Category: Sun-Walking

Art!, Cadence, Other Peoples' Work!, Redefining Evil, Sun-Walking

bang bang (there goes your heart)

mary v.

After my recent (No) Trouble piece I started thinking about how awesome all of the super “girl power” songs have been lately. The next day the guy on the radio was all like “There have been some females on the radio lately who are just ON FIRE” and I was like HELL YEAH so then I came home and watched the music video for “Bang Bang!” (Nicki Minaj, Ariana Grande, and Jessie J). I just started doodling and as soon as I did Cirrus’s pointer finger I ran with the idea and made my most powerful women into a drawing. I kept sketchy black lines and colored sketchy style, including shading. Weirdly I’m super into how the black lines ended up looking over the super pastel color scheme. I also love Cirrus’s star shirt. The writing on the bottom ended up being subtle enough to kind of create a nice solid background and I loved the little hearts I spontaneously added.


Started doodling waiting for my boyfriend to get home because we’re both so hipster and easy to draw and this was something he said to me last week and then I added terrible hashtags and giggle.

I took this picture of my boyfriend cuddling with his giant cat a long time ago and had lofty aspirations to turn it into a super fancy drawing and then I spent 5 minutes on this.

nsp peeps

Speaking of him, I made some promotional art for the podcast that he does with his brothers/dude friend and they’re all super funny while they dick around with video games so go watch them be derps.
 

Art!, Real People, Ryan & Me, Sun-Walking

longer days

mary v.

I’m sure I’ve said it in here somewhere that I realized I do more art when it’s warmer than during the winter. It’s technically spring even though it’s snowing but it is currently raining, so I’m getting right into it. I’ve done two traditional ink paintings that I’m totally in love with in the past few weeks, and I’ve been putsing with Stealing from Raquildis and I’ve gotten over half a page done (…that’s a bigger accomplishment than it sounds). I’ve also done a bunch of art for work-related things like TNMT for my students or like turning my coworker into a super adorable chibi.


It’s hard not to describe this picture without sounding sappy because of who inspired it. What was the most interesting about was only using two colors (blue and yellow) and creating such a range of tones anyway. To be fair, I used both my blue inks so they were actually really different colors. My favorite parts ended up being the watered down drips on the right. And weirdly the contours on his face; they always draw my eye. That and the swoop of his bangs. The hand got way out of control and I tried too hard to correct it though. I actually did the piece in two phases, which is pretty unusual for me because usually I just do it in one shot and consider it untouchable after that. I was expecting to fix the hand but felt no compulsion to do so when I came back for it, so it’ll be one of those things I don’t really mention unless someone notices it, because it’s more likely just in my head. Looking at it now I kind of wish I didn’t mark off the side of his face on the yellow side of the image because it may have been more dreamlike, but I remember struggling with it not having a boundary.


I should probably get a better picture than this of the canvas. I think it’s scaled down since I cropped the photo on my phone. But it’s also blurry because I rushed to take the picture too. This was a really profound piece for me, but I’ve already kind of talked about it too much so that I don’t have a strong desire to write about all of it here. One thing that didn’t come through in this photo (I’d totally get up and go take another one but my cat’s draped across my lap) is how great the depth of the paper bits looks when they’re glued on but, like, the top one there isn’t all the way glued down. Also the bottom corner is super metallic and you can’t tell. I love how most of the edges are within the canvas rather than bleeding right up to the end of the canvas, but it kind of makes the work seem poppy.

This piece ended up being a bit of a declaration of self, and surprisingly I would say two weeks or something later the message still resonates with me; I haven’t stopped this conversation with myself. I wanted to ask myself if I could still be myself when I’m with someone else. And I wanted to ask myself if it was still okay to have weaknesses, or to feel emotions that are new to me without letting them destroy my own integrity. The answer is yes, I’ve found, but when I was doing this, I left the question unanswered via the scraps of typewriter paper, which ask over and over again: are you sure?

