Elvenstar’s blog

I finally finished "To Love a Queen."  I am pretty happy with how everything turned out.  It's much better than I first anticipated it would be.  I just really like the contrast between them and I love to paint white hair for some reason.  :)  I decided against having him scratch her with his claw.  I was afraid that I'd mess it up and I like it without it.

It's 10 x 12"  Watercolor, watercolor pencil, colored pencil and goauche.

TLAQ

I will finish this painting!  lol  I finally started to paint Gabrias.  Their hair should be fun when I finally get to it.   I'm kind of tired of painting skin.  :)  But I actually really like how this is coming along considering that I hated it at first.  I'm thinking of making him scraping her a little with his claw, just a thin line of blood following it.  It really would fit their personalities.  They have a very volatile relationship.  ;)  Well here's my progress...

ToLoveAqueenWIP4

I spent a couple of hours yesterday hunting down references for a painting that I'm thinking of doing sometime coming up.  I'm not sure if I'll start it after this or finish up a couple of other pieces first.  I want to finally get back to my Enchanted Melodies series.  Well, it was intended to be a series but as of now, there is only one painting--the violin.  (check out my deviant art gallery if you haven't seen it)  I was looking up pics of harps and people playing them.  I remember how hard the violin one was to get just right, so I hope this goes easier than that, but I have a feeling that it is going to be pretty challenging.  I think that I'm going to make this one a male gypsy though.  I don't know, I just see this one as a man this time.  I did attempt to do the harp one not to long after I finished the violin and I just did not like how it turned out.  It wasn't my vision.  So here I am 2 1/2 years later, and I never got around to finishing the series.  And now I see a completely different image.  But hopefully it will be better this way.  Actually I have the old sketch on my computer...

OLD harp gypsy sketch

Yeah, I just didn't really like this one, at least not enough to finish it and make a painting out of it.  But I do like her scarf and coins... maybe I'll use that for the third one (the flute).  :)

On a totally separate topic...  I am so addicted to the show Dexter.  It is on Showtime on Sundays.  It's about a serial killer who only kills bad people and works as a forensics blood expert for the police department.  His foster father recognized that he was different at a young age and taught him to channel his urge to kill through killing only evil or bad people.  It is really disturbing that you find yourself kind of liking this character that is actually a killer.  It is quite a fascinating show and I'm hooked!  :)

Wow, I haven't written here for almost a month!  I kept forgetting to.  Oops.  Anyway, I have completed a new painting called "Lady Death."  The idea for this came to me as I was trying to fall asleep.  Don't ask what I was thinking of then that made me dream up an angel of death-- I don't even know.  lol  It turned out almost exactly how I had seen it at first, the only real difference is that I first saw it with blood.  Blood on the skull, down her arms, a little on the cross.  But as I drew it... it just somehow turned out classier than that.  *shrugs*  The blood just didn't fit anymore and she seemed like a lady of death without the gore.  :)  So I made up for the loss of blood by giving her a blood-red dress.  hehe   I actually was planning to do an angel of death for a while, but this one was a complete new vision.  My other one is a male and I think that I am still going to do that one.  Visually it is completely different, and I still like the idea.  I'm fascinated with death imagery.  I have another idea related to it too that I hope to eventually do, but that one is more vampiric than angelic and isn't completely planned out yet.  All I can say is think Josephine Wall-type surrealism.  Her work is its inspiration if I finally start to work on it.  Wonder if I can pull something like this off?  Hmm...

...but I digress...

10 x 14"  Watercolor, white goauche and colored pencil... and check out the detail views too  :)

Ladydeath

LdDetails

Prints of this are available at my Deviant Art store and also now at The Prints of Darkness.net

At The Prints of Darkness I also have a Limited Edition print of my painting "Demon's Fire."  It is only available there and is a run out of 100 prints.  Available HERE





I also now have a 2007 Calendar available through Deviant Art, of which I have my own copy and can confidently say that the quality is really great.  It is 11 x 8.5 inches (11 x 17" open) printed on thick, photo-quality paper and spiral bound.  The different pages can be viewed HERE

2007calendar

Now that I'm done advertising *wink wink nudge nudge*...  I have a lot of art that I have to catch up on, work that I have started and then put aside for various reasons.  This will be starting with "To Love a Queen" and then probably "Lerrik's Ghost" both of which I have WIPs posted here of.  Check out my pictures if you haven't seen/don't remember them.  :)

And that is all for now.

I worked on this for a little while today.  Only for about 1.5-2 hours, but I made some progress.  I actually really like how this is coming along now.  And I put together a little strip of the stages she has gone through.  Not really a step by step, but just my various scans.  :)

ToLoveAqueenWIP3

TLAQ-LantisWIP

I decided to make a little time today to work on this.  I am past my hate for this painting and with her eyes almost done, I really have a little more faith that it'll turn out okay.  :)  I think I may fill in the reflection in her eye just a little and make it slightly less bright.  I'm so all over the place with this painting.  I usually finish the skin before I move on to things like hair, eyes and lips.  I don't know why I didn't this time.  I'll just have to be very careful painting around the darker areas.

