Wednesday, April 30, 2014

My first pysanka


So I bought a pysanky-making kit two years ago, but didn't get the time to try it out the last two Easters. This year I finally did, and my first egg is this wobbly-lined fellow. More to come, and hopefully I'll get a better hang of it!


Saturday, April 26, 2014

A new feature-- Holy Cards

I've decided to bring a new feature to my blog, which will expand the 'art not by me' tag.


My family and I have fairly large collections of old holy cards. My father did his undergraduate work at a college run by Benedictine monks, and when he would get books from the library, he would often find cards left in them as bookmarks. The old ones can be really beautiful and many have fascinating bits of personal history (like funeral cards and ordination commemorations, etc.) I think I'll try to make this a weekly feature, every Saturday, because that's the day of Our Lady and she features on a lot of holy cards.

I thought this one would be good to start with, as it's Eucharistic and Eastery.

Thursday, April 24, 2014

More to the mountains

Remember that landscape commission? It's coming along.


I need to finish it before I leave...

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Scourging at the Pillar coloring page, Sorrowful pages


I know it's Easter now, but during Passiontide, I drew a set of coloring pages for the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary. That's a thing about me, I always do seasonal art at the time of the season it goes with, rather than ahead of time, because I'm thinking more about my experience and expression of the sacred time rather than the presentation of it. Ah well.

With the scourging, I was thinking of first-person-shooter video games with the placement of that arm, to communicate it's one's own sins that did it.


So, the Sorrowful Mysteries are now available with the rest of my Rosary coloring pages. Now I just have to do Joyful and I'll have all of them.

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

We'll suffer for as long as we can take


I've found a friend in the great great beast
He's digging his claws in me
He's digging his claws in me


Blue Beetle fanart inspired by the song Claws, Part 1 by Typhoon, which I quote above. With this, I finally got back into the swing of coloring with markers, and got good results combining them with the Stabilo ink painting I had fallen back on instead.

Monday, April 21, 2014

Easter Art

Christ is risen, Alleluia! 

I've been very busy and rather sick, so I don't have a new Easter art of my own to post. But I thought I'd share some of my favourite Easter art.


Resurrection by Matthias Grunewald. 

It evokes the New Flame in the middle of the Night of the Great Vigil. And the shining glorified Body of Christ! I once saw an artist/art critic claim that Grunewald didn't believe in the Resurrection because in one of his Crucifixions Christ's Body is tinted with green. Um, green traditionally symbolizes new life, as well as contrasting complementarily with the Blood of the Wounds (it was telling that at the time this critic artist worked only in black and white) and finally, just look at this painting!



Risen Christ by Giovanni Bellini.

And this one, the freshness of Easter morning! I like those rabbits a lot. Unlike with Christmas, it's kinda hard to unite artistically the religious and secular visual elements of Easter, but that's a start. So I included them in an Easter picture I did back in 2007:


The Converted goddess by Mary MacArthur.

Seven years old, oh man I hope I've improved a bit. A bit arrogant of me to put it with the above masters! But I still like the idea: people say that the word 'Easter' comes from the name of a Germanic goddess of Spring. The Protestants say it to mean that Catholicism is corrupted with paganism, and the so-called Neo-pagans say it to mean the holiday is really theirs and has nothing to do with Christ. But I say:

"But because it is only Christian men
Guard even heathen things."

G.K. Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse.

Happy Easter.

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

The Bird and the Archer


Black Canary and Green Arrow, second of that series of fairy-talefied DC romantic couples that I was going to do for St. Valentine's day... I have several such plans that I didn't do at the time I planned... I still haven't colored my picture for the Doctor Who fiftieth anniversary, and that was last November! Well, I am pretty good about keeping clients' deadlines, so if I fudge on my own personal ones, I figure what matters is I don't give up on 'em.

This wasn't working, then I added the flowers, and now I like it.

Thursday, April 3, 2014

Shrine scribbles



Yesterday at my illustration class, I had the students draw the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham at the church where we have the classes. While they were doing that, I did it too.

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Batman panel redraw


Among other things, I'm getting ready to start my large Batman fancomic, Batman: Decadence, and one of the things I'm doing to warm up is copying panels from golden age Batman using Decadence style and character designs. I posted this one on my tumblr and Deviantart yesterday, claiming it was the first panel of the actual fancomic, for April Fools'.

Here's the original panel, from Detective Comics #27, that I worked from:


That's by Bob Kane.