"You've all taken leave of your senses."

Remember what I said about art-rust and Starcraft 2? Well, now I have Civ 5, too. My muse is essentially doomed to shrivel up into a raisin when Cataclysm comes out, so to give it a bit of exercise before then...

...Ismial, looking less than amused. And just because I can:

Curios and Trinkets, part the twelfth

Catching up. Brace yourselves for necklace spam!

Twenty Thousand Dead and Counting!

Wholesale slaughter of Alliance forces in the field is but one of her feminine traits.

Sidhe Has Too Much Time on Her Hands

Dug up from the Steamwick Library employee files:

And I felt like scribbling something this afternoon. Not work-safe until I actually draw her some effing armour (for the moment, I think it'd be a bloody shame to cover it up).

I am horribly rusty. I also picked up Starcraft 2 the other day, so the odds of me cleaning off said rust are marginally worse than a snowflake's chance in hell. Whee!

Not dead, but I do have cookies

Yes, I've been neglecting ye olde blog. Generally when I finish a particularly large painting, my muse goes into hibernation for at least a month afterward, and that's been the case.

I did, however, make cookies yesterday morning. These ones, with several exceptions. I did not let the dough sit around to blend flavours, and I most certainly did not wait two days before breaching my supply. I also only filled some of them with jam. I am not a jam person. I like it in very, very thin scrapings on toast, not sugary blobs. In this particular case, I used some seedless wildberry stuff in similarly small amounts, and liked the results. These really need a tart jam to set them off; they'd be sickeningly sweet otherwise. I'll probably make them again next time there's lemon curd around.

Waiting is necessary after you fill them, but a few hours is sufficient for the jam to soften the cookies (the unfilled ones are very crisp and tasty in their own right--more sandy and less melty). I'll have to see if another day does anything.

The spoon-shaping sounds irritating, but it's not (although I may be biased, since I like doing such things). A bit time-consuming, but that just gave me something to do while one batch was baking. It also had the benefit of making them perfectly uniform in size, so I'll never have to guess at the timing (13 minutes) again. An ordinary teaspoon is perfectly serviceable.

If I have not yet implied it, they're pretty damned glorious.

The Xaotician Revisited, part the third

NSFW, as with the previous versions.

On a completely unrelated note, I have a box of vanilla bean latte cookies and am most assuredly not sharing.

Playing God, part the fourth

And like magic, we have mechanymph.

I feel a round of NetHack coming on. Five bucks says I run into a gnome with a wand of death on level 3...

Playing God, part the third

...and this little piggy wasn't going to be anywhere near the focus of the image, so the slackass artist left it in a state of half-paintedness.

Playing God (and catching up)

From a week or so ago, my two current painterly projects:

And some further progress on the mechanymph:

Currently cannot be bothered to take pictures of jewelery, but there are a few new ones waiting in the wings. Beyond that, I managed to singe my shoulders--further proof that the sun is, in fact, trying to kill me--at a wee mediaeval festival. All in the name of looking preposterous, of course...

...despite the fact that I look about as mediaeval as my mother, there. I suppose I could have ad-libbed something about time-traveling aether pirates, but thankfully, no one seemed to notice.

I keep thinking his mic needs a matching chain coif.

And lastly, since I've been working on Tea and Sorcery lately, I leave you with this:

--

“Now,” Mikala said in a low voice, feeling exceedingly awkward as he shifted his burden about, “how do you plan on getting rid of the body?”

“Well, how did you get rid of the one you killed?”

“Would you believe ‘swept up the pieces and put them in the rubbish bin’?”

Lady Kos sighed. “Never mind that, then. Do you know of a place that sells lye at this hour?”

“To a pair of guilty-looking magi carrying a corpse-sized bundle? No.”

Nice kingdom; I'll take it.

I found myself reading a badly-worded lament somewhere out on the grand and stupid internet, regarding elves and how some people don't like what they have "become", because elves should be peaceful, tree-hugging, mellow and dispassionate beings.

Setting aside the fact that 1) similar beings existed in folklore for *quite* some time before Tolkien cooked up his version, and 2) even his elves clearly undertook military training... do you know what happens to societies that are peaceful, mellow, and make a point of avoiding technological progress?

They get mowed down and enslaved by the first expansion-happy, warlike civilization that finds them, that's what--and it's a dull, dull fantasy setting that lacks one of those.

And... construct!