cuddles

This one is super old and I finished it a long time ago but I haven’t been super proactive about getting things up on my blog. My boyfriend’s cat is the size of a small horse and he’s very aggressively cuddly so he’s not often allowed in the bedroom with us. But on this particular morning we let him in and he could not believe that he got to be with us. He was sprawled between us or on me or in someone’s face the whole time and it was super precious.
I wanted to see what the sketchy coloring style would look like because my new tablet allows for a lot more scratchy lines than my old one. I do like it but I’m not sure how much.

fierce-like-her

This came before the purple painting up there. I always turn to Lucienne when I want to be stronger. Her abs look great, and I love the bright red lines that add highlights.

song

So I hate to brag about a gift (for my precious coworker’s birthday) because that just seems like the epitome of arrogance, but this piece was kind of a big old “look what I can do” for me. The last time I drew in a chibi style was in the 8th grade and I used colored pencils and printer paper for it. I remember in my days of scrolling through stock anime photos and staring at the shading on those beautiful drawings and feeling like I could never achieve that. There’s nothing perfect about this picture by any means, but setting out with a goal of making this picture look as froofy and adorable as possible – and kind of sort of accomplishing that feat – made me feel like I’m now the artist I would have wanted to become. It’s not like I’m gonna work on “honing down” my skills as a chibi artist but I love feeling like I could basically draw anything I wanted and end up happy with the product. There’s something to be said for now having the tools to do something like this. Of course I wouldn’t be able to do this traditionally. But I can also do epic stuff traditionally. Like, to humble myself a bit I just need to remind myself that I didn’t get into Uptown so clearly I have not risen as far as I could. But in terms of what I longed to be when I was a kid drawing pictures, it’s pretty cool to have gotten here.
That being said, the flowers totally suck hahaha.

Art!, Redefining Evil, Sun-Walking

only sketches to show

mary v.


Getting texts from Kyra at various points in the story while she was reading Sun-Walking made me more sentimental about Lucy. So I drew her post-story with tattoos and scars on her legs. … Yay?


Weird fluffy Ingrid.

This has been a somewhat discouraging last few months for my art. Really, since my art show, I haven’t produced much of anything unless it was a sketch for a student or a birthday card or a mindless doodle. Mostly, I do blame the fact that I work 47 hours a week and I have consequently lacked the time and energy to really dig into a creative project.

But another somewhat stranger thing that I have realized is that many of my most prolific periods have correlated to…uh…well, loneliness. During the height of summer when I’ve been home alone all day, or during semesters where my life revolved around going to class and going home at night. Where I wanted to write the perfect relationships because I didn’t know where they were in my life and I desperately needed them anyway.

All my major projects have reflected upon something I’ve experienced. I wrote Nikkei about my favorite cat, and about all my inside jokes, and all the manga I devoured. I wrote Rebels because I wanted a team, allies. Redefining Evil meant to unite my faith journey and my occult interests. Cadence was a coming of age story about a girl who decides to choose the right path rather than the one she wanted, only to find that they were one in the same. Farewell, Fairytale exposed to me my secret romantic that was hiding beneath the implausibilities in romance. Catcher did the same, poking myself into acknowledging that I could never be as cold as I acted. Sun-Walking declared that I didn’t think romance and independence were mutually exclusive. And Unface, which was the last original idea I completed, was my way of telling myself that some things are meant to end.

And I guess the thing is that I haven’t really had the time to think about where I am now. For the first time in my life, I’m not a student. I haven’t even had the time to think about that because my life transitioned so easily from learning to teaching. More than that, my life has somewhat smoothly transitioned from being alone to feeling like I have someone.

I was really hoping to plunge back into my make-believe worlds in this week off but I’m finding I don’t even really know where to start. I had a sizable start on Stealing from Raquildis but there are two problems. First, every time I open up that last WIP page, I just stare at it, scribble a few lines, and then lose interest. Secondly, my poor computer is beginning to putter out and opening such a massive file creates massive and heartbreaking lag on my computer. I’m not sure I’ve got the patience to wait forever for one damn line to render.

