Elijah David's Blog, page 9

Beautiful Books: Paper and (T)horns

It's almost NaNoWriMo time, which means that Cait and Sky are hosting a Beautiful Books link-up in place of their usual Beautiful People link-up. I've decided to join in with a post about Paper and (T)horns.
Two things to get out of the way before I dive into the questions: first, I am NOT doing NaNoWriMo, although I will be working on this story for the foreseeable future; second, this is not intended to be a novel (I am aiming for a novella, no more than 30,000-40,000 words).
What inspired the idea for your novel, and how long have you had the idea?
My friend Mirriam redrew the Beast from the live-action Beauty and the Beast film to make him more frightening, and I enjoyed her take on the character. In fact, I realized that I kind of shipped him with Maleficent, and thus the idea for Paper and (T)horns took seed. This was back in April of this year.
Describe what your novel is about!
A young man meets the girl of his dreams, only to have her curse him to a lonely eternity as a Beast.
What is your book’s aesthetic? Use words or photos or whatever you like!
"Beauty and the Beast" meets "Sleeping Beauty" meets The Prestige (with heavy dashes of "Cupid and Psyche")
Introduce us to each of your characters! "Beast" (he never tells us his name) is a former celebrity who has retreated into obscurity after his sister's death.Molly is a magician's daughter with a powerful secret and some Fae-level emotional issues.The Inventor is Molly's father, whose face is never seen and whose name is unknown.Di is an Unseelie Fae with her own reasons for mucking about with these folks.

How do you prepare to write? (Outline, research, stocking up on chocolate, howling, etc.?)
I brainstorm ideas for what might happen. I often talk through plot points and character development with writer friends and bounce ideas off non-writer friends to see if the idea catches them the way it catches me. I sometimes compile a musical playlist. Then I just dive in.
What are you most looking forward to about this novel?Getting to write an actual love story? I don't usually put much romance in my stories, but this one is all about the love story, so that's going to be a new challenge.
List 3 things about your novel’s setting.
Modern cityFae underworldTheatre!
What’s your character’s goal and who (or what) stands in the way?
Beast wants to win Molly's heart and free himself from the curse. Molly's curse and her refusal to forgive stand in his way.
How does your protagonist change by the end of the novel?
Let's just say that at the beginning of the story, Beast is unable to keep himself tied down to anything for more than a year, and by the end of it, he'll have to be more consistent than that.
What are your book’s themes? How do you want readers to feel when the story is over?
Love, forgiveness, and perseverance come to mind. Masks and why we wear them.
I want readers to come away with a feeling of understanding and hope by the end of the story.

Are you doing NaNoWriMo or working on a novel right now? Join the link-up at Paper Fury or Further Up and Further In.

Watercolor Wednesday: October Edition

This month's Watercolor Wednesday is much more packed than I thought it would be. I apparently did a lot more painting after last month's post than I remembered.
First up, another sign for Samwise's birthday later this month. The Man in the Moon sketch here is one I played with a few times this month, and a couple of other sketches of him were in Monday's sketch dump. (I also used this painting as a chance to play with transparency. It worked so well I'm not sure the picture actually captures all the color that's on the page.)


These two bookmarks were an experiment brought on by two factors. First, I ran out of my 5" x 7" (ish) watercolor paper, so I set to cutting up some of my larger sheets. Second, I cannot cut a straight line, so I broke out the paper trimmer, and the sheets were too wide for that even after I'd cut them in half, so I had to cut smaller strips off, resulting in these bookmark-sized pieces. The bookmark on the left is a classic quote from The Last Battle and the right bookmark is my first attempt at a floral painting.



Tow'rs music inspired some of my first watercolors, and I finally set down to try capturing their song "Circles" in a painting. I wound up with these paired pieces.



This is a haunted house postcard I'll be sending out later this week to a friend who really gets into the Halloween spirit. I'm pleased with how the colors turned out, and it's encouraged me to try mixing my colors more when I paint.



Like I said, the Man in the Moon has been a theme lately. Here's a smaller painting of him.



