Month: July 2024

[Cover Art & Sketches] Revisiting “Kushiel’s Dart “

Now that I’m about to enter the part of the CASSIEL’S SERVANT novel that crosses over into the events of KUSHIEL’S DART, I wanted to revisit some of the work I created for DART during my first time creating my own cover art and sketch explorations for a novel.

I’ve already shared a deep dive into the development of DART’s cover, but I wanted to revisit some of the old character sketches here as well. Enjoy a trip down memory lane, as these were done 10 years ago!

 LEFT: My very first try at drawing Joscelin! Inspired by his first meeting with Phedre, the main character of DART. Now that I’m reading CASSIEL’S SERVANT, I’ve learned why he was so cranky at the time. I love this old design, but I may simplify the wrappings on the sword and daggers even more to emphasize the Cassiline devotion to utilitarianism. I’ll be exploring equipment concepts in a new post soon.

RIGHT: Grainne, one of the twin Lords of the Dalriada, Gaelic-inspired warriors we meet in DART. I’m amused that even back then, graphite felt suiting for drawing art for this world.

An assortment of characters we meet early on in DART. Looking back on this, I feel like I very much had the distinguished actress, Maggie Smith, in mind when envisioning the discerning Dowayne of Cereus House.

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Now, back to reading with me and teaching myself new video editing software so I can keep bringing you fun storytelling snippets like my recent try at narrating Elua’s origin myth  from SERVANT that was shared on my socials.

Did you all enjoy this audio+visual format for Elua’s sketch? It was a lot of fun for me to make and I hope to explore more narrative imagery in this fashion.

More art soon!

– Ang

Ang Plays Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, Dancing with Demons!

(If the above embed ever breaks, you can watch my stream recording here.)

Dusting off my Twitch channel to play games I find artistically inspiring! Check out my first impressoin of Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, a new release from Capcom featuring a dancing shrine maiden, her faithful guardian, a corrupted sacred mountain, and a beautiful Japanese-inspired aesthetic.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it! Hope to stream more art and games in the future.

Art Fight 2024 Begins! + Character Art Feature

It’s July and that means it’s Art Fight time! I participated for the first time last year and it was such a wonderful experience that helped me reconnect with other artists and a sense of optimism during all the chaos and social media shakeups in 2023. After that event, I swore to do it again this year.

(I made a video about last year’s experience and how it works, for the curious.)

The time has come once more this July! If you would like to participate in an event where artists trade images of their characters, check out Art Fight. You can find my profile here. Feel free to share yours in the comments, if you’re participating as well! Perchance I’ll have time to Attack you, if something catches my eye and I have the time.

I’ll be participating when I can, but can’t promise I’ll be able to respond to each Attack. We’ll see how it goes! I’ll share a compilation of art made for the event once the month is through.

Here are some of the fun portraits I did for last year’s Art Fight event (which you can see what other folks did for me here):

This year, I’ve added some new character art, as well as a new character to choose from, both rendered by the amazing Sam Hogg.

First up, here’s newly added art of Ramah, an exiled prince from my story project, Song of Exile. After a failed rebellion against his tyrannical father, he spends his days in exile honoring his mother’s legacy as a healer. Until the day years later, he is called by his ex-wife to return once more to tend to the gravely ill king, only to be drawn further into facing his family’s tarnished legacy and the simmering violence of a coup.

Then we have Nils, a mortician-turned-monster hunter who is a new character choice for attackers to choose from for this year’s Art Fight. Nils uses his skills as a former mortician to retrieve the bodies of fallen hunters. It’s the job nobody wants, but he doesn’t mind so much.

Nils is from another story idea inspired by my D&D adventures with Blood Hunters.

  Are you in? Go team Stardust! See you in the art trenches.

– Ang

June 2024 Update – Adventures in Quitting Adobe

The Experiment Begins

Hey, friends & Patrons! It’s been a time of change and transition as we settle into a new pattern of digesting books so that I might create art inspired by them. Since the last update, I’ve cracked open Cassiel’s Servant by Jacqueline Carey and have been immersed in the Cassiline warrior monk’s origin story! It is, so far, full of gorgeous floral imagery and reflection on Terre d’Ange’s philosophy of love, honor, and one’s own place in interpreting dueling philosophies.

Feel free to hop in on the Cassiel’s Servant book club topic over on my Discord and discuss the book with me as I read and react and hopefully have art to share soon once I’ve let it simmer in my mind a little longer.

In taking on this experimental reading and arting exercise, I realize I’m much less of a sketch on the spot person and more of a sketch after pondering what scratches at the muse most person, at least for this style of introspective character memoir. Cassiel’s Servant is shaping up to be more spiritual and surreal in nature, image and themes-wise, which makes for a more challenging foray in creating art inspired by it.

I’d like to break myself of the habit of pondering so much on WHAT to draw and learn to play more, so I’m going to attempt to do better to force myself to just doodle what comes to mind along the way as I read. That’s half the fun of why I chose Story Sketcher as my Patreon’s focus for now. Time to push comfort zones and get myself drawing and playing with art more!

However, Cassiel’s Servant is also a 500+ page chonker of a book, so I’m also going to have to pace myself unless I end up taking too long to actually get anything done or spend too much time stuck in minutia rather than attempting the grand design that will be drawing my own cover for this tale, which is the ultimate goal!

Software Shakeups

In other news this month, I’ve only just barely started adjusting to the big social media shakeup when Adobe also decided to be the absolute worse this month with its sus content management terms.

To be honest, I had been considering dropping them for a long time now because the $60 a month price tag was already a lot, especially when my husband is still on the job hunt and my income as an artist has taken a hit from all of the world’s shakeups right now and record low sales for my shop, aside from that.

My software replacement choices so far (for any who are also similarly plotting their Adobe escape):

  • To replace Photoshop’s painting capabilities – Clip Studio Paint EX, Procreate
  • To replace Photoshop’s photo editing capabilities – Affinity Photo
  • To replace InDesign and Illustrator for vectors and book layouts – Clip Studio Paint EX, Affinity Designer
  • To replace Adobe Premiere and Rush – DaVinci Resolve (A free program)

As of this writing, the Affinity Suite is still on sale for 50% off, for anyone still hoping to get in on that! They also have a free trial you can dig for on their site if you want to test them out first. Clip Studio Paint also goes on sale quite often, so just wait for any major holiday or seasonal change and they’ll generally have a sale.

As for video editing, DaVinci Resolve is quite powerful and I was able to get the hang of it in a few days. It has a maddening default setting of starting each timeline at 1 hour, which you can change in the preferences, but other than that, it’s FAR more approachable than Adobe Premiere and I was already able to put together a video of my art using it!

Life Happening (TM)

Not gonna lie, it’s been rough for my husband and myself since February when he lost his job. Spring storms dropped two trees on our house, which ate through our emergency funds. The maximum level of stress involved has slowed everything down for me.

We’re currently eating into life savings to see us through and I’m very close to opening up emergency character art commissions, which Patrons will get first dibs on, followed by my newsletter followers, if things don’t start looking up by the end of July.

So here’s hoping we get some good news soon? A few interviews have gone well so it’s all about waiting right now!

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Hoping to have more visuals to share in July as I settle into a pattern of reading and drawing! The process has been more challenging than expected, but I’m determined to switch gears and keep things moving around here.

Hope my US friends enjoy their Independence time off, if they got it! I’m going to have good foods and company and hopefully find a little peace amongst the chaos.

– Ang