So the only open projects I have are Time-Painting, which actually seems pretty dull now despite my stellar crew of Andrew/Micah/Ingrid, and the rewrite of Redefining Evil. I told my dad that like the story would most likely benefit from as many changes as I’d think about doing, but that changing the shit out of it kind of makes me feel like I’m insulting the work that’s gone into the story. And I got a little stuck in Ingrid’s narrative. Also, dealing with the supernatural/spiritual aspect of the story is difficult. I don’t necessarily believe in the same elements that I charged into the last draft of the story and it’s harder to include the details that I did, yet leaving them out has actually made it feel flatter in places. That should probably be my way of knowing that I shouldn’t work on it right now, but it’s definitely my go-to project and doing that is considerably easier than starting a story from scratch. ARGH!


Weird sexy sex Ingrid. I love the poppiness of this though.


I just did this a few days ago and I love it. I can’t commit as easily to a sketchy digital piece as I did to this and it ended up drawing from Degas and I love the color scheme. It feels slightly unfinished but I don’t know what to add to it.

Oh and here’s some emo crap that I did when I was super stressed out a few weekends ago. I changed the Chevelle lyrics because “scene” didn’t fit but “mess” did.

Some more lyrics I decided to work on for an inordinately long time because typography sucks.
be still my soul

Art!, Emotional Breakdowns, Sun-Walking, Writing!

Sun-Walking: And…Done.

mary v.

So late last night, I officially completed my read-through of Sun-Walking. 12,000 words down, minus one character and some glasses, and I made it through with enough affection left to feel like just gushing about Lucienne. The story is so focused on her and it makes me feel good to have written what I think is a convincing, engaging heroine into such a lengthy book.

(For the record, Sun-Walking is 46,000 words now, Wind-Running is 55,000, and Sky-Dancing is 45,000 HOW DID WIND-RUNNING END UP THAT LONG ARG I HAVE DONE IT I HAVE MADE THE MIDDLE PART WORSE THAN THE REST OF THEM)

Now, I’m ready to set it down and force myself to back away from the story — I’m going to submit it…question mark? I’ve never wanted to send off a novel so soon after finishing it; usually, I’ve waited months if not years before the project’s done to feel compelled to send it places. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with sending it out soon, it’s just different.

Anyway, here’s some of the art I’ve been doing for Sun-Walking as I’ve been revising and recreating characters and so on.

betsy-lucy
I hadn’t done this oldschool-style character picture before and Betsy and Lucy look so different and their skin’s so different and it’s great.

bouche
This is old. Na na na na smooch.

dawn
UGH I JUST FINISHED THIS LAST NIGHT AND I LOVE IT WHY DO MY BEST DIGITAL WORKS TURN OUT TO BE COUPLING BUT SERIOUSLY I LOVE THE SHADING AND I’M SO PROUD OF MYSELF FOR DOING A LINELESS PICTURE AND WORKING UP FROM THE BACKGROUND RATHER THAN DOWN INTO IT AND IT’S SO SOFT AND DREAMY LIKE A PANCAKE

Sun-Walking, Writing!

Postponing the Inevitable

mary v.

So in my life, I either run from endings or I put them off. Usually with people, I run from them. With things — creative things — I tend to put them off. I remember taking forever reading the last chapter of “Immortal Rain.” I have a lot of good drawings that haven’t been shaded or completed because I put them off.

And now I’m so close to the conclusion of a project I’ve been working on for 3 years, and I am trying to force myself to write this last scene but I back away from it every few paragraphs. This story was started in November 2010 and it suffered in the shadow of “Redefining Evil,” which I spent most of 2011 working on instead of anything else. Then, when I was originally writing the last part, “Sky-Dancing,” I stopped abruptly at the same scene which I am now wading through, determined to finish this before I start work next week.