And a postcard for a friend.




This was an attempt to come back to my (first?) watercolor "Night and Moon," inspired by the Tow'rs song "The Kitchen." I LOVE the way the lady on the left turned out, but the background is much less fluid and nebulous than I'd like.




This is an attempt to repaint "Freckles in the Sun" with more fluid colors. I'm not as pleased with the facial features on this one, but I did get some more transparent colors in the hair.




This was another moonscape where I tried to mix my colors on the page and work in some more texture with the trees. I definitely want to come back to the firs and try to do better with them.



That's all for now. Come back next month for more painting, and be on the lookout for another Inktober sketch dump sometime next week!

Monday Musings: Keeping Your Creative Bucket Full

Last week, I went to my local writing group and, since the person who introduced me to Inktober was there, I shared my first few Inktober drawings with the group. One of the other writers asked how doing a challenge like Inktober affected our creativity.
For me, having a creative outlet that differs from what I might think of as my "main" art form (i.e. writing novels) actually fuels my creativity as a whole. It's why I picked up watercolors this year -- to give myself a place for art to spill over when I didn't have the time/drive/energy to sit down at a keyboard.
This was the short version of the answer I gave in group.
But as I thought about it, I realized that the deeper topic was actually not how does pursuing one art form affect another, but how do I keep from draining my creative well/bucket dry?
So here are some of the ways I do that.
Consume Other Art

This is one of the most common pieces of advice for artists struggling with keeping their inspiration going, but it's common because it is true and helpful. Read a book, watch a movie, flip through other artist's work. Whatever your medium, you can't make art if you don't consume it.
Try Something New

This is what Inktober is for me this year (more Inktober drawings below). I've been drawing and sketching more this year, but doing an intentional, month-long challenge like this is something I've only done with NaNoWriMo before (about which more later). Trying something new -- whether it's within your typical art form or a new one -- is a good way to stretch your creative muscles and stir the waters in your creative bucket.
Try Something Old You can find the pattern for this hat on RavelryRevisit an old story, an old art style, or just a favorite topic that you haven't revisited in a while. This is more personal, and probably more likely to be more "for you" versus something you put out in the world (neither this nor the "something new" has to be for you or for others unless it's a challenge like Inktober where the point is to share it; use your own judgment). For me, I picked up an old novel that needed an ending and knitting/crocheting, which I haven't done in over a year. I've crocheted myself a wizard's hat for Halloween (standing on its own above, modeled by yours truly below) and I'm knitting a new pair of socks. (I'll try to get pictures of these posted once they're done; I'm only about halfway through sock 1.)


Sometimes you need to dip your toe in other waters to get yourself fired up for your preferred art form, and sometimes you need to come back to the aspect of your art that you love the most.

Here are the rest of my first 8 Inktober drawings, along with some bonus sketches that I'm placing here because Watercolor Wednesday is already going to be overloaded. (September was a good painting month for me, it seems.)











A comic about my friend Stuti, who uses puns the way others use memes.

Panel 1: "So how would you deal with a gym-goer caught w/marijuana?
Panel 2: I guess I'd . . .
Panel 3: Weed them out.
Panel 5: This is Stuti. Stuti uses puns in job interviews. Be like Stuti. Spread light and laughter.

One last thing to say. I (finally) finished my NaNo novel from 2 years ago, There's No Place Like Home? It's a cyberpunk-ish retelling of The Wizard of Oz and I'm so glad that it's complete after wallowing in the mires of my to-be-done files while I finished edits for Albion Academy and wrote Albion Apparent. It's going to need some work to be *done* but draft 1 is step 1. On to other things (in this case, finishing "Paper and (T)horns"). I won't be doing NaNo this year, mostly because I have found it does not help me as much as it should in my goal of finishing manuscripts and it tends to pop up when I should be working on other things (which is why TNPLH? wallowed for almost 2 years). However, I know many people who love NaNo and I am ready to cheer them on!