The hair was actually quite relaxing to do. Draw one squiggle, build it up on either side, do another, fill in gaps with little layered arcs, rinse and repeat.

You can see it in its natural habitat (along with some of the other art I did for the site) over at Heart of the Dreaming.

And now, for some extra shinies.

I previously mentioned trying to capture Anaquiel's spirit in one of these; this one is much closer to the mark.

And a beetle. And various kinds of agate, of course.

Deconstruct, Reconstruct

I have a confession to make: I can't draw curly hair. Or at least, I couldn't until this morning.

I'm working on some website goodies for the ever-lovely Myn, and currently this involves lineart of a curly-haired violin player. My initial search for pointers on how to do the hair turned up tutorials on painting (not helpful), and a few that amounted to "lol wavy lines". Not good.

My eventual salvation actually came from a finished picture, namely c85's Miss Murder. Who is, coindentally, one hell of a babe. That is what my painting of Bernadette LaRoux should have looked like.

But anyway. After I was done with the whole ogling thing, I started to take a good look at her hair. A lot of it is built *around* descending wavy lines, but not all--if you look closely, you can see C-shaped strands in rows here and there. Some of it clings in tight ringlets, some of them are looser. The artist added shadows to the parts where each section disappears back into the mass of hair, which is what gives it dimension and makes it seem shiny.

And with those things in mind, I'm taking another crack at this mane of curls. I doubt it's going to look as good as my inspiration, but it sure as hell beats a bunch of squiggles.


On a completely unrelated note, I decided to host a wee contest on DA--namely, do visual art of one of the protagonists of Tea and Sorcery for a crack at winning one of my necklaces. Most people tend to present custom drawings as prizes for such things, but I decided to go with something wearable.

Liquid Light

No, I do not have an excuse. Nor do I need one.

"I didn't sign on for this crap!"

Mikala Quethalis, for those who don't know him too well, is a silver dragon disciple. In essence, this is someone who has a teeny wee bit of draconic blood in the family tree (and knowing silver dragons and mortals, that seemed the most fitting species), who has focused their efforts upon bringing that heritage out.

When I played him in Winter's D&D game, he was just shy of halfway through the process, having grown several fangs and some talons, and developed some exceptionally hard and slightly metallic skin. Nothing too terribly exotic, unless you count having breath that could -literally- kill someone. In Tea and Sorcery, he had grown vestigial wings.

As I've chosen to write it, however, that apotheosis cannot be stopped at a convenient level of pretty.* The vain mage has made his bed and now he's just going to have to lie in it.

Let's not talk about how screwed up that hand was, though.

*It actually did during Tea and Sorcery, but I don't think he'd be terribly happy about that, given the reasons.

Curios and Trinkets, part the eleventh

Before I get on with the shiny objects, I'd like to mention that as of 3:30 yesterday morning, aioli ceased to be a mystic delicacy that I only had in restaurants. This has a lot to do with the fact that aioli is essentially garlic mayonnaise that's wearing Groucho glasses and hoping that no one recognizes it. I ended up just grinding some dried garlic to powder in a mortar and mixing it with some mayonnaise and lemon juice, then leaving it to mellow in the fridge for a few hours. Done.

I'm bordering on will-breakingly tired right now, so do forgive me if I'm a bit laconic about the jewelery.

Labradorite, shell, crab agate, quartz.

I've since added clasps to these. All glass.

More glass.

An attempt at capturing Mikala. I don't think it's going to be possible without an actual dragon, though.

Quartz, if memory serves.

Quartz and imperial turquoise, and some copper beads meant to frame other beads. Turquoise, by the way, is an exceedingly awkward word to type.

The rings spin.

And lastly, something vaguely reminiscent of Miss Nori.

Curios and Trinkets, part the tenth

I think that I am rapidly approaching the point at which I'll be glad when someone buys one of my necklaces more because it's one less piece to deal with than for the money.

...oh, bugger that, I'm already there. Here, have more shinies!

More chrysocolla.

Glass, candy jade, and something I can't identify.

Carnelian, pumice, and crab agate. I've resorted to trying to make necklaces based on the 'essence' of various characters of mine in a bid for inspiration. This was supposed to be Anaquiel, but it didn't quite come out right.

I think what I -really- need to try is Mikala. Goodness knows he'd approve of my new hobby.

Curios and Trinkets, part the ninth

Just a pair of bracelets for the moment. I have a few things to photograph, but this vague dread of going outside to do so.