From the Art Desk March Edition 2012

Okay I am supper excited. I drew today for the first time this year.  See I've been having this problem with how the office is set up. but today at work while listening to The History of Rome Podcast I started to think about the history of one of my novels, The Alchemist's Daughter. (secret a lot of the history of this world is based off of things that I have learned on this podcast seriously give it a listen Mike Duncan is informative and entertaining.) then I thought well I should really make a map first. I mean so much of history and culture are reflections of the environment the people live in. And the cultures of the 6 human races are defined by their location: the mountain people, the islanders, the low lander, the desert dwellers...okay so four out of the six. anyway sense it was towards the end of the day I knew there was a good chance I could hold on to the inspiration till I go home and could sit at my desk. and it did My board now looks like this:

So here is the thing. I like to clear my board and have only one project going at a time on it. I find it gives me a cleansed mind and I can focus more. Plus the paper I was using for these studies-because as of now that is all any of these are- is very cheep and unforgiving. when I say unforgiving I mean that it doesn't erase well. you can erase a line maybe two times before you start having paper come up with the lead on your eraser. that is why I would get to a place and then move on to another sheet. now lets have some fun and talk about each of these studies. 

 This is the first one. and you can really see that I massively used the concepts behind the Americas, Europe and Africa. Eh you gotta start somewhere. but this let me think about what the land needed to look like for the people migration that I already know happened in this world's history. Just so you know the books that i will be writing about in this world all take place in the western continent-at least as of right now-Duelvia

 Here things start taking on a bit of a better shape. My focus while drawing this one was to get Dunelvia fleshed out a bit. sense this is where the stories take place It was good to get that more figured out. Plus I got to play with some shapes that I liked seeing in the first one. For example the Angry Cat Gulf is here to stay. I also played with the shape of the southern continent in hopes to get it to look less like Africa. the other big change is the northern peninsula stretching over the islands. See that is where the norther mountains are which are called both the mountain finger and the edge of the world.

 This one was about playing with the positioning of the land masses. You can see where Carth is, it is was at one point the capital of the known world, this was before Dunelvia was discovered. So I had to think about the invasions that happened to bring about the destruction of the Carthian Empire. all in all this drawing was mostly a stepping stone to get where I would get in the next sketch.

Now there are a lot of things I love about this one. First the size is appropriate. Dunelvia (which is spelled differently in the drawings and really I am too lazy to look up in my manuscript what the spelling actually is so  yeah) is smaller, though when i start to write the history of the fey peoples I may wish I had given it more character. The Lowlands look less like Europe and the southern continent has lost its African look. the area I really was focused on in this one was the Islands. I wanted them to look like they were a unit and I also got to add something fun. you see the little circle? That is underwater during the high tides. I'm still not completely happy with how the mountain peninsula looks but it was getting late and I think what got done tonight was something to be proud of.

So there you have it. I'm drawing again! Hopefully next month not only will I have more of this done but also be back to working on the Icon regularly!