So, how do you keep your creative bucket full? Are you doing Inktober or another drawing challenge? What's the most useful thing you've found to keep your drive strong?

Top 10 Tuesday: Scary Characters

Before we dive into this month's Top 10, I want to share a couple pieces of fan art created one of my betas for the Albion books. I'm very excited to share them with you because who doesn't love seeing characters they've written inspire others to create something?

Robin from Albion Academy (Source)

Merlin and Robin in Albion Apparent (Source)You can check out more of Meltintalle's art on her Tumblr.

Okay, back to the subject at hand.

I know that "scary" is a subjective word, so let me clarify: these are characters that have, at one time or another, frightened me. Most of them were just frightening when I was a child (in some cases, specific incidents when I was a child), but all of them still have something unsettling about them even now.


The Headless Horseman Source
I'm thinking in particular of the version from Disney's animated adaptation of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (which was first released as part of the package film The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, but which I knew as its own movie thanks to VHS). The sequence at the end where Ichabod flees a demonic-seeming rider with a sword and a flaming jack-o'-lantern head was one of the scariest things I'd seen when I was young; still, that didn't stop me from watching it several times a year.

Gmork
The Nothing's agent in The Neverending Story is a werewolf named Gmork. Although given a bit more significance in the book, the film's version had the added creepiness factors of glowing green eyes and animatronics that looked almost like claymation. This guy, along with the wolves from Beauty and the Beast and the werewolf from Dr. Terror's House of Horrors, gave me a healthy aversion for all things lupine for many years.

Asmodeus Yeah, that's a bit nightmare-ish (Source)
Asmodeus is an adder who slithers through Mossflower in the first Redwall book, repeating his name and calling his victims to him with a hypnotic voice. I have to blame the animated TV show that adapted Redwall for this one (see below). Though the animation leaves something to be desired nowadays, the voice acting is still creepy as heck. When I read the book, I could only hear that voice (David Hemblen, who voiced Magneto in the '90s X-Men show).

Not so scary to look at (Source)Dracula Source
By the time I actually saw a film version of Dracula (much less read the book), the whole "I vant to zuck your blooood!" joke had taken away any significance for the idea of a vampire. At least, you would think it would have. But the story of a man who can so completely deceive society about his true nature still kept me glued to the screen and the page.

Pryrates Art by Henry-Jekyll on DeviantArt (Source)
I talked about this guy a little while back when I shared a watercolor I painted of him. He's cruel, cunning, and vindictive as the devil. He has no qualms about killing people and sacrificing whole kingdoms in his quest for knowledge and power. Avoid him if you can (which, if you're in Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, is unlikely).

Mr. Dark
SourceMr. Dark is the leader of the evil carnival in Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes and he is chilling in his malice and his pursuit of Will and Jim. The scene that stands out most when I think of Mr. Dark is when he is questioning Will's father on the street, while the boys hide in the storm drain beneath their feet. As Dark grows more impatient with Mr. Halloway's question-dodging, Dark digs his fingernails into his palms--which are tattooed with Will's and Jim's faces. It's a harrowing scene that will not leave the mind, and Jonathan Pryce brought it fully to life in the 1980s film adaptation (which Bradbury himself wrote the screenplay for).

McLeach "I didn't make it all the way through third grade for nothing."

In other words, kids, STAY IN SCHOOL.
(Source)
One of the lesser-known Disney villains, McLeach is one of the few to actually show up in my nightmares. Though I never put it into words as a child, I think he was scarier than the likes of Maleficent or Scar or Ursula for the simple fact that he was fully human, and his only goal was to make more money by killing endangered animals. He didn't want power or fame or the kingdom. And he was willing to kill a child to keep his operation secret from the authorities. His cheerful singing of "Home on the Range" as he carts Cody back to his lair and "You Get a Line, I'll Get a Pole" as he taunts the crocodiles with a bound Cody are still unsettling.