ToLoveAqueenWIP2

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Here is a bit of the painting that I've done on this so far.  I know I said that I hated it in my last entry, but I feel a little better about it now.  I'm still not completely satisfied, but I have a little more confidence that I can turn it around into something I'll be happier with.  It has a lot more work to be done still, And I'm no where near being done with her skin even though I would usually finish that before moving on to hair or lips.  I've decided to work around in this one.  Maybe the change in technique threw me at first.  Hmm?  Oh well, I think it'll be alright if I stick with it.  :)

ToLoveAqueenWIP

2 comments

Oh, and in other news, I did good on my western civ. test.  I got an 85% on the actual test but all the assignment points and the extra credit question bumped it way up to a 104%!  *does a dance*  Every assignment/quiz that we get in class counts as extra points toward the tests.  It almost seems impossible to do bad.

I haven't really been around here too much lately.  I've been kind of busy with school and all that.  I had the first test last week in my Western Civilizations class.  I had to do some major cramming because I'm a procrastinator and put off reading from the first month's worth of chapters to 3 days before the test.  Luckily most of the information came from the professor's notes and the book is completely worthless anyway.  I'll find out how I did tomorrow.  Hopefully I did good.  :)  It didn't seem as hard as I thought it would be because I had to know a lot of information.  The first unit covered from Ancient Mesapotamia through Ancient Greece.  That includes Egypt and all the major powers of that time.  Next unit's on Ancient Rome.

I only have 2 1/2 weeks left of my Mythology class.  It's an accelerated 8 week class.  So it only lasts half the semester but the classes are twice a week for up to 3 hours.  It is interesting but it sucks that the classes are so long.  *wants to sleep just thinking of it*  lol  I have to write a paper due on the last day.  We got a list of topics to choose from.  I think that I'm going to do mine on comparing/contrasting a couple of different creation myths.

I watched the show "Heros" tonight.  Did anyone else see it?  I thought it seemed pretty good and intriguing.  I'll have to hold off on my final opinion until I see a couple more episodes.

Helen of Troy

I'm reading the book Helen of Troy by Margaret George.  It is a really long book but I like it so far, even though I'm only about 160 pgs. into it.  I don't think that I really need to tell what it's about, but the story is told in the first person through Helen's point of view.  It is interesting to have it told by her as her side of the story.  The author has written books about other famous historical figures such as Cleopatra (which I own but haven't read yet), Mary Magdalene, Henry VIII... but this is the first that I have read.

I went shopping this weekend and bought some new shoes.  Some black Sketchers tennis shoes.  All black with charcoal stripes.  They're really cool looking!  And I bought some perfume too-- Exotic Coconut from Bath and Body Works.  I smelled it as I walked by the store and had to buy it.  I love the smell of coconut!  I used to use a Paul Mitchell hair mouse that smelled like coconut all the time.  Admittedly though, it does smell a bit like some tanning lotions.  lol  But it is a soft, calming scent.  ;)

I also went to the cider mill on Sunday to get cider and donuts.  It is a nice little drive out into the country.  I love seeing all the open land and the trees beginning to change colors.  It's beautiful and I love this time of year.  In a couple of weeks it should be even prettier!  It makes me wonder if I lived more in an area like that, what that would do for my imagination?  I live in the suburbs, very different.  I wonder what all that nature would be like for the muse.  Hmm?  Though funny as it is, it is only 20-30 minutes from my house.

I don't really have any new art to show.  I started painting "To Love a Queen."   It has a long way to go, and at the moment I hate it.  But I'll hopefully get it to a neutral point and then can finish it.  I don't know if it is like this for anyone else, but I have a hard time working on art that I am seriously hating.  It's depressing.  I don't know what happened but somehow I didn't get the paint to blend as smoothly as usual.  I think that it is going to take some serious mixed media to make it what I had originally imagined, but I think it may still be salvageable.  I don't know, I've been in a wierd mood this past week.  Happy at moments, sad/mad at other moments.  Don't know what's up with that, but it'll pass.  Well, that's really all I have to say at the moment.  I have some other ideas for some paintings.  One came to me as I was trying to fall asleep (I get a lot of ideas at that time) and kept me up for a while with the excitement of the idea.  But I haven't gotten a chance to work on it.  Maybe this week sometime.  :)

I settled on a title for this sketch, "To Love a Queen"  And I also change his hand positioning, so it doesn't look so much like he's going to scratch her eyes out.  lol  And as my mom said, this positioning seems a bit more intimate.  I have to mention that it is pretty hard to use your own had as a reference (tried to make it more masculine than mine though) for a left hand when you are drawing with your left hand.  I ended up getting frustrated and used at my right hand, flipping it in my mind.  :)  I actually have this sketch completed, the top of his head and everything, and already transferred onto watercolor paper, but I didn't feel like scanning it again.  This shows the major difference of his hand anyway.  So it's ready to be painted.  I know that you can see her jawline through his nose.  Last time I took the time to Photoshop that out, but I was too lazy this time.  lol, but that won't be in the painting.

ToLoveAqueenSketch

And for comparison, the old version:

GabeLantisSketch

What's your favorite foreign accent?

Scottish and Irish.  I can't say why, but I just love those.  :)

Midnightempress

Well, I finished this painting tonight.  I'm pretty happy with it.  I just wish that I could have gotten a more accurate scan.  My scanner doesn't like purples, it seems, and always scans them as dark blue.  So I had to adjust the colors in Photoshop.  They still aren't exact, and the purples in the original are much more vibrant.  I'm going to mess with my scanner's settings and see if I can get it any closer.  But for now, here is this version which isn't bad but not as close as I'd like.  :(

Watercolor and some white gouache.  9 x 12"