“Sun-Walking” (I think I’m going to call it “The Sun-Walker,” because you’ll never be sure who it’s talking about…if not, I’m going to keep it as “Sun-Walking” because that does pertain to all three parts) has been a really exciting project for me that started as a diatribe against patriarchy in response to Bethany and in response to OH MY GOD PARTHIV hahahahaha that roommate I had for two months my sophomore year (I just found a blog entry about that part). I described it as a girl who finds her “something” instead of her “someone” and overall that has definitely stayed true as the story progresses. Her relationship with Lee is definitely present, but her growth is much more important, particularly where it pertains to her reconciliation with her homeland. Ultimately, Levi’s most important feature is that he, like Lucienne, had to face a past he’d very thoroughly locked away when he went home to Agaar — just as Lucienne was forced to face her (much more recent) injuries inflicted upon her by the society which raised her. Over the last three years, I’ve had to work really hard to tune into her character, as my other long projects either had female characters I hated or were mostly male casts. Plus, following the journey of a character whose perceptions and attitudes change is actually somewhat challenging. I don’t think I’d have been able to write the middle part, when Lucienne goes to Agaar, if I hadn’t have traveled to New Zealand myself. Not only did Agaar end up being heavily influenced by NZ, but I understood better what Lucienne would feel being in a brand new world, and being absorbed into someone else’s world.

Yesterday, I was thinking how even though this is supposed to be a story about a woman finding her own power, the cast was, again, predominantly male. Though I improved the state of the few females (Find/Tarisi, Nasrin, Malaya/Anita/Uyen) with my latest revisions, I was writing Lucienne’s scene with Johanna Tirra when it struck me that there was still something missing in the women. And then after I’d drawn a now-obsolete picture of Lucienne, Levi, and his then-brother Isaac (Micah), it hit me: IF LEVI HAD A SISTER…
And so I decided to turn Isaac into Elizabeth, without touching any of her dialogue, or actions, or attitude. Suddenly Wind-Running was laced with a dynamic female to counter what Lucienne knew women to be like. Elizabeth is fiercely independent, but her independence is definitely something she had to fight for. She was injured by losing her father and then her brother, and her mother chose her career over remaining close (Nasrin is a full-fledged World-Seeker), so Elizabeth needed to find work and learn to fix cars and become strong physically and emotionally. She’s absolutely got a fantastic vulnerable side, which is partially revealed through her art. Her relationship with Lucienne, though it is literally not at all changed from when “she” was “Isaac”, is now fabulous in that it’s not too tender but it’s definitely affectionate. Because all I changed was her gender, it stays essentially a non-issue because I kind of learned from traveling that you don’t really ever expect things to be the way that you knew them to be, so Lucy would have been more likely to take Elizabeth in stride rather than being shocked by her.

(Note for future reference: I am watching Hercules to see him fight that serpent dragon thing with the multiple heads, because it’s the closest thing I could think of besides the obvious How to Train Your Dragon scene at the end, as far as helping me write Idalia’s final scene [edit] this scene was WAY MORE DEPRESSING to write than that scene in Hercules was)

sun-family

Art!, Sun-Walking, Writing!

Not the Expected Direction

mary v.

So, about two days ago I FINALLY finished my third complete rewrite of the middle portion of “Sun-Walking” that I’m calling “Wind-Running.” I first started this “sequel” in June of 2011. I don’t think it took me long and then I rushed right onto the last installment, “Sky-Dancing,” and then suddenly for some reason I’ve now forgotten halted with only about a quarter of the whole story left to write. That has never, since then, stopped bothering me. So I gave “Wind-Running” a second go and then stalled again. For most of my time in NZ I focused on “Cadence” and this last semester at school, when I set that aside in favor of…you know, my education, I kept poking at “Sun-Walking” trying to figure out what the hell was going wrong with it. I really didn’t want to give up on this story because the premise was so solid and I really believed in Lucienne and the journey I was sending her through. So FINALLY, after toiling over it since school ended, I finished a version of “Wind-Running” which accomplishes what it needed to and also felt very natural and believable as compared to the last drafts. I got so into Lucienne’s voice that when I had to switch back to third-person I was repeatedly writing whole paragraphs in first-person before realizing I’d switched. It was awful but I’m keeping both voices because “Wind-Running” needs to be told intimately but the rest of the story benefits from the added drama of third-person.

