Fabelwald: Fremde the Strange

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fremde

Here is a paint of one of the characters in The Mythic Forest.

Fremde the Strange, a self-exiled hermit, was once called Rikard when he lived among other humans.  He is also called Stranseir by the Elves, and Prexnos by the Faeries… all names that translate as “the strange and curious one.”

He turned away from his own kind, fleeing what he saw as humanity’s ignorance and cruelty, and wound up living in the wild.  There, he met an Elf, a forward thinker who set out to prove men were just as capable and deserving of magic as his own race, and who bound magic to Fremde via tattoos of spells and runes.  These tattoos had the unintended effect of further ostracizing Fremde… the superstitious humans found him frightening, and the elitist Elves saw him as a fraud, a cheap parody of themselves.

It was the faery folk however, who knew his heart and chose him for an important task…

https://www.createspace.com/4461608

 

Book Proofreading

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torches

I have nearly finished reading my novel in long sessions to get a feel for continuity and pace and all that fun stuff, and though I had reviewed it a million times for grammar, word choice, etc., I still find tiny things to change.  My biggest pet peeves are the occasional instances of “I used that word too much in the last few paragraphs!”.   So off we go to the online thesaurus!

Hmm… thesaurus.

Let me jump off track here.  I remember back before there was an internet, when I was in grade school I needed to buy one of those little “Roget’s (?) Pocket Thesaurus” for class.  I was in the local pharmacy buying an X-Men comic, and on the off chance they had such a thing I asked the cashier where I could find one.  That’s not so strange, is it?  I mean they always put in those racks at the beginning of the school year with packages of pens, pencils, erasers, notebooks, glue, compasses, etc…  So the lady who bore a strange resemblance to the mom of the family of thieves in “The Goonies” :

Says to me : “What’s a fasoris?”

***

Anyways, back to proofreading, I would like to share a little gem I discovered weeks ago when researching medieval life to make sure what I was writing was accurate.  I don’t recall what I was looking for, but somehow came across this Brit’s youtube videos.  He has a wonderful sense of humor, sort of a Hugh Laurie vibe.  He apparently does a lot of historical reenactments, cosplay and so on, so not only has a good historical knowledge but a practical one as well.  He found out (the hard way sometimes) about little details like uses of fire, weapon and armor details, etc.   He mocks the Hollywood versions of things, like sound and lighting effects, which are done simply cause they look or sound cool, but are completely wrong. Of course, the world has grown up seeing these things in movies, and we assume its real.

I had a scene in a castle, and described a scene where the flicker and sputtering of torches created all this tension and mood and yadda-yadda-yadda…. and then I saw the following video and went back and rewrote it all.

In my proof reading last night, I caught the mistake of mentioning “torches” instead of “lanterns” pages after my rewrite.

Which is what got me on this sidetrack.

Or was it a sidetrack?  I was talking about proof reading.

I think.

What the hell did I start this post for?  Ah, never mind.

Just enjoy the videos.

Book Proof is In!

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I finally got the physical proof of the fantasy novel I have been working on since the beginning of the year!

Being of grumpy nature, my first words upon opening the package were “God damn it!”  Ha ha ha.

I was of course referring to how dark the cover printed- most of my painting simply came out black.  As I have griped about in previous posts, what you see in you actual drawing file versus what gets saved when converted to a .jpeg or .pic or .png is a whole other animal.  Over the last year I have searched for clues online on how to get things to come out right, but have had no luck. 

I actually thought my prayers were answered when I had to submit the drawing file to the printer, cause they required a PDF file.  When I saved it as such, I was shocked to see that it looked identical to my drawing file version.  No way! I cried… finally I had found a format that looked like what I had intended.  Well, now I know it looks good, but prints terribly.  The other formats look worse, but print better.

Back to the drawing board (no pun intended, but what the hell, it works).

