My first (and probably last) World of Warcraft Commission

Commissioned by a friend of mine as a random gift for a friend of his.

Disclaimer: I have never played World of Warcraft and any thing I have rendered wrong is entirely due to my ignorance and not spending enough time researching the "gear" on the 'net.

Commission was for the character - a gnome mage, fishing with otters. I was giving references of gnome mages, the character, and how fishing looks on WoW. I was not, alas given references for the otters and only found the WoW style otters after I had inked them in. Man, the WoW critters are cute! I based the background on a New Zealand swamp forest.

I hope the intended recepient likes it.
(And isn't also a secret watcher of my blog, but that seems highly unlikely).

Based on my current commission rates, for a piece like this I would normally charge NZ$36 

(6x4 inches, 1 main character + 2 additional chars + complex background).

Just in case anyone is thinking of commissioning me.

Introducing Niamh

Niamh is not a new character - she was first "conceived" around 1996 as the shape-shifting Assassin for the Gods (then called "Nemesys") and then later reinvented in 2005 with a somewhat more extraordinary background. She had now been reinvented AGAIN in 2013 with the same extraordinary background but with a few macabre twists.

I am writing her story for an anthology on "Reflections" that the Christchurch Writers' Guild will be releasing early next year (probably) and that I am compiling/editing.

Niamh isn't totally human, as you may have guessed - she was created with the life force of an owl, but she is intelligent, observant, silent of foot and somewhat aloof in her thoughts. She does not give love, nor take love, easily. Her story beyond her childhood (which I am writing now) is not fully developed, but I envisage her as being a sort of immortal being charged either with assassinating, or saving, specific individuals that will have a strong influence on the shape of the future. In line with a dream last night, I think she may be preparing for the encroaching apocalypse - an unknown threat that will obliterate a large percentage of the human population. She, along with other chosen immortal individuals (not all of them shape-shifted animals), are known as the Brethren of the Phoenix and it is their task to prepare the survivors to rise from the ashes of humanity.

This may, actually, tie in somewhat with my Furritasia stories - which would be a really exciting prospect.

Art for Ylangylang

Tonight I chose to get another one of my ATC trades done. The trader in this case was YlangYlang, aka Cananga Oderata of Deviantart. As you can see she is a very talented artist indeed.

This is her "Cacao Frog" character. First I drew the one on the right, but wasn't too happy with it, so the one on the left was rustled up n the back - making my first properly double-sided ATC in years.

And this is Jeremy Anathol, a coloufrul and flamboyant parrot with a taste for shiny things. Because I made him red, and scanners don't work well with red (or mine never have), he looks a little garish, but I think I did a good job with the pose and the movement in this piece.

Children's Literature

I am running another reading group at present and every single book nominated was a children's classic. As I have just completed my final illustration, I thought it time I shared them here:


Max frolics with a Wild Thing in "Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak
Mr Tumnus parades towards you, umbrella, parcels and tail in hand. He's stepped straight from the pages of "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" by CS Lewis.


The last free unicorn screams as the Red Bull comes charging towards her in "The Last Unicorn" by Peter S Beagle.


A Cloud man has failed to hail on the peaches parade, as it skips under the rainbow and away, in "James and the Giant Peach" by Roald Dahl.
And Arriety writes in her diary from "The Borrowers" by Mary Norton.

My nominated title was "Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH". I should re-read and illustrate it myself, actually. Jolly good book!

Art this week

I've not been updating as much as I should which is probably a relief to some of you. Anyhow, here's a bit of an art-dump from the last week or so:

More 13 min (or so) birds. These were done some time ago - I even had to get the book out of the library again because I couldn't recall the second species. But that's all good cos now I have it for another 3 weeks or so:

Roadrunner, Great Argus Pheasant and Maleo.

