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.

Inked Art Dump

 Thought I'd share some pieces with y'all.

I used to draw horse and equines quite a bit. I've been doing some studying up on them because I wanted to draw characters with equines again (as you'll see below). This is a brooder, a quasi-unicorn from The Legacy Incarnate. They're supposed to have a very similar build as a Friesian horse. I'm working on illustrating different horse breeds, heh.

The vaporous villain Vapor, spewing her ash across the countryside.

Caemorr and Sabra riding north, Caemorr on her brooder stallion Thurr, and Sabra on a gelding named Honey. It's been a long time since I've successfully illustrated a rider on an equine, and I'm pretty pleased with this. I had to research side-saddles for Caemorr, as she prefers a side-saddle due to her right-leg prosthetic.

 “Do you know what the letter says, Hakaan?” Zaenth said, jamming the end of the barrel against Ķervak’s throat. “It says my grandson is DEAD! And your Sabarah is responsible for it!”

This is intended to be an illustration for one of the short stories in The Legacy Incarnate anthology (Book IV.V). 

Thanks for reading!

Goals and BV Excerpt

 I'm starting off this year right: by sitting down and blogging! I have some good stuff to share with y'all.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I had finished drafting Book V of The Legacy Incarnate: Incarnate Truth. However, I kept chewing and chewing on what I had written for the climax and aftermath, really unsatisfied with a lot I had written, and I finally decided to dive back in and add a few more things to round it out. I normally don't do such heavy revision right after drafting, but my mind will be much more at peace once I finish these last touches. Then I'll set the manuscript aside and focus back on E'lsra and the LI anthology (Book IV.V). 

Here's my author goals this year: