Finished Thorne Scratch!

Since I started this monster back in February...It's officially been a year and six months, whoot!

My first serious acrylic painting, and my first of a human. One day, cover art dream job. One day.

Lessons learned:

• I hate canvas texture. With a fiery burning hate. Next painting will be on illustration board.
• Nervous about making rock texture? Just jump in! Oh the adrenalin...
• When it been a year and there is NO way that you're going to be able to replicate that skin tone, break out the water color pencils. They smudge under a damp fingertip and are quasi erasable.
• Also go for drawing red vines! And tattoos!
• Fineliner inking the vines really made them pop and helped define the thorns, which were disappearing into the background.
• Mixed media for the win!

The book, Elf Home, is now out both on Amazon and Baen. Go read it, it's EXCELLENT. Also, this painting is a giant pun, since the character's name is Thorne Scratch on Stone. *ducks flying rocks*

The beautiful stock is provided by the following:

Woman by Jagged-eye, who can also be found at DMAC Studios
Stone texture by ShinimegamiStock



Disclaimer: Thorne is owned by and copyright Wen Spencer. As is anything Tinker-Windwolf-Elfhome related. I just visit, a lot. More than I should. Maybe I should rent an apartment...

Elemental Eggs

Confession: I'm a total nerd. One of my favorite shows is Avatar: the Last Airbender. I'm also into resist dyeing. So egg dyeing this year got a bit...creative ;)

Recently, I've seen several tutorials on making masking tape stencils. that artist woman has a good tutorial, though I tend to sketch directly onto the wax paper and then put my tape on top of it. However, with my method, you have to be very careful about mirroring (you'll see why in a second). I never thought about using masking tape on eggs because I usually dye by soaking or boiling them. Then I saw Melissa's post on No. 2 Pencil about making super bright (though not water-fast) eggs by rolling them in vinegar, then pouring on food coloring. It sounded like a great technique to try with the masking tape, and if they didn't turn out perfect, then I could still eat them!

Wet eggs with tape on

Unfortunately, I accidentally put the tape on the wrong side of the wax paper, so the designs are reversed. Impossible to tell with the Earth Kingdom coin, and it's not very noticeable with the Air Nomad swirls or Fire Nation flame, but the poor Water Tribe wave and moon...

The wrinkles in the tape made for a cool batik look, in my opinion. Though if you want crisp lines, I recommend a resist that can be painted on or using very small pieces of tape.

I also recommend wearing gloves!

The dye took a few days to scrub off completely...

All in all, a delicious, nerdy, artistic project using local, free-range, cage-free eggs!

WIP Art Nouveau Bast

Long time, no post! Let's just say that I got a full time job and found Tumblr. Baaaaaaad combination for my attention span. (I'm also Flame Point over there if you want to brave the crazy world of Tumblr).

I was in an art slump for a while and decided to force myself out of it by coming up with a way to grade myself on effort and work on faces and backgrounds (I'm highly grade motivated, just to let you know how huge a nerd I am). I managed to get fifteen faces done and three backgrounds before my little Murphy-inspired personality quirk set in: If I force myself to do an art project, I will suddenly be flooded with art inspiration...for things that are not that project. If I make myself stay on course, I will loose all drive and make cruddy art, but if I jump on that rogue art idea, I will be driven and motivated and get it done. Thankfully, though I have a hard time self motivating, I can work through the lack of drive and still make good art for other people, otherwise I never would have made it through college.

Now that I don't have a GPA steering my every move and I have to be my own motivation, I'm trying to make this flaw into a feature. When I get a crazy art idea, I do it. Of course now instead of no drive, I have a webcomic storyboarded but stalled in the character design, eight posts written for an environmental blog idea, a sample sketch and a half for a great history blog's Indiegogo, and two finished art pieces. Creativity overload!

I thought I would share some WIP shots I took of the piece that took me out of my slump and cat-apulted me back into drive (I couldn't resist):

 Materials: toned card stock, mechanical pencil, Faber-Castile pens, watercolor, white gel pen, white conte pencil, black and white Prismacolors.

Stock art: a vintage postcard

The jewelry is based on Victorian/Edwardian Egyptian Revival jewelry, so not ancient but it is period for Art Nouveau.