Rat Creature's Journal

Fandom: Sandman
Characters/Pairings: Morpheus, Matthew
Media used: pencil drawing, inked with fine liner pens, acrylic paint
Rating/warnings: G, none
Notes/comments: This was my Yuletart gift for Rasetsunyo. Besides Morpheus and Matthew, Rasetsunyo mentioned in the requests (for another, non-Sandman fandom) the Egyptian pantheon, and also liking crossovers. This isn't really a crossover with the other fandom, but I thought it would still work to mix Morpheus into in one of the classic scenes of the Egyptian afterlife, i.e. the Weighing of the Heart. So there's Anubis weighing the heart against the feather of truth, Thoth keeping the records, and Ammit (the crocodile/lion/hippo mix demon) waiting to eat the unworthy hearts. I decided to show the waiting soul as Ba with a bird body and human head. I'm not sure why Morpheus is there, but I figured that the Egyptians connected their afterlife underworld to the night and to the journey of the sun might be good enough for this Endless to show up there.
Preview:
( Somehow Morpheus and Matthew ended up in the Egyptian afterlife. Image and high resolution details are behind the cut. )

The Yuletart gift for me was just posted, and it's great! I got lovely Farscape art, showing Aeryn Sun, and you should look at it too.

I'm so glad I finished, scanned and submitted my yuletart picture last night, even if I stayed up until 4 a.m., because today my desktop (the computer of the mysterious, intermittent hardware problems that don't materialize in the repair place) crapped out on me again. Incidentally that is also the computer with which my scanner works. Anyway, while my desktop fails to work once again *curses the stupid piece of crap*, at least I was lucky enough that I completed my assignment before.

Coloring the yuletart thing is taking forever. I've started yesterday and been at it for hours today, and I'm still not even half finished. How can this take so long? Granted, I'm layering for livelier colors so I have to go over every area many, many times, but still.

Also, I need to learn to sit more ergonomically or something. I have this unhealthy tendency to hunch over when I do details, because I'm very shortsighted and somehow it works better to look at details without glasses, but with my eyes that means the paper being less than two centimeters away from my nose tip. Obviously my back does not thank me for that.

I just finished the pencils for my yuletart picture, and I think it turned out really nice so far too. Of course it still needs to be inked and colored, and who knows how it'll look then.

Now I'm going to take a break to watch the new Heroes, and then maybe start with the inking.

Not entirely unrelated, I really wish I had a nicer desktop lamp, because the light I have right now is crap. And this time of year you don't even have daylight hours. Like today I woke up a bit after seven, and of course it was dark, but later around half past nine it was still dark, because it was so overcast. And I don't mean just a bit gloomy, but seriously, it was barely bright enough to read without additional lights, and my night vision is good. And crappy lamp light sucks for coloring especially. *grumble*

On the bright side, I've finally gotten past this annoying creative block wrt to my recipient's requests, and have an idea that could look cool rather than just being a random, boring character drawing. On the downside, the deadline is looming really close (*meeep*), and my idea is somewhat complicated, and I'm not sure my skills are up to realizing it. Though because I have participated last year, I have until the seventh to finish my art rather than until tomorrow night, so I might manage it, and won't have to hide from the internet in shame.

First, some art comm linkage (even though I suspect most interested people will already know of these):

Yuletart, a multi-fandom art exchange, has started with the nomination process for this year's fandoms. For the next couple of days only the participants from last year can suggest fandoms for this year, but soon it'll open up to new participants. Since I suggested fandoms I guess that'll mean I'm going to do a holiday exchange again this year. Meep.

Also, Paintedspires recently got an overhaul and reopened as an SGA flash art community. The first challenge has been posted, and you should all join or at least watch.

In less happy news ( rat health update )

Fandom: Temeraire Series by Naomi Novik
Characters/Pairings: Temeraire
Media used: pencil drawing, inked and colored with a Wacom tablet in GIMP
Rating/warnings: G, none
Notes/comments: This was done for the Yuletart gift exchange for Tylercat. I'd also like to thank brown_betty for helping me to come up with a motif, when my initial idea didn't work out, and for taking a look at the half-finished stages, spotting problems with the rocks and such.
Preview:
( the image and two high resolution details are behind the cut )

My Yuletart gift was just posted! Yay, art for me! It's a Nightwing and Arsenal drawing (gen, though you can interpret it with subtext too), so if you are into DC comics you should check it out, here.

Yay, my Yuletart assignment has arrived! Also, the mods suggested participants do a public post to elaborate on their requests, though I feel I have gone on at quite some length there already, so there's bound to be some repetition, but I added some more detail on my preferences.

Dear Yuletart artist,

first, thank you for drawing me a picture in one of my fandoms. I'm not set on anything specific for any of the fandoms I listed, so if you have a great idea, just go for it.

( However, if you are looking for more guidance and info about my likes and dislikes... )

So, I've gathered my courage and sent in my sign-up for yuletart after all. I guess I'm finally going to join the holiday exchange related fandom-wide flailing, that I've avoided for so many years.

With all the posts about yuletide and some fans pimping the newly created yuletart (a fanart holiday exchange for all fandoms except HP), I've been thinking about signing up for the latter, but then I read the rules for the sign-up, which ask you for offering to draw in at least ten fandoms, if I understand the sign-up correctly.

The form is a bit oddly phrased, it asks for "At least 5 fandoms you would like to get art of:", "At least 5 fandoms you want to get art of the most:" and then "Any other fandoms you would be willing to give art of:", which is unfortunate, since first, it assumes that I'm able to offer in all fandom which I'd like to receive, which has to be bad for matching too, because I'd be more than happy to get art in a dozen fairly popular live-action fandoms which I don't draw in, and second I have to come up with ten fandoms I can draw in, which is a high number. I mean, I think yuletide only asks for a minimum offer of three fandoms for people to write in, even if most people seem to offer more. At least that high number makes sense for better chances to match people, with the fandom choice being wide open like this, so I can understand it.

But I don't think I can reasonably offer that many. While I do have many fandoms, I don't draw in live-action fandoms, so those are all out. That leaves only my comic and book fandoms, and okay, the main universes of Marvel and DC comics I can do, and to fill this out a bit more I could maybe count Sandman as separate fandom, then there's Dresden Files, and maybe LOTR, though I never tried drawing that before. And I've drawn Muppets already at least once so I guess I could do that, though I'm not that familiar with all of the canon or the movies and such, but still that's only six. I don't do a manga-influenced style so that leaves out Avatar, too. Maybe Watership Down? I mean, I've never actually read the book, just watched the movie, though I've always wanted to, but I think I could read it and manage rabbits. Perhaps Temeraire, otoh I suspect I'd suck at drawing the dragons, and worse, period costumes and stuff would probably need a lot of research. I have no clue about that stuff and never even watched any of these Age of Sail movies, so offering that would probably lead to disappointing disasters as result.

Sigh.