Hexxus SourceThe spirit of destruction and pollution from FernGully: The Last Rainforest, Hexxus is on the list for the simple fact that at the start of his introductory song (thanks for the singalong nightmares, Tim Curry) Hexxus appears as a skeleton climbing out of the sludge. Some people talk about Curry's Pennywise from IT scarring them for life, but really Hexxus is as creepy a villain you could ask for in animation.


Gollum SourceGollum isn't typically considered a scary character. Pitiable, perhaps creepy, but not that scary.

Tell that to the preteen version of me who decided watching the animated version of The Hobbit in a dark bedroom. Gollum is now the scariest thing on the planet. Goodbye. Thanks for playing. (This impression did not improve when The Fellowship of the Ring came out, because they kept Gollum in the dark except for his eyes. Thanks, Peter Jackson.)


The Old Man from "The Tell-Tale Heart" Source
Two things to clarify: This is my favorite short story ever and I know the old man is the victim. However, there is an animated version of the story from 1953, narrated by James Mason, that is quite eerie. The literature textbook that first introduced me to this story featured screenshots from that film, including the one above, and that image would not get out of my head for years afterward.

If you're interested in seeing the short film in totality, here it is:



So who are some of the scariest characters you've encountered?

Monday Musings: In Autumn, Creativity Abounds

When cool weather hits, the air turns crisp, the wind smells like leaves and hickory smoke, and pumpkin spice- and apple-flavored everything hits the stores, my time of the year has arrived.





And that time of year brings with it a surge in my creative drive. At least, most years it does. Last year, I hit my favorite time of the year and felt drier than ever when it came to making anything--writing, drawing, needlework, you name it. I did cross stitch a Narnia sampler for Samwise's bedroom, but that was about all I did. (And if I'm honest, preparing for Samwise's arrival and adjusting to the lack of sleep afterwards account for a lot of my lack of creativity this time last year; stress can kill your creativity like that.)

But this year.

This year, I've finished a draft of Albion Apparent, I'm working on the ending of There's No Place Like Home?, I'm doing Inktober, and my brain is trying to figure out where to squeeze in some knit and crochet projects (something I haven't done in well over a year).

Happy fall, y'all.



Is there a time of the year your creativity kicks into overdrive, or do you have smaller ebbs and flows in that area? What are your favorite things about this time of year (or are you more of a summer person)? Let me know in the comments!

Saturday Snippets: The End of Albion Apparent

Yes, I have reached the end of Albion Apparent, and it is in the hands of beta readers even now. (If you would like to be one of those beta readers, just drop your email in a comment and I'll send it to you!) Here are your final glimpses into the second book of the Albion Quartet. Tune in next month for some snippets from other things I'm working on.




“What have Oberon’s hopes to do with you, grey sister?” Grandmother’s voice did not overpower Darity’s in the way a bombastic politician will drown out an opponent. Instead, it slipped around the chamber like a strand from a web, throwing out more threads of itself until the entire room was subjected to its will. “You are not his vassal, that his hopes and fears should rule your own. Nor are you his ally, except in times of war, and let us pray that war is far from us.”

Darity’s hands stilled. “Do you mean that the Merlin we have foreseen will not be responsible for—”

“He will be what he will be, child. Do you suppose our destinies are woven by so fickle a Weaver that this simple choice can throw them all awry?”

“I have seen gods slain for smaller choices,” Darity whispered.

***


Spork spotted the golem lumbering up the stairs behind me and shouted, “Look out!”

I caught her wrist before she could cast a spell. “Easy. It’s with us. Spork, meet Bright Eyes.”

“Bright Eyes?” she asked.

“Names can wait. Running cannot,” said the golem.

“Amen to that,” said Spork.

***
“I Name you nightmare,” I hissed, holding the feeling of waking to safety in my own bed foremost in my mind. “I Name you daydream.” I kept up the rhythm, timing the words to my movements, climbing up the rough wall of the cavern like a dancer adjusting his movements to match his stage. “You are cobweb and sleep dust. I Name you fading and forgetting. I Name you the dusk before the dawn.”

