Dragons: Addae and Otieno

This is a piece that accompanied two wire dragon sculptures that I gave to two of my best friends.

Flickers of red flashed between the dark trunks of the trees under the heavy canopy. There was bare enough light to catch the rest of the shape of the quickly moving form from the soft pre-morning glow at the edges of the sky. Everything slept at this hour, even the nocturnal predators. Everything except for the beast running, leaping, ducking, moving through his forest with barely a sound to belie his great mass. He knew his forest as well as he knew his own body. And his forest knew him and made way for him as he raced towards the cliffs.

Battle Ostrich

 

Titled: Battle Ostrich.

So this is another piece inspired by/is a portrait of my punk friend (this time with correctly colored hair). She mentioned something about riding the ostriches into battle as a metaphor for getting ready for her college's convention and I was inspired to draw it out. It was tempting to make it a chocobo as made famous by Final Fantasy but instead I went with the straight ostrich. When I happened to present this to my friend she was at a meeting for the officers of the convention and she shared it and they immediately wanted it for a t-shirt. So I made a black and white outside version of it and gave it them and they are giving me a t-shirt in return. How cool is that. Proof under the cut.

Madrin, Dragon Knight

 

This is Madrin, she's a dragon (shapeshifting) from a story I asked a friend to write. I gave the prompt: "fairy tale with reversed humans and dragons" and ey wrote me a cute piece about a captive dragon prince being rescued by silent but deadly Madrin. And so in return I had to draw Madrin for em. The Prince will be coming eventually.

Punk Angel

Piece titled: Punk Angel. Alternatively titled: Bitches I can fly.
So this is sort of a portrait of my friend who is a punk master and was complaining about how she wanted wings, so I went ahead and drew her with wings. Her hair isn't currently accurate as she's dyed the top pretty much with the colors that you see with in the wings, but she was ginger when I started this drawing. It came together very smoothly and wow, I even did a background. Mostly it's photo editing though. That is Chicago at night from the top of Willis Tower. Details under the cut.

Still Not Dead

Still in Chicago though and will be for a couple more months. This has been a terrible winter weatherwise. Getting close to record lows, record snow falls, and lake ice coverage. It's been nasty so I've been staying inside. I've been trying to date up here and had some success, but they all end up a flop in the end. It's still been fun. As it's getting warmer, I've been venturing downtown so I'll have more pictures soon. Also took a cruise in January and got some good shots there. So more Chicago Story coming. Meanwhile I have a couple arts that will post over the next couple days. And remember Fairy Tale? Well I didn't write it for NaNoWriMo, but I am getting ready to start it for real. I have the story fully pinned down now. But I have over a half million words posted via Tumblr and Archive of Our Own, so that's a pretty cool accomplishment. Talk to you people later!

Not Dead

I swear.

I've just been busy. Between my tumblr project and other small writings I haven't done much on my original works except poke at them when I explain them to people.

But I have found a great writing friend that I hope to continue to meet with to bounce ideas off of. His ideas are rooted in Dungeons and Dragons as he is a DM, Dungeon Master, aka the Story Teller. He helps the players create great characters to go on epic quests with brilliant twists and depth to them. He laments not being able to put his stories actually to paper but damn, his ideas, D&D based or original, are fantastic. I want to help him get them out there.

At the same time, I've run my ideas by him and have gotten some epic feedback. He's fixed the ending of Not a Hero completely and made it a thousand times better which means I really need to find names for everyone and just sit down and write it. And between my new friend and my dad, I think I'm about ready to write my Fairy Tale. I am tempted to write it for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writer's Month) but again I need names and a brain.

I've been getting into a weird cycle where I can just spew words out like no other. I'll be able to build up some headway on the tumblr project. Like right now, I am five stories ahead. I've been able to do this enough that we are now posting two stories per week. But then after this burst of writing, I immediately go into a dearth where I am struggling to put two words together. I still get ideas but they just won't flow from my brain to my hand and it's fucking annoying, excuse my language. Just a couple days ago I was a fire hydrant of stories and now I just keyboard smash and it's better than anything I actually try to write. Write now I'm in the dead period so I don't know if I'll actually NaNoWriMo but I'm gonna try.

Happy Halloween!

Dragon Link

Hic Sunt Dracones
This combines my engineering love and that stuff from the blacksmith into my favorite creature (don't tell me dragons aren't real. Don't you dare say that). The robotic movements still aren't as fluid as it biologically would be but hey I'm not complaining at how awesome it looks. I'm going to start plotting my own dragon soon if we can't get them bioengineered.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2013/09/18/the-worlds-largest-walking-robot-is-a-giant-dragon/

Photo Art Link

Art that is fantastic. Photo realism in painting and drawing is a lot harder than it looks like but this is an awesome twist. It's photos that don't look real. They absolutely look like paintings. I wish I had an eye like this.

http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/10-photos-that-look-like-paintings/

Blacksmith Link

Oh man, I want this as an occupation. This is badass! And if I can't become an apprentice, I will save up to buy something from this guy. I've seen him around a couple of times, even a video of him turning the Key Blade from Kingdom Hearts into a functional weapon (instead of the blunt object that it appears to be).

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/08/hollywood-blacksmith-tony-swatton/

Science Fiction Story Link

I've been pretty lame about upkeeping this blog which I was afraid of with the new job. However I have been slowly collecting interesting articles/links that I have found or been given so I'd like to share those in a facade to make it look like I am still here.

To start it off, my brother gave me a link to a collection of short science fiction stories that I have been slowly trawling through because I am such a completion-ist. So below is one that I really enjoyed. If you like science fiction, go explore this site. It has science fiction of all flavors.

http://365tomorrows.com/08/16/dreams/