Let's see. This one is 35 years old! I must have been doodling instead of taking notes in school...!
I picked this one out today for a few reasons:
I remember being really proud of it at the time - people are hard to draw!
I remember working on it for a while... if I concentrate, I can still smell a classroom, and feel my hand putting down the dots with the pen, and sense the stillness in the room. I can even, I think, remember which way I was facing in the classroom. Wild!
It definitely hits one of my early interests, which is intricate clothing, without trying to hew too closely to any received wisdom on historical fashion... I just liked bodices, and ribbons, and off the shoulder dresses, and weird braid cuffs that also include ribbons? Whatever. Teen Me was gonna do what she was gonna do
It also hits a lot of my visual hallmarks: the figure is askew on the page intentionally (yes, this is the actual orientation of the figure on the page), and the hair is... ignoring that skew to hang at some other angle... and the ribbons are blowing in a wind that makes no sense if you're reading the hair. Jaguar does not care for physics. Jaguar cares only for Fwoosh.
I did several more in this "series" but this one sticks with me the longest because it was the first, and the most "free" (the next ones try to copy real fashion trends), and because, despite its many flaws and inaccuracies, it has a spriteliness that the others lack. (Photographed here so you can see what I mean).
Going this far back into my archive has been... really interesting to me. A historical glimpse, not only into my development, but into the transitional period: being an artist before the internet, and being an artist before digital art. The other day I was observing how many artists now photobash references, trace them, then develop them from there, and how this is simply how people draw now. Everything is faster, easier to source, the expectations are different... so different, in fact, that it's like I sprang from some alien world. I'd have to explain to a young artist that, for instance, when I was drawing historical costumes as a teenager, I was having to remember them from movies (and you didn't even pause movies easily back in the VHS days, to get stills), or from plates in books (that often weren't in color!). The historical accuracies and inaccuracies of these Teen images represent the paucity of reference material and the inability to easily acquire it, as well as my skill level.
This is hard to imagine for someone who can grab their eight favorite references from a web search, save them, paste them onto the back layer of their piece and reduce the opacity, copy the embroidery, clone it onto their top layer's dress, trace the sleeve, enlarge and rotate it, then add more bows to it for fun.
When people with this kind of process tell me that AI art doesn't involve "real work", I wonder if they understand what their workflow looks like to me!
I'm not judging, because I don't actually care (weird to have arrived at this place, but I have!). What I care about is doing what I feel fulfilled doing, and for me that's drawing by hand, even if it means the results aren't as impressive to look at. But I hope explaining some of the 'backstory' of how pieces like this were drawn helps make those results interesting.😊
Or at least, I intend it to be relaxing. Hopefully it delivers.
4:22 minutes
Materials:
In which I talk about the paper, the paint, and the experience of oils versus gouache. Fun stuff, will do more.
Thank you Locals supporters! Your contribution to my art war chest here is what's powering these experiments and videos. For now I'm keeping them public but I may start doing some subscriber-only videos if you all are interested.💖
Thanks for your comments yesterday on the business post... all very provocative, in a good way. I'll try to respond to all of them today.
Some Alysha misc now, since I'm gearing up for the results of the Kickstarter!
Petrov is giving away coupon codes for every book in the Alysha series (and has some leftover coupons for Marda and the business book). You can pick those up here (and please do! The books are bought already, someone should use them!) https://twitter.com/PetrovNeutrino/status/1457344535843987461
Our own @JudasComplex sent along a sample of the Faith in the Service audiobook, which I've attached for your delight! I... haven't had a chance to listen to it. Don't ask me about my past week and a half or so. Putting it here will guarantee I get to it.
After hearing the amused comments during the livestream, I went ahead and added all the ship type illustrations I have inked from the 90s to the wiki. Glory in the rampant adorableness of their anthropomorphic stylings! See those ...
A little comedy today, at least in the link. Transcript follows.
Hi, all. Welcome to this episode of The Jaguar’s Heart.