***
I wondered, not for the first time, how much of Merlin’s destiny had been tied to my own. Not woven as the threads of fate were naturally, but tied like two strands of yarn being patched into the same work. My sisters—and Darity in particular—were going to get an earful from me when this business was finished.




Thanks for reading!

Monday Musings: Finishing the First Draft and What Comes Next

As of last night, the first draft of Albion Apparent is complete! The last month has been a rush of finishing chapters and interludes with a speed I haven't had most of the year. It's immensely satisfying to reach this stage with a book.



So what's next?

For me, I'm taking the next month or so to work on things other than Albion. The book is set to go to beta readers, after which I'll take their comments and use them to draft a better version of Albion Apparent. My hope is to spend October finally hammering out the last chapters of There's No Place Like Home? and maybe even finishing "Paper and (T)horns". I'm also planning to try Inktober, a month-long drawing challenge similar to NaNo but for drawing instead of writing.

This also means that this Saturday's snippets post will be the last for Albion Apparent. (I will still post snippets of what I'm working on in the interim.)

For you, my friends and readers, this means that we're one step closer to having Albion Apparent off my computer and into your hands. *insert happy dance here*

However, if you want more of Albion before Albion Apparent is released in its final form, there is hope! If you would like to read this first draft and provide feedback, send me your email. (Comments on the blog are moderated, so if you leave your email in a comment and don't want it made public, just say so and I'll delete the comment after I send you the book.)

Until next week, happy reading!

ThrowBook Thursday: Narnia Audio (Part 1)

This month's ThrowBook Thursday is a sequel of sorts to July's post. My reread/relisten of the Narnia series has continued (with quite an odd reading order, on which more in a moment), though I have dropped the BBC Radio adaptations after being thoroughly underwhelmed by their version of The Silver Chair. As I've gone through the audio books and Focus on the Family Radio Theatre versions of the books, I noticed that I was ranking each against the others, so I thought I'd offer my thoughts on them in that light.

First off, I am still only partway through the series. I have listened to (in this order): The Silver Chair, The Horse and His Boy, Prince Caspian, and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader*. In each case, I listen to the HarperCollins audio book and then the FotF radio version (with the BBC version thrown in for SC). Secondly, I'm ranking the audio books, but including any relevant thoughts on the FotF versions, as my biggest comments there tend to be how much David Suchet's Aslan bothered me (or not).
Of these four, here are my rankings:


4. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader read by Derek Jacobi

I expected to love Derek Jacobi's reading, but it didn't hold up for me, especially following three such splendid narrators as he did. My main complaints are that his voices for Lucy and Reepicheep are just dreadful (his is the worst Reepicheep of the lot, being far less noble-sounding than Lynn Redgrave's and even squeakier than the radio version). His Aslan is also not as good as the other narrators' (this is typically the voice that can win or lose me on a Narnia reading).



3. Prince Caspian read by Lynn Redgrave

Usually one of my least favorite books, I was impressed with how much I loved this version this time (like my memory of Northam's Silver Chair, my memory of Lynn Redgrave's narration was worse than the actual experience). A friend remarked to me a while back that Redgrave's quiet reading fit perfectly with the narrative of Narnia waking again to life and magic, and listening to this book on the car sound system versus through headphones allowed me to enjoy that aspect more this time. Redgrave does remarkably well with the male voices in the book, and astounded me with the fact that hers is the Reepicheep I now love most. She captures the smallness of his size and the largeness of his courage and valor. Her Aslan is acceptable.



2. The Silver Chair read by Jeremy Northam

I covered this one two months back in another ThrowBook Thursday, but suffice it to say that I was pleasantly surprised this time to find that I actually enjoyed Northam's Puddleglum, which had been my chief complaint before. This may become one of the Narnia books I most want to listen to because of Northam's skillful narration all around. (His Aslan begins a bit iffy but finishes strong.)



