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.

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!