B612

Voici mon secret. Il est très simple: on ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.

A certain prince tames a fennec fox; part of a much larger piece. I'm feeling very tired today.

Sabriel and Bunny

Illustrating Garth Nix's Sabriel has always been a personal project since I read the trilogy. If you haven't read it, you definitely should! It's a fantasy story about necromancy that half takes place in 1930s Australia and half in a medieval world of absolutely terrifying magic. It also has the bravest, most believable heroine of any fantasy novel I've read.

Anyway, I'm back from a weekend at NYCC and I've gotten back into traditional painting. I think paint is my way out of this awful creative rut! More later.

St. John's wort

I have a Tumblr elsewhere in the 'verse in which I'm given prompts to illustrate to, and today's was "superstitions." Now, I love Scottish mythology and folklore, so I went with the archaic use of St. John's wort, which, when carried, warded off malevolent fairies or something like that. In our lovely modern world, St. John's wort is used to ward off depression via herbal treatment. :) So here ya go, have some goddamn fairies.

You know, I think I'm finally starting to come out of my year long art slump. It's a nice feeling.

DONE

Done done done done and DONE!!

I've been mentally done for almost a month now (shame on me), but now I am actually done with my junior year. David Macaulay presenting us all with gifts of the now out-of-print Building the Book: Cathedral was a pretty fabulous way to end my third year at RISD, and a fun semester all in all. I got a firm handshake and a genuine well-wisher for my future, too. Both were appreciated!

As for junior reviews... There seems to be a karmic trend in my life where, if I say that something is likely to happen, it most definitely will not; and likewise, if I badmouth something, it ends up being fantastic.

Don't ask me why, but I expected junior reviews to be drawn out and painful, and a poor way to spend my time when I could be procrastinating from packing. It was, in fact, not painful at all, and went by quickly. My reviewers were pithy, energetic, and enthusiastic for me, and seemed sincerely invested in the development of my work.

So there I was, proven wrong by life again, just like when I said Tangled was going to be awful ("Why can't they just call it Rapunzel? And why is the typeface for it so goddamned ugly?!"), just like when I declared my many options for summer housing (each of which fell through, except for my last option, which I am taking).

This is an artless, masturbatory post about how I am finally done with the pleasantly disguised hell that is RISD* and how I can spend my summer slaving away on Wes Anderson's movie set, whine about how I missed my chance on getting a junior review t-shirt, and actually train properly for judo.

And now I must go pack and drink coffee to keep myself up and running. Moroccan food celebration tonight at Sensei's? or crashing the Brown University graduation dance party with B? Choices, choices...

Bisous!

------


*And I mean this in the most loving way, without question. But I think I will appreciate RISD most once I'm out of here.

Scheherazade

EDIT   I got a rather hilarious reaction from my new Moroccan friend Alaye when I explained this was supposed to be a cover for A Thousand and One Nights. "No, c'est pas Scheherazade! What kind of Scheherazade is this!?" 

Final assignment for Cover to Cover, which is... still not really finished. I've always thought Scheherazade was one of the coolest babes on the block.

Witches

This blog will inevitably fill up with an excess of pretty girls, as that seems to be the one of the few things I'm fiercely fond of drawing. Take that as you will.

Quick sketch, the first of two protagonists. One more week left, and then I'm free to work on this story with what energy I've left from the school year!

O's got a lot of growing up to do.

Spring

I'm feeling a little burnt out on RISD. It's particularly difficult for me to get any personal work done when I'm at school, so I have a handful of half-baked stories just waiting for the freedom of summer so they can be told.

This is just a quick character sketch of Viviana, a resident of one of these stories.

In any case, the torture ends in another week. I'll be working on the set of Wes Anderson's new film until June, whereupon I'll be jet-setting off to Korea to intern as a concept artist at ncSoft (creators of Lineage, Aion, Guild Wars)!