Category: Blog Posts

“Cassiel’s Servant” Art Archive

EDIT: I’ve decided to make things simpler by updating this entry with the new public art at the top of the post and add links to all the posts, public and patrons-only, pertaining to my art journey with “Cassiel’s Servant” by Jacqueline Carey. Now, you won’t have to dig for all the entries and art. Enjoy!

I wanted to give my Free Members a peek at all the art I’ve been creating inspired by “Cassiel’s Servant” from Jacqueline Carey. This story of a warrior monk’s unknowing rise to meet his divine destiny has just as much resonance as Phedre’s origin in “Kushiel’s Dart” and I’ve been enjoying it immensely!

Along the way, I’ve been creating art inspired by the mythology and fantastic worldbuilding of the world of Terre d’Ange, the “Land of Angels”. I’m planning for all this exploration to culminate in my own fan version of the book’s cover in the style of this one I created for “Kushiel’s Dart” and perhaps other book-inspired pins, stickers, etc. I hope to make a physical reality (more in that in a future post once plans and designs are more finalized).

(My fan version of the cover of “Kushiel’s Dart”, the book that started the Kushiel’s Legacy series which “Cassiel’s Servant” is a part of.)

I’m happy to share all of this art for free, but if you’d like to help support me while I work on this project, check out the following Patrons-only posts available to all paid members at all tiers for the deep dive into my process, inspiration, and research that my free posts don’t go into.

List of Posts So Far

You can also watch the experimental video I made combining art and narration about Elua here, since Patreon doesn’t support video embedding within the body of posts yet.

I plan to keep sharing art for free with optional paid perks this way so you can all get the best of both worlds!

Want to join me as I book club “Cassiel’s Servant”? Hop in the book’s discussion thread on my Discord server! This server is open to the public and free to join, though my Discord also has a Patrons-only area where you can Ask Me Anything, browse my private sketchbook, and more. Come hang out!

Have you finished reading “Cassiel’s Servant” yet? Are you planning to read? Or reading something else? Let me know what you’re up to, book wyrms!

– Ang

Art Fight 2024 Collection

(Patrons are getting an early peek at this vid before it goes live elsewhere. Enjoy!) The dust has settled and 2024’s Art Fight has ended! It’s always a fun opportunity to practice my skills and draw some unexpected characters, all while bringing a smile to another artist’s face, which is my favorite part of the experience!

(Don’t remember what Art Fight is about? See my 2023 wrap-up which was my first experience in participating and includes an introduction to the event and how it works. The tl;dr is it’s an event where artists trade art of their characters and ‘battle’ in teams.)

My Attacks for 2024

I had a ton of fun this year trying to keep my style loose and energetic. All of them were rendered in Procreate on the ipad, which seems to be my main digital painting tool of choice these days.

Scissors for AnnaCoryKulikova

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Zhenlin for MissSunnySweden

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The Seraph of Promised Silence for Hamsandlich

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Kai for CherryFlash

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Valerian for DungeonDelves

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Ray for Viday

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Goku for Erdending

(My first time drawing a monkey and they have such fun anatomy quirks!) 

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Attacks on Me

Here are the Attacks featuring my characters by other talented artists participating in Art Fight this year!

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Aurora by AnnaCoryKulikova

 

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Aurora by Erdending

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Rabs by MissSunnySweden

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The Crucified Dreamer by DungeonDelves

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The Crucified Dreamer by Viday

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The Crucified Dreamer by CherryFlash

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Kalara by Hamsandlich

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Don’t forget to check out the video at the top of this post for timelapses of how I created my pieces. If you’re an artist who needs a pick-me-up or to work through art block, I highly suggest this event! It’s satisfying to do an activity that’s lighthearted with no other lofty aim beyond making another artist happy and drawing some cool characters.

And now to return to our regularly scheduled programs!

The Usual Reminders

[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

Currently Reading: Cassiel’s Servant

EDIT: I’ve added some share links at the end of the article for anyone who’d like to help me signal boost!

My Story Sketcher journey begins with Cassiel’s Servant by Jacqueline Carey! I was originally going to begin with one of my top Fantasy faves, Kushiel’s Dart, after it was very popular on my poll, but Cassiel’s Servant arrived just in time to tempt me to embark on what will be a new, but familiar journey, as Cassiel’s Servant tells the story of Kushiel’s Dart from the perspective of a different character, the stoic warrior, Joscelin Verreuil.

How I could resist a brand new venture into one of my favorite affirming and inspiring Fantasy worlds, especially during Pride month?

(Cassiel’s Servant cover art by Mélanie Delon)

GENRE: Romantasy | PAGES: 528 |  RATING: Mature Audiences, Spice Levels High! Though my art will be no more graphic than PG-13

SYNOPSIS: In Kushiel’s Dart, a daring young courtesan uncovered a plot to destroy her beloved homeland. But hers is only half the tale. Now see the other half of the heart that lived it. 

Cassiel’s Servant is a retelling of cult favorite Kushiel’s Dart from the point of view of Joscelin, Cassiline warrior-priest and protector of Phèdre nó Delaunay. He’s sworn to celibacy and the blade as surely as she’s pledged to pleasure, but the gods they serve have bound them together. When both are betrayed, they must rely on each other to survive. 

From his earliest training to captivity amongst their enemies, his journey with Phèdre to avert the conquest of Terre D’Ange shatters body and mind… and brings him an impossible love that he will do anything to keep. 

Even if it means breaking all vows and losing his soul.

The Journey Ahead

Here’s the plan for my journey with Cassiel’s Servant! For this book, I’ll be creating:

  • My own variant version of a cover for the book, to be offered as a Limited Edition print. All Patrons will be getting a deep dive into my cover creation process! (Limited Edition prints to be offered to Patrons, tier to be determined).

  • A bookmark to commemorate the occasion. All Patrons will get a downloadable version. (A physical bookmark with a tassel will be offered too, tier to be determined).

  • Sketches of particularly inspiring characters, concepts, scenes, etc. that inspire me along the way. To be collected as a PDF for Patrons (tier to be determined) and available to others via my digital shop items.

Once I have a better idea of how much art I’ll be making after this first experimental book art journey, then I’ll make a proper announcement about what goodies my Patrons will recieve at what tiers. There’ll be an announcement and a PM sent out to keep everyone in the know so you won’t miss out on any of the limited or exclusive goodies.

(The variant cover I created for Kushiel’s Dart. Will I be brave enough to do traditional art for a variant cover of Cassiel’s Servant???)

Read Along!

I’ll be doing my own Book Club-style reaction posts sharing my art and thoughts inspired by this book as I read in this dedicated Discord channel. Feel free to hop in and discuss with me! Spoilers/spoiler-y art will be hidden by spoiler tags.

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It’s been a few years since I read Kushiel’s Dart, which has me excited to see this familiar world once again, this time through the eyes of Joscelin, who will no doubt have a unique perspective and history as a warrior on a different battlefield than Phedre’s glittering courtesan arena.

I’m also excited to let my book/Fantasy nerd flag fly with this new art adventure. It feels good to get back to my heart’s passion for storytelling and art driven by deep character exploration. I can’t wait to see what comes out of this journey!

– Ang

Share Links

This is a small operation of just me and occasionally my husband who serves as my IT department, so if you’d like to help me spread the word, I’d be incredibly grateful! You can signal boost these posts: