The Magic of Blending (and Updates)

 Hello everyone. It has been an absurdly long time since updating this. Summer has been crazy busy with so many things!

Writing Projects

I've finished the editing and revision of Book 3 of the Legend of Draconite: E'lsra! I'm assembling the appendix and want to do more interior art for it, and then I will format it and prepare it for publication. I can't give an exact date on the publication, but it will either be by the end of this year or early next year. I have a few illustrations for it already (some of which I've already shared on Xenithar's Lair), and I plan on doing more, possibly in a variety of my art styles.

The Legacy Incarnate anthology (Book IV.V) has been on the backburner, although I've done some editing in it already. For the cover of the anthology I want to do a full color piece, not just a single-color palette like the other books. 

Side Projects

 I don't know what happened to March, but I found myself pursuing some different side passion projects so I didn't get burned out on my main passion projects.

It's funny being an artist. Things can draw you in different directions, and then you come back and complete something huge and beautiful. I'm not sure how I would function under a professional deadline when it comes to my writing and art. Would it make me more productive, or less? Would my quality go up or go down?

Drawings and Goals vs. Artistry

I love details. I love planning out the details in things like meetings, administration, programming, etc., but then I come to my creative writing and art, and I tend to be a lot...looser on things. I'm not used to setting writing and art goals, even though I can see the progress I'm making on them already. I suppose that when I meet a goal, a part of my mind gets a little lazy and says "What now?" Will I keep the same passion for the written and visual storytelling? Or will this make me burn out faster?

Well, so far I've maintained a passion, although I'm getting a little burned out. Usually in that case I need to take a day or two to rejuvenate before diving back into an artistic endeavor. 

Here is a digital painting of a city that features in one of the Legacy Incarnate short stories. I'm learning to do landscape paintings, and this was a fun exercise.

This next one I'm particularly pleased with. I needed to practice drawing snow leopards for a short while before I could get the tundra leopard's head correct, as they are similar in appearance. These two characters appear in the last short story in the Legacy Incarnate anthology. My goal is to create at least 2 illustrations for each short story.

Will I post every illustration that will be in the books? No, but I still feature them here or there on Xenithar's Musings.