 

Figure Study: Knight

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Ahhhh…

I have nearly forgotten how to use this site.  Its been that long…

As I have mentioned before, I have been busy working on a fantasy novel, which is finally finished!  I should get my proof in a few days, and if all is well it will be available on amazon (print or electronic).  The series is called “Fabelwald”… book one is “The Mythic Forest”.

Anyhoo, above you see three pencil drawings I did last night at the figure study group.  Its the first time I’ve been there in three or four months.  Same complaints about the poor lighting, LOL.  Its also the first pencil drawing I’ve done in months… I’ve only done two digital paints since then as well (damn that book of mine!)

This costume was not so bad, but overall not so great either.  The model had the biggest complaints… metal parts were pinching and poking him, he repeatedly lost circulation in his hands, the suit somehow got heavier over time, it was too hot, his head and shoulders were crushed under the weight, he could not move, etc.  All this meant he had just one pose available, to last 3 hours (with breaks every 15 minutes to half undress cause of the problems).

This was not so bad for the painters in attendance, but for me it was monotonous.  I pretty much finished in one or two sets of 15 minutes for each detail.  I even ruined the second pic you see cause I kept going back to add contrast in the face, and the final result is worse for it.

I did get to play around with new pencils I had bought long ago but never used.  I especially liked the ‘woodless’ pencils (basically a giant piece of “lead” wrapped in plastic); they stayed pretty sharp even though they are on the soft side, and oh boy did they make such nice BLACK color.  They felt funny to use, gliding on the paper smoothly and “waxy” like a crayon, compared to a more scratchy feeling by regular pencil (I was using slightly textured paper, sort of rough like a business card or construction paper.)

It was funny to watch our host playing the squire and dressing the knight.  Mind you, this is a cheapo, light replica without all the details… no padded shirt, skirt, short on straps and fasteners, etc.  This thing was supposed to be easier to wear than the real thing.  So what sort of grief did a Knight of old go through?  He had to lug around expensive heavy armor, have help getting dressed, and constantly have an armorer repair the suit.  It must have been like owning a Ferrari and having to go off-roading in it every day… cringing with every dent, but telling yourself you’re still special and super-cool.

What must have been the biggest heartache was to be the knight standing next to the first armored soldier taken out by the longbow…. realizing that all that money and a lifetime of training meant squat cause somebody just invented a bow that could shoot through you!

Book Cover 1

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cover 1

Boy, its been a while….

Where have I been the last 3 months?

Let’s see… in Feb. I had some water leaks in the basement, and my free time was eaten by cleaning, tossing damaged stuff, knocking holes in drywall to find the cracks, having them repaired…

March I went to Puerto Rico during spring break week with the wife and kids, it was very nice…

April was Easter stuff at work, doing some big yard work, etc

May, just taking it easy.

number of drawings made: ZERO

I did scribble once or twice, and worked on novel covers (one drawing is at perhaps 40% complete) the other is shown here, perhaps 95% complete (I want to redo her face and punch up the lighting).

What novels you ask?

Last year I toyed with writing a fantasy story to go along with a dozen or so drawings, and actually had a rough outline and perhaps 10 drawings completed or thumb nailed… well, that project sat on the shelf until I finally committed to doing something about it.  I began writing months ago, and because I nit pick, looked at a chapter and thought ‘that needs some explaining’ so I wrote some more… and then that needed explaining, so I wrote some more.

Fast forward to today, the story has stretched to three books between 200 to 300 pages each.  Needless to say I gave up on illustrating it!  The first book will be perhaps 200 pages or so, introducing the “world” and the background of the parents of Dandle and Lion (the kids who are the subject of some earlier drawings posted, which my own kids modeled for).  Book 2 will deal with their preteens, book 3 with their late teens, and then (hopefully) more illustrated works will lead into their adulthood (standard fantasy art).

I am pretty close to finishing the first book, I have maybe twenty pages  I want to add at some parts that I have “yada-yada’d”… then its going thru the draft to punch up word choices, etc.

 

Its been quite an educational experience working on this, but I will go into the details in a later post…

till then…………..