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.

Lemya and Passiflora

Recently I have been doing some large pieces - 8x8 inches, to be precise. Most of these have been for a "circle journal " swap. But it's not really a circle journal - because the actual journal is not being circulated - it's more just a pages swap.

My partner for January was Mrs Alderman, aka Lunathewhitewolf. She submitted a selection of characters to choose from and it took me some time and a few rough sketches to settle on the two I most liked. I chose the two most "natural" of her characters.

This differs in my earlier journal pages because the other two were 16x8 inch pieces that I cut in half. These ones are two separate and unrelated pages.

The first was Lemya, a mermaid-esque type character.

This is one of my only attempts to show sun rays slipping through water, and alas I do not think I was particularly successful. It is also the very first time that I have drawn a sunken ship - thus I have technically already completed one of my 2012 Artistic Goals. Lemya can communicate with sea creatures.

The second character is called Passiflora. She has an affinity with plants and can make them grow with her touch.

NaNoWriMo 2011, Day 6

Wordcount: 1,400
Total Wordcount: 14,498
Percentage: 29%

Today was the first day* I did not reach the requisite 1665 words. Not a big deal since I am well ahead on the wordcount (since if I were just doing the requisite minimum/day I would have achieved only 9900 by now).

So, why did I not succeed, may you ask?

Well, the plot's a little slow moving at the moment. I'm basically just writing scene-stuff and the "journey" and I'm also pretty tired. In one story thread, Aurelia and six other lemurs (including Constance, her rival) are traipsing across the Tsingy to visit a refugee camp. In the other story thread, Rakoto is about to be shown the underbelly of Narivo by his tutor, Mephistopheles. Mephi's species as not yet been identified - I wonder if any reader would have noticed that? There's hints and vague descriptions of parts of him (his fur, his fingers, his ears, his eyes) but I have never yet said "the aiay".

Today was also the first day back at work after my week holiday. Now, sundays are always quite tiring - as there are only ever 4 staff members on sundays and although we are not a particularly busy store, sunday can be busy - usually depending on the weather. Today the weather was actually beautiful, but we still have quite a few customers.

Also, sunday is also the day the new My Little Pony episode is uploaded.
Yeh, I'm a MLP fan.

And lastly, my mother rang. I can't write and talk at the same time, but I can draw and/or colour, so I finished up this image of Snoshti:

She's a Hedge Imp from the most excellent "Dreamdark: Blackbringer" by the amazing, the awesome, the imaginative, Laini Taylor.

And here's a random picture of my book cases:

Now mostly organised after the earthquakes - and stacked two deep with the ones in back being piled flat, top to bottom of the shelf. I put the pretty ones in the front!

Anyhow, to bed! Tomorrow i must be up with the birds (5am) because now I'm back at work it's time to get back into the pattern of 1000 words before breakfast.

* except for that day when I deleted about 500 words and then had to use the today's wordcount - yesterday's wordcount to work out my total - I had also written as much I'd deleted.

Big Bunch of Hemlock

I have been collecting artistic renditions of several of my characters, encouraging people to work off of a written description. My faovourite to request at present is Hemlock the goblin.

Here is the description I have been giving people:
"Standing no more than ten inches tall, he rather resembled an upright, naked rat with a pot-belly. His back was hunched, his legs bowed. Dull grey-green scales covered his body. A red tongue flicked across gleaming white teeth." He has spines running down his back and a three-pronged fork at the end of his tail.

And here are the ones I have collected so far:

-

Cards are by:
Kreationkween, Captnklaus, HmmNBird , Ncalkins ("adult" form)
Icekat, Silverhermit, Meow2000, Miss
Moonfairy, Al Fresco Girl, Merlinprincess, Bubblecup

And I have a couple of cards to share:

The final of my "Reading Group" cards for this round - "The Ship that Flew".

And Menanna, a Native American mermaid inspired by this tale here

Mutant Iguana and a pretty bird

For my trade with Donna Quinn. She resides in deviantart and is an extremely talented artist - which makes me wonder why she is willing to trade with me but I am very grateful that she is. To check out her stuff - http://donnaquinn.deviantart.com

Anyhow, like UrsulaV she has a slightly twisted sense of humour and I was trying to come up with something interesting to entertain her.

Her first request was for a "bush bird". Now, for those of you not ornithologically minded, what springs to mind when you hear those two words are the small, innocuous and more-or-less relatively dull birds you see in the woodland. Sparrows, for example, or silvereyes. She mentioned being enthralled by thornbills in her garden, so I decided to draw one of them:
Possibly not the most scintillating of birds - it's not gaudy not weird, but it is rather cute.

Then I thought I might draw an iguana, since I had a neat photograph of one I'd taken in Panewa Zoo.

Somehow it mutated into this:

This is what Hemlock would look like, were I to draw him more realistically and less toonish. What do you think?

For the third one, I might print out one of these characters and colour him in:

They're both gnomes.