Chevalier of Swords

Fire of Air.

That's my hand there, thanks to the miracle of digital cameras. My original rough wasn't working for the hand, and drawing over it was going nowhere, so after a couple of tries I said "fuck it" and went into the bathroom with the camera to take some photo ref. Every now and then I do this, mostly for really foreshortened hand poses like this.

I'm only a little behind schedule now. And yesterday I did most of the figurative work on the High Priestess; I just have to draw a couple hands that I was lazy on in the rough, and decide what to do for her background. So I'm not doing too bad, despite (a) continued bits of work at the Museum of Science and (b) playing the occasional long session of Space Giraffe. (I made it to level 48 today, starting from level 1. The third and fourth bonus rounds had me laughing in amazement at how pretty they were, and cursing Minter because all the swirly feedback pretty makes it damn hard.)

I need to post this to FA and DA once they come back up; they're both down right now.

Print available on Artspots.

motivation is weird

So there I was, hot and kinda tired from walking home in the summer sun. I'd been sitting there at my computer futzing around with the net, occasionally looking at the Chevalier of Wands sketch sitting there in AI and not doing anything to it. It was becoming increasingly clear that I wasn't going to get any art done tonight.

"Screw it, I give up; I'm not getting anything done tonight," I said.

And then instantly I was seized by a desire to at least do the middle panel. Which I did, pretty quickly. It looks damn nice.

Self-motivation is so damn weird.

(This reminded me of the bit in Pinkwater's Alan Mendelson, the Boy from Mars where the two main characters have spent hours trying to produce 'zeta waves' or some such, with no result - until they say "I give up!" and their z-wave detector instantly goes off. It's one of those bits that just sticks with you because it sounds so absurd. Until it happens to you.)