Miscellaneous doodles (now with Tasteful Dwarven Erotica)

silvado (sp?) rocketh my worldeth

My favorite among the new ones is "Searching for Daybreak", your style is perfect for an artic scene, and I could feel the cold wind blowing around me looking at it.

Personally I don't go to the galleries much, so I'd prefer posting everthing in the tread.

.Ziggy

Those are amazing.

I think putting them in both places is a fine idea, specially for those folks who want to view them full size.

Ziggy said:

My favorite among the new ones is "Searching for Daybreak", your style is perfect for an artic scene, and I could feel the cold wind blowing around me looking at it.

Personally I don't go to the galleries much, so I'd prefer posting everthing in the tread.

.Ziggy

Click to expand...

Wow. This coming from someone in Norway.

Thanks.

I started work on this a year or so after I moved to California (about 1999), while I was in my "homesick for winter" phase. I remember having to call a friend to ask about the color of the sky, because I couldn't quite remember it. I knew I hadn't quite captured the feel, and I was frustrated with the piece, and put it away.

When I pulled the canvas out of an old envelope I found under my desk this week, I realized that what was missing was the wind. I went back into it and added in the wind, and the blowing snow, and moved the rats whiskers to be blown east, and a few things like that. I was much happier with the final result, and glad to have finished the piece at last. I've always wanted to set that one right.

So much so that I asked Kip the Bold to do one for me bck around 2000--I love his version of this character. He did such a good job with the light and the snow and the posture.

There might be a few more of these in me. I want to do one with three giant rats pulling a sled . . .

Sialia said:

When I pulled the canvas out of an old envelope I found under my desk this week, I realized that what was missing was the wind. I went back into it and added in the wind, and the blowing snow, and moved the rats whiskers to be blown east, and a few things like that. I was much happier with the final result, and glad to have finished the piece at last. I've always wanted to set that one right.

Click to expand...

There's two very different kinds of cold; the pristine, silent cold of a cloudless winter day and the freezing, face-numbing cold of a windy day with snow blowing everywhere. While the first will make me straighten my spine and think how lucky I am to be outside even when its 25 below (centigrade), the latter causes me to hunch, shielding my body from the cold even when its only 5 below.

To me the best aspect of the painting is the posture of the rider. He (?) hunches just the right way, shielding his face from the wind, looking for somewhere to hide from the wind.

Sialia said:

So much so that I asked Kip the Bold to do one for me bck around 2000--I love his version of this character. He did such a good job with the light and the snow and the posture.

Click to expand...

Ah, I knew i'd seen something like it before....

Sialia said:

There might be a few more of these in me. I want to do one with three giant rats pulling a sled . . .

Click to expand...

I'd love to see them. Your paintings are the main reason I still visit this forum.

.Ziggy

Ziggy said:

I'd love to see them. Your paintings are the main reason I still visit this forum.

.Ziggy

Click to expand...

Wow. Thanks! That's the kind of encouragement I need to keep going.

Kip's drawing had that clear, still cold, kind of feeling, with the snow just wafting down silently. That kind of beautiful cold that holiday cards are all about, which was right for the description I gave him--I was looking for the heroic moment of the ratrider with lantern aloft, seeking for lost travellers after the storm.

This one I wanted to be during the storm--that kind of winter that is hard to be nostaligic about. Thre's a certain kind of pride in being able to go out in that--knowing that you are not going to let it stop you . . . the ratrider is that kind of heroic, too.

Seem to be doing at least one a day. Wonder how long I can keep this up.

Sorry to have been low profile lately. The last few weeks have been weird. I will initiate fan-boy startup sequence now:

Sialia, that one is great! Before my son was born, we commisioned a piece from a friend for Winkin', Blinkin' & Nod. I think you should see if you can get this done as a print, or in a calendar, or as a book illustration, or something. It is beautiful.

I will confess that it doesn't speak to me the same way that some of your other pieces do, but it is gorgeous.

BardStephenFox said:

Sorry to have been low profile lately. The last few weeks have been weird. I will initiate fan-boy startup sequence now:

Sialia, that one is great! Before my son was born, we commisioned a piece from a friend for Winkin', Blinkin' & Nod. I think you should see if you can get this done as a print, or in a calendar, or as a book illustration, or something. It is beautiful.

I will confess that it doesn't speak to me the same way that some of your other pieces do, but it is gorgeous.

Click to expand...

It's good to hear from you--I've been wondering what you've been up to. You've been unusually quiet. Hope everything is ok.

After the Ceramic GM tournament I felt the need to do some pieces that were less emotionally taxing. Round 2 took more out of me than I expected, and I think that shows a lot in what I turned in for round 3. It's as if I wanted to see how far I could go in a certain direction, and having proved that I can in fact get there, I backed way the heck off and wanted to be somewhere else.

I'm still trying to find a way to balance things--to do pieces that are neither overwrought nor too sweet. Right now, I'm probably erring on the side of sweetness. Sping is in the air here and we went bicycling through the cherry blossoms today. The daffodils are poking thier heads up and the mockingbirds are starting to sing.

It's a good time to work on sweetness.

Vargr hairdryers.

From a Traveller game I was in, several lifetimes ago.

Enjoy.