Drawing and writing

Somewhere along the line I need to flesh out some characters in my mind to write a particular story. What better way to start than with the superficial act of drawing their faces. Not only does this lend a certain familiarity to a character but it certainly nails, in my mind, some of the facial expressions that go along with certain emotions or thoughts. Angry, happy, suspicious.... all can now be visualized easily. This way the character won't all of a sudden shift in my mind, they can remain, more or less, fixed.

I sat down before bed the other night and spent a few minutes putting a rough sketch on paper to try a certain face angle and to put my very first effort into a drawing that included hair.... my nemesis, or so I thought. This is the first draft. Much more needs to be done as there are some glaring flaws here, the neckline and chin, the hair looks more straggly than I would like... maybe just thin. There is no top of the head.... well, what can I say about a 5 min sketch. Oh, 2B compressed charcoal after doing a rough layout with 6H graphite, I still need to do the really light layout before laying down the darker stuff to be sure that the proportions are at least close to looking right.

So I made a few changes here and there over a couple of days and made some adjustments, added the top of the head to make it complete and to test my determination at getting hair right... I had to  clear my old starting strokes that were rather strong and feather in the rest.

Better. 

I tried for a shadow on her forehead from the hair, but that didn't look right so I nixed that. The drawing needs a little pop as it is too flat for my liking, add some shadow, a few darker highlights in the hair tweak the eyes just a tad. All in all not a bad rough draft. This was on less than half of a 9x12 sheet so detail is tough to add to any great degree. I expect that I will redo this properly in a larger format, more detail and include more of the person and get in some contoured facial features.

Jeff.

The story starts to unfold

Without getting into actual plot it is interesting to see how the idea develops into a story.

I tried setting a goal of writing between 500-1,000 words a day but time has a way of getting away from me so I figure that if I can at least regularly do a bit of writing that it is a start. Setting a word goal also made it sound like I "had" to do it... I don't do well with that style of incentive in the first place. I'd rather jot a few notes when something comes to mind, maybe record a voice memo for quick ideas while driving... all that sounds great until I actually try to do it. The notes don't get jotted and the voice memos don't get recorded. Meanwhile the story still takes shape in my mind and eventually makes it's way onto paper... figuratively, as I am using the computer.

Other worlds interacting with our own in a not so fantasy based way... but not really science fiction either. I still haven't ironed out some of the details. I hesitate to start background writing here, I am not sure why as I doubt many people are reading anyway. I know I certainly don't intend this to be some sort of a popular blog format.

Off to bed I guess, early tonight as I went for a rather rigorous bike ride, and after biking back and forth to work all day (six one way trips, it adds up) it tends to take a lot out of me.

Jeff.

Winged creatures and reality... dragons, fairies, etc.

Oh boy!

I started out with drawing landscapes in mind as the sole topic of interest and, as I mentioned in my last post, that is far from where I am heading... although landscapes may yet form a backdrop for pictures to come.

Somewhere along the way a dream has pushed me in the direction of considering winged humanoids. I see tons of artwork that depict dragons, fairies and everything in between but none of them are anywhere near realistic... if you could ever call dragons and fairies realistic. Either the wing area is too small  for the mass or the body is not setup to provide the structure to support such a wing even on it's too small scale, a wing just poking out of a back has no functional means of actually working let alone carrying a load in flight. This prompted me to consider the physiological aspect of trying to put wings on a person in such as way as to make it believable... or at least follow most of the laws of physics involved in flight.

Suffice it to say that I am not satisfied with just saying "but it's fantasy art and it's just magic that makes it work". I think that is the line that normally gets used in cases such as this.

The only animal that exists in reality that is anywhere near to being somewhat similar in structure to a human and that has wings is a bat. Unlike a bird they have a proper ribcage similar to that of a human, no large breast bone and keel arrangement. The downside is that this only works due to their extremely low wing loading. One thing that I considered was losing the arms and making an extra hand at the point where a bat typically has the vestigial thumb. Then I did some math and came up with a wingspan of over 30' to carry a human with a total flying weight of 175 lbs. That is not very workable for what I have in mind so I need to put the arms back in, which means now I need a shoulder structure to provide for two sets of shoulders. I thought that I could use the arms as an auxillary source of muscle strength but the wings are large enough that they would be little more than decoration.

I have seen Avatar, (who hasn't?), and recalled that the Na'vi bone structure was reported to have been some sort of carbon fiber natural composite, this makes them tough. I figure that it also makes them lighter than they might be had they a traditional Earth style structure. Perhaps this sort of structure could also reduce the water content of the bones to further reduce body weight. More math results in the possible total mass going from 175 lbs to about 144 lbs. Take into consideration that this also provides for a stronger structure which allows the bones to not need to be overly large.

The next, but far from the last consideration is the musculature that would need to be involved to drive these wings for anything other than controlled gliding. This is where it all seems to fall apart as I cannot come up with any workable muscle structure that could conceivably power this great wingspan to provide even a fast running lift off.

Enter the realm of telekinesis. Well, at least I didn't say magic. I decided that I can draw whatever I imagine so there are few limitations. The trouble is that I was doing this in conjunction with a story line that also was spawned by the same dream and telepathy came up somewhere along the way. So, if mental abilities get mixed in for other reasons why not some form of telekinesis that is focused specifically on flight assistance in the form of augmented muscle strength.

Basically, my drawing project is also a writing project and I do not really know where this is going to end up taking me... but isn't that more than half the fun?

Jeff.

First post, dreams, drawing and writing

I have started a few drafts here but not posted anything yet. I am playing around with the idea of writing stories based on dreams, or at least starting out by writing settings, characters or situations that appear in dreams, on a regular basis in order to get into the hang of writing. While these would end up being fiction of one form or another, just being based on dreams, I might be able to write as if they were just narrative or descriptives of actual events. After all, they did cross my unconscious self at a level of consciousness to make them seem like reality, even if only for a sort while.

On a side note, I also have started drawing. I am not doing that as regular as I would like but I have started. I blogged a bit of drawing in my "Search for Self" blog, which is not being kept up as regular as I would like either. I tend to get stretched between all of the various things that I want to do and all the various things that I need to or should do. Basically, life tends to get in the way. I almost think that I should be blogging all my crap in one place.

A few days ago I had a rather intense dream that has spurred me into both writing and drawing on the same general topic at the same time. While I haven't done much of either on this particular topic I have tons of ideas and thought juices flowing in that direction. The last drawings I did took me over a month to get out of my head and onto paper... so this period of marinating is not a bad thing. I am doing research, forming characters in my mind and working out background ideas to lend support to the whole story and topics of potential drawing. I see it in pieces but the pieces are well formed before I put much thought into them.

On this line I am getting farther and farther away from the original plan that I had when I asked Kate to pick me up some softer pencils while at the store over a year ago. All the drawings that I had planned on getting to at that point were landscapes and nature settings. My first real drawing ended up being a portrait study. This, my next project I suppose, will be so far removed from the landscape settings that I am surprised. But, like I hear authors say, the story just comes to them and they write it down, they are less part of the creation then they are scribes. It seems that the same may be said for most art undertakings.

Jeff.