Creature of the Week #227 : Turtle Village

Long after the great cities of fire and smoke had been washed out by the sea, the remnants of humanity learned to once again live in harmony with their fellow creatures. Little hamlets sprung up on the backs of the giant sea beasts that thrived in the new environment travelling all around the globe, never calling a single place home.


Man, I had no idea what I wa in for when I tried to do this. I thought it would be a simple thing, without thinking of all the different textures I had to paint as well as the multiple lighting sources. I was just asking for trouble! I think I'll stick to something much easier next time to give myself a bit of a break.  I want to properly critique this and my recent work to help reinforce the stuff I'm doing right and wrong, but there's never any time!

Art Musings : High and Lows and a Need for Cheap Chewing Gum

"Thanks, it's been really fun and fulfilling, but it's also been really rough at times."

"But isn't that true of creating art in general?"

This was an exchange I had with my friend Caroline a week ago after she complimented me on my recent work.  I explained to her that yes, the creation of art (or almost anything for that matter) naturally comes with highs and lows, but that I was trying to compress so much art education and practice in such a short amount of time that the highs and lows were compressed, almost tumbling over each other in their effort to take control of my limbic system.  I'm going to risk chavinism right now by wondering out loud if this is what a woman's period feels like.

The intense stress generated by this has lead to some peculiar nervous tics, reflexes that I find very difficult to control, especially when I'm in the middle of flow.  A few weeks ago it was a simulated acid reflux, where I would involuntarily choke up bile (or some sort of acidic fluid) up my throat at regular intervals.  This was extremely discomforting to I did my best to tamp it down, but recently it's been replaced with grating my tongue over my teeth, specifically the right side.  This has been far more difficult to control.  I tried inserting my lower lip under my upper teeth (easy because I have an overbite) to prevent the tongue from moving, but I worry about misshaping my mouth even more, and an expensive trip to the orthodontist. 

My new ingenious solution is to chew gum.  Not only does this give my mouth something to do while I'm in the throes of flow, it ostensibly will help me burn calories as well.  Now all I need to do is find cheap brand gum i can buy wholesale, ideally sugarfree.

Islandback WIP3

I'm probably not gonna make a habit of posting this often (though I should really start thinking of what kind of a regular schedule works for me) but since There's been quite a bit of progress on this piece I wanted to post it.  Bunch of concerns here.  I'm not sure I'll have enough time to really put to kind of polish I think it deserves before the Wednesday deadline.  I'm not sure if the colors are working, and it's proving more difficult to work up from a monochrome image (as opposed to grayscale) than I originally thought.  I'm not sure what to do with the clouds, or if I should even have them there.  What I do like is the water.  I'm quite happy about how I got the movement of the waves, and I love the details on the turtle's face.  Now we have to see what bits and pieces to work on and what to just ignore.

Islandback WIP2

Another quick update here.  I'm establishing both the values (light/dark) and the color scheme here, working with a not entirely realistic dark green/teal sort of color.  The end result will actually incorporate two light sources, But I'm trying to simplify my workflow by finalizing the moonlight values first and then coloring over that to establish the Turtle and island and separate them from the background, and finally introducing the lantern as a light source.

This is about as far as I got with that before deciding that I was rushing into color way too early and deciding to focus on the moonlight values.

Islandback WIP

A quick out of sync update here just so there isn't too much lag in between posts.  The latest creature of the week challenge was to create a creature large enough to fit some sort of environment on its back.  This actually when through numerous revisions before even getting to this state.  I think it marks my increased maturity as an artist that I just kept plugging away and cutting of bad ideas until I came to something I liked.  I'd originally intended to create a mini rice terrace on the turtle's back but for some reason I just couldn't make it work properly, but I still left in a lot of Filipino elements like the statue on top of the hill and the nipa huts.  Deadline for this is September 7, so I have plenty of time to finish it up.