And as many of you know, I have been using my mother (and father's) address to collect most of my mail for the last year or so. She is always delighted at the exciting stamps and exotic places I receive packages from, but always a little disappointed that they're not for her. So I thought I would try and enlist the help of my artist friends. I had an overwelming response, with (so far) 12 people offering to make cards or other gifts for my mum. Since I am intending to repay each and every one of them (an experience that will be somewhat expensive in the postage lines, but well worth it), I have designed a "thank you" atc to make prints of:


A RAK for someone I have never traded with nor, I believe, actually spoken to. So I imagine this would be something of a surprise! She collects dinner bells and needs a bit of cheering up.


And lastly, two for the Summer PAT:

A Muppet - my interpretation - of Rowlf. And my take on Icekat, a sexy anthro kitty.

Lovely art, but you can't see it ^^

I've finished up the second part of my Secret Santa "small" package. Alas, because the recepient could stumble upon this blog and the picture is very definitely for her (it has her name on it, for goodness sake!), I can't share it.

But it's cute, very cute. I've been designing altered cds recently. Using a similar technique to my early Character Trading Cards. Firstly I draw a head and shoulders portrait onto my sketch paper and then I colour it, cut it out and mount it on card. Then I cover the cd with a piece of printed scrapbook paper, cut to size (and stuck on with double-sided tape cos nothing else will stick to cds, except maybe superglue which I won't go near) and stick the card-mounted character onto that. This gives a neat 3d effect that also has bits sticking over the edges.

I'll be able to show these off at the end of June, so if you are interested in acquiring one, please let me know. For now all you're getting is a sneak preview.


I also have a grand idea on how to display my inchies.

Today I also went in search for goodies to add to the Secret Surprise parcels. Alas, no NZ bookmarks to be found. We had some neat ones at work but with the refurbishment we're not quite sure where they've got to. Consequently, I am thinking of making my own. I did manage to purchase some cute pencils though, and I have some starburst candy. Add a couple of chocolate somethings, a bookmark and a few other goodies (I shall see what I can find) and they're good to go.

Also, a customer today was urging me to finish my story because she seems to think (Without having read it, or knowing its plot or anything about it, even its name) that getting published is easy. Her daughter is writing a book. Inspired by "Twilight". In a similar style. I dread to think. Have given her my email address in the hope I might get to read it, as I love critiqueing work even if some people won't talk to me now...

A Low Art Day

Not a great deal has come out of my pens today - or yesterday for that matter. I have been too frustrated trying to draw someone's cat character correctly (third attempt and I think I've suceeded).

Anyhow, here's two more of the "In the Style" of cards.

The first is Luvloz. She was a bit of a trickyone because her style is more realistic and she does not tend to delve into recurring stylisms - like my suns or Adriayna's swirly trees. After poking through her archives, sending her an email and poring over the cards I own of hers, I decided to try more to capture her colouring style than her actual artistic style. So here we have Astaria with a Vasa Parrot. She uses watercolour pencils, and thus so have I. The bird feather details were somewhat copied from a picture of a rosella in her archive. The 3/4 profile to the piece was suggested by her, however she tends to draw human subjects. I am not so fond of drawing random humans - they need to be specific characters or what not. Also, I kinda suck at them. Also, whilst she comments that her backgrounds tend to be coloured gradients, they actually have better detail than I provided here, at least some of the time!


The second is Katilady. Her gallery shows lots of head/shoulder pieces with long necks and large eyes. She has a tendency to hide the hands (many artists are guilty of this, hands are hard to draw) along with plain colour backgrounds and often text. My art actually looks very little like hers, but that's cos I suck at people. Anyhow, it's based on a photograph of her and the more I look at it the less I like it, so I might attempt it again.

Okay, so I decided to attempt it again:
What do you think? Better? Worse? Who cares? Let me know!

So, all up, not a very productive two days.

Here's the last artist I need to try and replicate the style of: Crafter
If anyone can offer me suggestions on how I can do that, please do! She's good at landscapes - but I'm not sure I could even try that (my landscapes look very dinstinctly like MY landscapes) and most of her pieces seem to be beautiful realism, without recurant features.