Tales and Legends

Sunday, January 27th, 2008 | General, Illustration Friday | 7 Comments

How could I resist this topic!?!? Ok the first thought I had for this was to do “Swan Lake” but that required research for me. I wanted to find the original story. Guess what? The Tchaikovsky ballet IS the original story. There are other iterations that it was based on but otherwise, apparently, that’s that. And it has various different options for endings. This got me thinking about writing a version of Swan Lake someday and i just got carried away. So that got shelved.

Instead, I have done a version of Elaine, also known as “The Lady of Shallott.” Here she is looking out her tower window as Launcelot comes, by chance, to Astolat. I was thinking I was going to regret painting it in low-res but there are enough things I’d want to change on it if I were doing it “for real” that I’d have to do a bit of it over anyway (like run her braid down her back instead of over her shoulder and out her armpit. oh well). I started a version of this story about 10 years ago so I didn’t have to do the research. Someday, maybe, I’ll actually finish writing my version of this story, but for now, I leave you with Tennyson:

Elaine the fair, Elaine the loveable,
Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat,
High in her chamber up a tower to the east
Guarded the sacred shield of Lancelot;
–LANCELOT AND ELAINE by ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

Plain

Monday, January 21st, 2008 | General, Illustration Friday | 1 Comment

My first thought on this topic was to draw a “plain vanilla” cake. And I, um, went from there. Not totally thrilled with this one but I’m trying not to edit too much and just go with it.
Also, I’m having some trouble with monitor calibration. Can anyone tell me if this illustration looks either too yellow or too red? Thanks!

Stitch

Sunday, January 13th, 2008 | General, Illustration Friday | 8 Comments

It has been so long since I did Illustration Friday. I’ve been spending almost all of my illustrative energy working on the same book which I hope to have finished as soon as possible. I keep having all these ideas I want to work on but can’t for now. In the meantime, I am having fun playing with weights of B pencils and loosening up my drawing a bit. For a warm-up today, I indulged myself in doing an Illustration Friday assignment because I woke up thinking about it. I was originally only going to post the pencil sketch. I did it all in #2 – no B pencil on this one – and I actually missed the B weights! I’m actually pleased about that! On a whim, I threw a bit of color on it and I think it looks better than just the pencil sketch.

Happy 2008 everyone!