Monday Post: Baldr drawing + Loki in progress

Pin It Now!

"Loki" in progress...

Happy Monday and here's some of what I've got going. Currently I'm working on Loki's painting. I'm feeling a little behind on this one, but I'm excited about getting that tree to look really good :) I mentioned the story behind this image when I posted the drawing, but the quick version is that Loki is getting some mistletoe to use to kill the beloved god, Baldr.

Speaking of Baldr...

Here's my thumbnail and finished drawing for the Baldr painting:

Baldr is a son of Odin & Frigg, the brother of Thor, and is the god of light and purity. He also has the greatest ship ever built (!) called Hringhorni AND the most beautiful of all halls, Breidablik.

New painting: Nott, bringer of night

Pin It Now!

Here's a painting I finished the about a week ago of Nótt, who is night personified. I have also included the initial thumbnail drawing for the completed painting.

Nott rides across the sky bringing the night with her hair and cape made of darkness and stars. Her skin is dark, and she rides her horse, Hrímfaxi, from whose mane the dew falls. In relation to the Norse godhead, she is actually Thor's grandmother. Day is personified in her son, Dagr.

I posted the sketch for this one a while ago, so I'm glad to finally share the final version of this one. I really enjoyed the horse on this one 'cause I love cool horses!

Troubleshooting Norse gods

Pin It Now! Today I'm posting one that I was doing some fixing up on over the weekend. This is Skadi (pronounced SKA-thee). She is actually a jötunn which is like a Norse giantess, but there's a lot of overlap with the attributes and powers of the regular Norse gods. Anyway, she is basically a goddess associated with skiing, bowhunting, winter, and mountains.

I posted the drawing of just her figure some time ago, but here's the complete drawing, as well as a snippet of the completed painting.

It's harder to tell with the cropped figure, but I was having some size issues with the original drawing because the proportions looked a little off. In Photoshop I reduced the size of the head somewhat (after I had already painted it), and lowered the right arm a little. Something I had to do a lot of little picking at to make everything go well together after changing those size areas a little. Anyway, I feel like it looks more proper now.

I've also been completing Nott, goddess that brings the night to the sky, so I'll probably post something from that next Monday.

:)

Sleipnir again.

Pin It Now!

Here's the latest.  Had fun working on this one over my Thanksgiving break.  Here is Sleipnir, Odin's 8-legged horse.  I posted a different take on painting this one some months ago, but I'm much happier with this version.

I was able to enjoy gorgeous surroundings as inspiration while I worked, as I spent Thanksgiving week up in King's Canyon National Park next to Sequoia trees.  I felt like I was in Lothlorien :)

Next up, I'm back to painting on my Frost Giant drawing, previously shown.  Also never quite finished Freyja, so need to complete her painting.

I'm very much looking forward to some extended (and much needed) art work time when teaching lets up for Christmas break!

Odin and Frigg

Pin It Now!

Finished (I think) Frigg today.  Here she is putting clouds in the sky using her magical distaff.  See previous post of the unfinished version.  Same with Odin -- here's the completed version.

I think I'll be working on one of the creatures next.  I need to go back and re-work Sleipnir, since I hadn't quite settled on my style for this series back when I first painted that one.  Though I also haven't finished Freyja so that one is also on the back burner.

Anyway, I'm very happy with how these are coming out.  I feel like I'm getting better with my painting and just hope to get a-goin' on having more of them done.

:D

An unfortunate event, getting some press & Odin-in-progress

Pin It Now!

Well, hello again!  As a teacher, the new school year getting rolling has REALLY kept me busy.  I also had quite an unfortunate event kick things off -- my MacBook got stolen while I was at school on the first day of conservatory teaching :(  I did have anti-theft software installed, but I haven't been able to track it.  More importantly, I did have cloud back-up of my hard drive data through Backblaze -- yay!  So glad I had my computer files backed up.  That includes these Norse digital paintings!  I was able to set myself up again on my partner's 2011 MacBook that wasn't really getting used that much.  Phew.  A crummy thing to happen, but it could have been an even bigger disaster.

Anyway, that whole experience put a crimp in my workflow for a bit... but I feel like I'm getting back on track.  Been working on the Odin painting, as you can see above.

