat from his mouth, eats a whale a day (in fact almost ate Jonah’s wale with Jonah in it), his eyes light up and illuminate the space around him and he stinks so bad no living creature can stand his odor. Not to worry though, the female was killed so they can’t reproduce (oh and her body was salted and reserved for the righteous to feed on at the end of days, yummy) only the male was left; not sure why he was left to roam around but it could have to do with him being the “demon of jealousy” and according to the Hebrews God like to leave none to subtle reminders to keep us in line.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan
Enough of the history lesson, I painted my Leviathan in watercolor using Spriulina powder:
Hopefully I will post a better version soon, my scanner decided it didn’t want to work today so I had to take a photograph of the painting, sigh.
I was going to try and improve on my mermaid image I did yesterday, and I tried, however I had many interruptions and things just didn’t go very well. I’m not in a great mental space right now, if anyone is actually reading these and has something nice or encouraging to say, please do, I really need it today, I had one of those days that many creative types must have…where they feel like the world just doesn’t want or need them to be creative and like they have to fight and defend who they are…I’m struggling to become an artist because really it’s all I’m good at and I’m tired of working jobs I’m not passionate about or good at, but when I stay home and try to build my portfolio I’m viewed as lazy. Anyway this is what my lazy ass managed to do today, it isn’t much and if anyone is actually reading this I apologize for that and for my blubbering I probably shouldn’t complain, but I feel ready to explode today, I needed to vent.
Today I decided to draw a mermaid in what I interpreted as the Art Deco style:
Sometimes inspiration hits from odd places. I saw a friend on facebook share a funny video called “Hey there Chthulu”:
I got to thinking way too deeply about it, which I tend to do. The octopus like monsters have terrified humanity for a long time. What I find interesting is they are definitively NOT serpentine like many of the old monsters but the tentacles have a very serpentine quality and perhaps that mixed with the fear of the deep unknown which a creature from the sea would certainly represent. The oceans depths is nearly as unfathomable as the vastness of space (not quite but nearly). So, I think I will be covering some of those fantasy and mythological monsters like chthulu, medusa and others a bit more. For now I’ll start off with the little eraser stamp I made…not bad I think for my first time carving in 12 years.
I wasn’t quite happy with the quality of the Firespell image I did so I tried again with the same stock and did a shield spell this time, I think it looks much better:
I decided to have a little fun with Corel today and experiment with watercolor brushes on dot paper, it was fun. So here’s my fierce looking dragon and remember folks if you find yourself in the company of a hungry dragon and a halfling, remember you don’t have to outrun the dragon…you just have to outrun the halfling.
This one started off as a photomanipulation in photoshop and ended up altered into a bit of a painting in core painter. I was going to do more fine tuning with this image, but too late I discovered my main bit of stock was only 72 resolution at 8 inches…so this whole image is way too small…grr…I just took for granted that all people who offer stock made their images at a pretty decent resolution…because every other time when I’ve check it was like 200….but not this one, sigh. So, sorry that this image is so painfully small…I just can’t get this coffee fairy thing right. Maybe it’s because I’m never actually drinking coffee when I work on it, lol.
Every Day is Fantastic 