A while back I was introduced to a comedy sketch about Cuban coffee by a Mexican comedian, Gabriel Iglesias. ( The sketch begins with him greeting all his fellow Latinos and then backing up to say ‘but we’re all different, aren’t we’ which is a segue into a demonstration of how different Hispanics speak Spanish.
It is hilarious. First, because I am a Spanish speaker and a linguistics hobbyist, and his portrayal of various accents resonated with my experiences in trying to make sense of them myself… Not always easy, since from culture to culture, slang and accent are often totally different (and sometimes grammar! Spaniards use a grammatical construct that has died out in many other Spanish-speaking countries, the plural “you.”)
I also loved it because the Cuban coffee part is real. I grew up with Cubans. I know how we are....
One of the most common things I hear (and say) right now is "the asymmetry is the story." Here's one about how none of us are innocent of the sins we hate in others.
Hi, all. Welcome to this week’s episode of The Jaguar’s Heart.
It’s been weeks since the Baen’s Bar incident and I’m still thinking about it... because the longer I do, the more I feel, overwhelmingly, that it’s obvious that the problem is deeper than “this forum was saying stuff that offended us.” We have to back up to the glaring fact that people on opposite sides no longer consider each other human. Nothing I say will matter because the people disagreeing with me don’t think I’m human. They have denied my humanity; they have not bothered to listen to my beliefs, or have fake-listened to them in that way that people do when they’re so ready to prove you wrong that they’re only using your speech to provide talking points for their own ideas.
We have forgotten how to listen.
Increasingly, we have also ...
https://mcahogarth.org/gallery/image/123-2019-42-ElementalJahir
Today's Wednesday Share is a little different... in this case, it's the first of a series, and you can see the other 6 pieces (plus a false start) linked from the annotation in the gallery. (Bonus: there's a link to another, similar series of Peltedverse Tarot images in the artist notes section).
I was inspired to do this one by the song Elemental from the Tears for Fears album. I was thinking of what the elemental symbols of each of the major Eldritch saga characters was, so I decided to chase them down. For instance, Jahir's has the unicorn, the amulet, the sword of state, the caduceus, and the net/spacetime of the seer!
If you're interested in seeing the rest of them, go check them out! Share your favorites if you feel like leaving a comment!
How wild is that? This one is fun because it's a "choose your champion" style competition between tea and coffee! And my daughter is participating to raise money for her college food budget with a design of her own! AND it will run through my birthday!
This might be more excitement than I can handle, honestly, lol. Anyway, come check it out!
Yes! Because tomorrow I am launching the kickstarter, so I don't want to clutter up your feed. So for your pleasure today, here is a color pencil piece from 26 years ago. Look at the water! And goodness, how hard I worked on those dark and forbidding cliffs. But I think my favorite thing is her hair, caught up in the jeweled caul.
I hope this one brings some beauty to the start of your week!
You can see it here on the gallery: https://mcahogarth.org/gallery/image/56-2000-055-NorthPoint
Today's short returns to the Le'enle for a comical urban fantasy published originally in Raconteur Press's Brim to the Dregs anthology. This was a potion-and-brew-themed call, and that made it a perfect fit for the Le'enle who have a special relationship with...
Well, just read on. XD
Returning to the freebies, here's the fantasy short I wrote for Raconteur Press's Goblin Market anthology. One of the things I love most about the Le'enle is that they're a meta-genre species: because they are immortal superbeings who choose to live among mortals, they are as at home in a scifi dystopia as they are in an urban fantasy as they are in a fairy tale. For this story, I chose to return to their medieval-fantasy-esque roots to tell a gentle story about magical inventory.
Okay, it's not about magical inventory. But I did have a lot of fun designing Prissa's potions, and I hope you enjoy reading about them.🧡
This one was originally published in Raconteur Press's anthology All Will Burn 3, the theme of which was "parents will do anything for their children." Most people went super-serious with that theme. I decided to go slapstick, and set this one in the Peltedverse. It's about the Guardkin, and eventually it will go in the Forecourt collection I'm planning. But for my locals supporters, here's your dose of fun for Friday!