Anyway, when I finished school I was totally expecting to plunge back into “Cadence” instead, but after fussing and fussing over one single page I realized that the sort of meticulous tedium required by graphic novels isn’t really the kind of art that I enjoy right now. I mean I prefer getting paint or ink all over my hands, and seeing what comes of a few surprise lines. So I consciously set “Cadence” down and picked up “Sun-Walking” and I’m so glad I have. So here’s a TON of pictures I’ve done over the last few weeks.


Did this when I was starting off on “Wind-Running” because Anita’s kind of sexy. But Lucienne looks really good in this picture.


I’ve been trying to get better at using real paints (I don’t even use watercolor like paint, I use it like ink…or else I use ink like paint) and so I covered a bad attempt with yellow and then realized I was itching to paint Lucienne. Dad says she looks like Wonder Woman and I think it’s because of her dramatic hairline and the use of bright red. Not sure how I feel about it, but it is super strong and I’m glad I took a risk and added blue.

I think I did this quick sketch back in February or March.


Did this last week. Lee looking dashing. Still didn’t get his face narrow enough but still I’m kinda pleased to have gotten him down. I focus so much on Lucy.



I have no idea why this doesn’t look like her. I really like it — I just did it today — but I think it’s her chin that’s masculine. I’m easing into the part where Lucy chops her hair off before she goes back to Helios so I wanted to do her short hair.



I haven’t finished this because I kind of lost steam on it for whatever reason. But those hands are nggh.



This is kind of a weird piece and I don’t like her body. It was supposed to be really flowy and bright but it’s mostly just clunky and smudgy.

lucy-solveig-hot



I’m totally gonna clean this up and color it. Solveig is so cute when she’s this size. And then she gets huge.

Art!, Sun-Walking, Writing!

It’s Okay, ‘Cause They’re Not Real

mary v.

violet

This was a picture I started on Valentine’s Day. It’s okay…’cause they’re not real. Anyway, I’m pretty happy with how it came out as a digital piece. I worked over traditional lineart first, but the lineart included their whole bodies, but when I was doing it in Painter and moved them down to the bottom of the canvas, everything got A LOT stronger. Then I worked really hard trying to establish a method for “shading” that added to the piece without taking away from the lines, which is why I settled for this somewhat unusual contour-style minimalist shading. Then I knew it needed a background and suddenly it occurred to me, HOW COME I don’t just add circles if they work so well in my traditional stuff?! SHA-ZAM.

I’m working on Wind-Running AGAIN and unfortunately I’m getting stuck in the same place I did in the second draft. I mean, it doesn’t help that I don’t have a lot of time for it, but I have some pretty important projects dangling right now (I haven’t touched Cadence since school started).

Art!, Redefining Evil, Sun-Walking, Writing!

Puppies & Pecs & Pretty Girls

mary v.

I’m torn between the impulse to write all about my creative happenings now, but without full access to anything I did traditionally, or to wait until I get home (in like 2 weeks) and just take a MASSIVE DUMP (sorry, but the excitement of having my own flatbed scanner back at my fingertips just brings from me disgusting phraseology).

Well, then, to tide me over, in list-format, here’s what I’m working on:

  • The Cadence of a Restless Heart pages, 17 full pages coloured and 1 in the works, with 3 more inked pages to follow
  • Redefining Evil/The Terror of Night revisions — I did most of them, but I’m still meaning to change the ending a little bit. A LITTLE BIT. Only a little. I finally figured out a good direction for the remaining characters to go in, and it’s exciting.
  • …SUN-WALKING WOOO. No I mean I guess I just opened it up and GOODNESS that story’s got the best action sequences! Plus when I reached the end of what I have written in “Sky-Dancing,” I was like ooo boy…now where was I going with that? Turns out for a change I DID write down my planned ending and I went “oooohh” when I read it, and there’s not really that much more to write and I’ll be much happier with a rough but at least finished draft of the story. 0___0
    Okay and I’m coming back to this a few days later (after my second of three finals!) and I got back into working “Wind-Running” because I had this breakthrough that sometimes I make my characters overreact where in life people would respond more subtly, so like, Isaac isn’t as angry at Levi as he was in the last draft. Also, “Wind-Running” will be almost completely told through Lucy’s journal entries, up until the point where she gets tranquilized by Keenan, where it will switch back to third for the duration of the story. This is because you really need to be inside Lucienne’s head as she transforms, otherwise it all seems too simple.
    The changes I was proposing to Sun-Walking, such as solidifying Helios and whatnot, I realized some of them started going overboard. I do want to keep that one told in third-person, so that means I don’t want to rewrite the whole thing…I will need to dig into it at some point and hone down Helios and the Sun-Creatures, but in general I don’t want to rework as much as I did before.

