via guardian.co.uk
Hmm... maybe I should start looking into this. I particularly love the initial part, where Briggs says, 'Children's books...!? Hadn't got children, didn't want any!' XD
Some illustrations I did for my workplace's new website, all vector work, done in Illustrator. I'm not all that good at cute, it's very hard for me, and takes me way longer than someone with Natural Kyoot tendencies would, but nonetheless, I'm very pleased with how these odd blobbies and co. turned out.
I've also included a couple of the 'sketch versions' of stuff, in case somehow, somewhere, someone is curious. ;)
This week's whimsy courtesy of the fact that I start my taichi classes tomorrow. Guess I'm more excited about it than I thought.
Whozis? 陈洁敏 of course! Doobeedoo.
Gwalchmai. I think. Possibly!
WooOoOoOoOOties. Iz done! And I can go back to random quick sketches next week!
About time too... was getting to that zomgIamsoSICKofthis stage...
I've fiddled with the colour a bit, and I think I like the new version (the third from the left) better than the older ones. -_- If anyone other than my neurotic fiddly self can tell, anyway.
The lionesses were pretty fun. I haven't painted a furry thing in a looooooooooooooooooong while, so it was great to re-explore rendering fur with the shiny new capabilities of Pshop CS4.
Wikipedia has this to say about the leanan sidhe (yay for quoting the Intarwebz!):
"The leanan sídhe is generally depicted as a beautiful muse, who offers inspiration to an artist in exchange for their love and devotion; however, this frequently results in madness for the artist, as well as premature death."
A thought I've been kicking around for a while now though, is that the depiction above is a rather unfair one. For one thing, it isn't just inspiration she offers, or at least, it doesn't seem to be. It's both skill and inspiration... and then they die young, her chosen artists. But how good you get as an artist also depends on how much time and care you put into your art - same as any other skillset. In other words, artistic skill (if not necessarily inspiration) is what the artist gets in return for parcelling away chunks of their lives to their muse.
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell mentions something about how it takes most humans 10,000 hours or so to attain a highish level of mastery. That's 10,000 hours of your life you'll never see again.
So what's the leanan sidhe really doing? Stealing the lives of her 'chosen', and dooming them to early splatting? Or is she merely compressing the whole process? Maybe that's the real bargain she offers. ;)
'Listen, puny mortal, you can spend the rest of your life improving your craft, or you can just pay me upfront, now, and I'll give you all the skills that would have accumulated in the time you've just bargained away. And I'll throw in some inspiration as a plus!'
...suddenly she doesn't look all that evil anymore.
>.> Especially since her way is the easy way out. You don't get to procrastinate your life away instead.
Having finally accepted that it's unlikely, in this life, that anyone's going to pay me to paint whatever the Hell I feel like painting...
...I can freely paint whatever the Hell I feel like painting! Woohoo! XD
I know, I know, I should have realised this years ago. What can I say? Nuggets have low (no!) brain content!
And maybe it's better this way, anyway. I never loved print design, and I'm glad I don't do that anymore. But there are aspects of web design work, especially the bits that deal with poking and prodding humans into doing things, without them *realising* they're being poked and prodded, that really appeal to me.
Still... it'll be good to get Inanna, my current sole-completed-piece-for-this-year completed. -_- I miss my weekly free sketches, but I'm too lazy to do them while this project is there staring at me. Yes. One completed piece a year seems to be all I can do. And we won't count those 3 years that WoW ate. Prolific, that's me!
I seem to have spent most of the weekend frolicking and sleeping. -_- Didn't do as much as I hoped.
Was supposed to finish jewellery and wings this weekend. Hah! >.> And no, the jewellery isn't done. Necklace, bracer (or is that bracelet) and her hooked rod thingies still need proper detailing - all I did was put in the highlights.
Alas for lazy nugfaces! >.< Must work moar... moar! :( Need to finish by 15th August.