1. The Horse and His Boy read by Alex Jennings

It may be no surprise that this is at the top of the list, but I really wasn't sure which of the two (this or Silver Chair) would win out in the end. The fact that this is my favorite Narnia book helps, but Jennings is an excellent reader and does a fine job of handling Aslan's scenes. (I loved his reading of Shasta's encounter with Aslan, my favorite scene in the book, and *almost* loved the FotF version of the scene; Suchet almost got it perfect, without his usual odd inflection on the words, and then threw some of that in at the last moment and brought me crashing out of the scene.)


If you have listened to any of the Narnia audio books or FotF radio adaptations, what did you think? Do your rankings match mine? Tell me all about it below!


* I will cover the last three books next month. You may be surprised to find that adding those three in will change where some of these four land on the list.

Monday Musings: Learning from Your Art (and Your Mistakes)

I said last Wednesday that I didn't think I'd post my painting of the four sisters of the seasons because I'd ruined it. Then I wondered whether this was just me defending my wounded pride.
As I looked over the painting later that day, I decided that yes, I was defending my wounded pride, but I was also cutting myself off from fully admitting that I had made the mistake in the first place and needed to learn something from it.
Sometimes with art, no matter the medium, you will screw something up. But whether you do that or not, every piece -- every painting, every poem, story, novel, drawing, film, or song -- is going to teach you something about how to make your art. Maybe it will be something not to do next time (like add pen to your painting) or maybe it will be something you need to push further or play with more (like blending the colors in the autumn queen's dress). Whatever your art form, don't close yourself off to the lessons your art is trying to teach you.
Those lessons are there for a reason.
Now, go make some art.

The painting that never was

Watercolor Wednesday: Sun, Moon, and Fan Art

Welcome to another edition of Watercolor Wednesday! I've been doing a lot of painting in the last couple of weeks, thanks to some inspiring reads and some inspiring posts from friends. On to the art!

First up, there's a postcard of a beach scene that was primarily a chance to try getting the salt texture right. I finally realized with this one that I wasn't getting enough water on the page for the salt to properly absorb the water and paint and leave this lovely texture behind.



I call this piece "Freckles in the Sun" and I have to admit I loved playing with the spatter look. I used a lot of wet on dry with this one (something I've been advised I might do too much of) but I mixed in some wet on wet as well (which is where the softer colors of the hair, dress, and face come in). Aside from the "freckles", my favorite part of this painting is the way the facial details came through. I might come back to this character at some point.





This was one of my failed attempts with the salt texture. (In fact, I'm not sure you can even see the small spots of texture at all.) I did get a nice midnight blue mixed here though.




This painting is a fan art attempt at the painting from the beginning of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I'm fairly pleased with the way it turned out, but I think I'll try it again with more wet on wet technique.




Is it still fan art if the characters are your own? I liked the idea of seeing some of the Albion Apparent characters as playing cards, so here are Bryn, Mortimer, Merlin, and Robin in some basic playing card styles.





A moonlit beachscape postcard, I tried some more grassy texture here. I didn't do much with salt texture, but I did play with white splatter for stars again.





Possibly my favorite moon-themed piece of late, this is a Hunter's Moon in a cloudy night sky. I didn't go as dark with the background this time, and I think the moon would have come out better if I'd let the sky layer dry more completely before adding the moon. (The color was much more orange before I painted it, and it looks a little too brown now.) Even so, I'm happy with this one, and I got to play with salt texture and the effect of dropping water into drying paint a little.





This is a fan art piece of Pryrates, the red priest and secondary villain of Tad William's original Osten Ard trilogy, Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. I still suck at trying to get arms to look natural in perspective like this, but I like the effect of the eyes and nose being so densely painted compared to the paleness of the face.



There's another piece that I realize I failed to take a photograph of that features four sisters inspired by the fairy tale "The Snow Queen". I will probably not share that one just yet because I really, really want to redo it. The summer and autumn ladies turned out very well, but spring and winter were flawed at best and I foolishly attempted to add some definition and detail to the autumn queen with an ink pen and instead of helping the painting, it kind of . . . ruined it. So yeah. A repaint is definitely in order.

So that's what I've been up to with my art lately. Have you tried anything new with art recently? Share it in the comments. I'd love to see what you're doing!