And now…without further ado, a sketch dump!

I mean but seriously. This is my favorite gif I’ve ever made. I MEAN BUT REALLY. Also, this was a reasonable movie.

So I JUST finished this listening to Cartel, which is one of the two or three bands I will always and forever associate with Micah. And okay I didn’t JUST draw him without a shirt on to indulge myself. Okay it was mostly that, but he wasn’t wearing a shirt in his first scene in the new draft of “Wind-Running” because Levi decides to go there in the middle of the night so what dude sleeps with a shirt on in the summer?
Anyway, this is another attempt to get the hang of lineless digital work. I’m a lot happier with it. I almost just went through with the sketch I had laid over it but finishing most of my schoolwork made me ambitious. Also lineless work is a lot easier when I can still kind of work with lines…TCoaRH helped me figure out to just use the pen tool and layer over it to blend things, rather than copping out and using the airbrush like I thought I needed to in the past.
And okay I’m trying to convince myself that my favorite part of this isn’t just his pecs because they’re his pecs, but it’s not working.
Oh and don’t worry, he’s not the only person I’ve been drawing naked lately. I did a nude of Lucienne last night in my sketchbook. o_O And on that note, I mean “nude” as in the kind of pose I did during Life Drawing, not “HUAAA HERE ARE MY TA-TAs” but…I don’t think my intentions were as noble with this picture.

ball-smooch-new

This was seriously my FIRST satisfying lineless piece I think…ever. And it kind of slipped away from me because things got so busy here what with classes ending and my uncle dying. I did it when I was doing the latest (and hopefully last) re-write of the ballroom scene of ToN (yes that’s right, I am implementing the new acronym of RE with its new name…Margaret), even though that’s not even what Ingrid was wearing in the scene. I just kind of like the fairytale effect of this picture but then it’s like OH THEY’RE BOTH VAMPIRES THEY’RE DEAD THEY COULD KILL YOU IF THEY WANTED MUAHAHAHA delicate kiss

There’s definitely more of a vampire vibe in this picture, but I’m not as pleased with it and I didn’t work on it for as long (obviously). On another layer I had a doodle of Danny getting the wind knocked out of him when Ingrid punches him in the gut right before this part in the story, but it looks like I deleted the layer. xD The rewrite of this ballroom scene reached a nice compromise of all the previous drafts. Danny and Ingrid do get a nice kiss, but no sex…Ingrid gets mad, but she doesn’t blow up at Lacy (that scene was very contrived, and long-winded, and a perfect example of what I was saying earlier about subtlety of reactions)…Ingrid gets in touch with her life back at the force because I introduce her mother, but I didn’t get carried away with that by implementing the whole huge “foster home” concept and all her rather obnoxious (and contrived) friends that were in previous drafts. Plus I got to write another scene of Micah being paranoid and sick and that’s always fun.

Then here’s Ingrid looking badass as usual. I don’t have a ton to say about this one except that I like the movement of her skirt. When I did this I almost decided to add all my other heroines but unless I’m feeling particularly dedicated, usually the thought of doing that is much better than the product.

Then here’s a biology lesson I learned. I feel pretty dumb because I really should have known that incisors are different than canines, but right after I read that in my notes on animal digestion, I searched “incisors” in my latest ToN draft and I used it like six times in relation to what I meant to be their fangs. e___e; Oh well, at least I learned it now.

Well, I think that’s the end of my seemingly endless stream of art updates. There are some more I won’t get to till I’m back State-side and settled, but this is pretty satisfying in the meantime.