Surreal Animal Doodles

First, there was the ten-horned beast. It looked really cool, kind of like a cave drawing or Picasso or something, and I wondered if I could draw other animals in the same kind of style. Would they still look like themselves?

It all went downhill from there.

Those wings were ridiculously hard to design. I drew about five
different variations, trying to make them fit the style,
before I finally settled on these.

Unfortunately, the paper ran out before the left hind leg
got a full hoof. Poor surreal horsey.

I'm actually thinking about making a comic that'll feature more animals and plants of this persuasion. I even know what it'll be about, but I just haven't started working on it yet.

Ney of the Godhand

I drew this as a part of an art/sketch exchange on deviantART, for *Veezibee. The woman in the drawing is Ney, one of the characters that Vee has made up, and who appears as a child in a short comic called Godhand.

This was really interesting to do, as I'd never drawn other people's characters before. I took it as a challenge to stay true to the details that Vee had already established with the kind of precision I'd expect from, say, a cover artist (I spend at least twenty minutes checking and double-checking the original comic to make sure I got the design on the hand done right, which hand it was supposed to go on, and whether it was visible even when not glowing), while also giving my own spin to the character.

Because of my anal sticking-to-the-details-of-other-people's-characters, I purposefully picked a character that Vee was still working on the design for, but that she also had a core idea for. Her sketches of adult Ney show have a unified feel, even if she's still playing around with the details, and she mentioned that she was going for a middle eastern/asian look, so I tried to use those sketches to inform this drawing.

Of course, I wasn't planning on doing this drawing on lined paper. I was going to do it proper, on a sketch pad. The problem was that I had a pile of blank lined paper sitting next to me while I was mulling ideas in my head of how I'd draw Vee, and I started doodling completely by accident. Next thing you know, I found I was a third of a way through the drawing, and it was going in a direction that I really, really liked. When that happens, there's a 90% chance that stopping and trying to replicate that on a different piece of paper will result in complete and total ruin of both drawings, so I decided to finish it.

Ugh, and now I'm all impatient again for Vee to make more comics so that I can find out what happens to Ney and her brother next. The premise of Godhand has hooked me good.

And Then There Were Photos

During this fine November that we had, I took some pictures with my camera. Hier sind sie! :D

We had a rather large dump of snow partway through the month.
This was the aftermath.

This is my baby nephew. He was born not too long after
the Big Snow Dump, but I'm positive the two events aren't related. :P

That white thing in the sky? That's the sun. The clouds were so
thick that day that you could look right at the sun without
hurting your eyes. It was crazy.

Speaking of the sun, this is a sunset. I took the picture while
walking home from the bus stop. Which means it was only
about 4:30. Must be winter.

This post just wouldn't be complete without the creepiest find
of the month. I discovered this a few days ago when I got
home. No one else was in the house, so I had no idea
what the heck I was looking at. Apparently, it's a wig holder.
I'm convinced it's of alien origin.

There you go. My month in a nutshell. Just the nutshell, though. The actual nut part seems to have gone missing. It's okay; it was mostly boring university stuff anyways. :P :)

How was your November?

Power to the Powerless

This picture comes from a scene that will appear in the fifth or sixth book of the fantasy series I'm working on, when a certain character sees that dragon for the first time. The dragon isn't actually that big in comparison to the person, but it appears that way to her, because it is so very powerful and she feels so powerless.

And I really, really want to say more than that, but then I'd be giving spoilers, and that's just not allowed.

Oh! Also, this drawing was done in pencil, and I darkened the lines via my computer. I may colour it at some point, mostly because the perspective is a little wonky right now. It's not incorrect; it's just that it's hard to tell how everything works because it's all just lines at the moment... but I like the lines. So there. :P

From Doodle Thursday: The Two Sides of Forgetting

The beast in the corner represents the inner experience of forgetting, which is not easily understood by others without explanation. The Silent on the bottom represents the external experience of forgetting, which is what people think of when they think of that word.

Basically, it's a contrast between idiosyncratic and stereotypic experiences of the same mental activity.

If I wanted to take the time to improve this, I'd make that Silent look more like it's supposed to, but this is probably rather good, considering that they're aliens from Doctor Who that people forget the look of when they can't see them. :P Here's what they're supposed to look like:

I also doodled a little monster today that I found entertaining. I think I'll call him Ronald.

But back to forgetting: Do you think there's a difference between how you experience forgetting internally, and how the average person forgets? (Yes, I like asking philosophical questions about my doodles. They lend themselves well to that. :) )

Doodle Thursday: A Gentleman Octopus

I learned something very interesting about the octopus today:

Gentleman Octopus is very confused, people. VERY CONFUSED.

In related news, I wanted to show you what the rest of my page of notes looked like, because I was having fun with fractals:

And all those numbers around the big triangle? I was counting the number of right-side-up triforce symbols there were in it.

I'm geeky and I know it!

*bows*

But now I'm curious: What's the correct plural for platypus? And is cacti also the wrong plural for cactus?!? OH THE HUMANITY!

Winter at Its Finest

Nadin is a major character in my fantasy series, and I wondered, if a camera got imported into his world, what kind of picture would he want of himself? Turns out, just before the first book, he was very optimistic about life. This would be a picture of him, standing on a roof somewhere, celebrating such a beautiful winter day.

It was either this or a picture of him laughing, and I really did try that, but it was turning out rather ugly, so I stopped and went with this approach instead. :)

What's interesting is when the happiness of this picture is compared to his theme song:

They seem so odd to me, together like that, and yet I know they're perfect for him.

What do you think? Are you able to get a sense of who Nadin is from these?