I also was able to get recommended through my mentor, Dorte Christjansen, for an artist profile for The Signal Tribune, a local paper!  The Signal Tribune serves the city of Signal Hill, which is very unique as it is completely contained by the larger city of Long Beach, where I reside.  The interview, including images of my work, is scheduled for the Oct. 3 edition.  Yay!

Okee doke, back to work.
:)

I think we're getting somewhere.

Pin It Now!

Been a little absent lately -- the school year is gearing up so I'm prepping for teaching (this coming Tuesday, ahhh!), and just before that I did a bit of vacationing (got to finally see the Grand Canyon!).

Sooo, getting my groove back with my Norse series.  Perhaps the time away was just what I needed because I feel like I've made a break-through in painting my drawings.  Above you'll see a new painted version of Thor.  I really ended up going in a different direction that my initial experiment with the painting of Sleipnir.  I liked that one, but still didn't quite feel like I had really nailed it yet.  I'm feeling a lot better with this version.  Looking forward to continuing this style of coloring to the other drawings.

:)

Starting to paint at last...

Pin It Now!

I haven't actually finished all of my 13 drawings yet, but the big ol' part II to these pictures, the painting, has been looming over my head so I went ahead and got started.  The drawings are complete (I think!) for 7 of them, so I'm taking some time to get at least a handful of them rolling with the painting aspect.  2 more of the drawings are done except for the background patterns.  That leaves 3 more drawings that are just practically a glimmer in my eye at this point :)

Argh, painting is very... challenging for me :)  Confession: I'm more comfortable with lines than with color and value.  So I am really welcoming this series so that I can get more faster and more better (yes, I know that's not grammatically correct) at painting!  Right now, because I'm at the beginning stages of painting these, I'm still figuring out some of my decisions about my style and technique that will be affecting all of them.

I am scanning my drawings at 600 dpi and painting in Photoshop CS6 if anyone is wondering :)

keeping busy.

Pin It Now!

Hey everybody,

  Well, I've been kinda busy of late, but I'm finally putting something up here on my blog.  I did have a nice little assignment for a small publishing house the other week.  It looks like it might be leading to some more work too--yay!

  Here's the illustration:

  I was excited to do the finished piece entirely as a digital painting.  It's for use in a reference/educational kind of book.

  In other news, I'm really enjoying my new animal drawing class I'm teaching at OCHSA.  Such a fun class and I'm learning a lot myself, of course.  This week we're headed to the zoo!  Fun.

Cara

new digital painting

Pin It Now! Here is the digital painting version of the drawing I posted a couple of months ago. I had a lot of fun painting this one. It was fun to do something that had a border again too. A while back I used to use a lot of borders with my illustrations, but I had gotten away from that for a while.

And speaking of stuff I haven't done in a while, I also have a very intricate Celtic page design I'm working on. I have a number of Celtic & Norse designs on my website, but it's not something I have done much of in a while, though I really enjoy it. Anyway, the one I'm working on is pretty much the most intricate one I've ever done. I look forward to finishing it so I can post it.

In other news, teaching is finishing up (yes!) so I'm looking forward to having more time to focus on my artwork. Though I do teach a couple of summer classes as well... Not as rigorous as the regular school year though. I'll be preparing my portfolio for the SCBWI Summer Conference in LA in August. Big opportunity to show my portfolio and seek new work.

Cheers!

preparing for the SCBWI Conference in LA

Pin It Now!

Well, I'm finally managing to post a new blog. I've just been really busy with a lot of new work--yay!--and haven't had much time for anything else except sleep and work. I'm teaching a summer art class for kids every morning and afternoon during the week at OCHSA that lasts for 6 weeks. Next week is the last week...goes by so fast! It's been really fun actually and the kids have been great. They have a bunch of classes the kids can choose from and I'm teaching beginning drawing & painting. After classes though I've been beating it home to work on my illustration portfolio. I'm going to the annual SCBWI Conference in LA and I want to dazzle! I went to the conference last year (I also went a couple of years before that for the first time) and came away resolved to refocus my work and push myself to the next level. My porfolio this year is all new work and I'm pretty excited about it. The conference is right around the corner now--it's August 7-10--so I'm hurrying to prepare the best I can. The task that remains at this point is updating my website with my new work. I'll be getting that done in the next couple of weeks. Wish me luck!

P.S. Here are a couple of the new pieces that I've done lately--they were both painted digitally.