Courage's Beast [editted]

Added a few layers and texturing.

Stock:
=Lockstock
~Morgiana
*CausticStock
DA
My Own

Portrait: Aldon

This is Jolene's Christmas present. :) I drew this over the Thanksgiving break, because I wanted a head start on everything. Katherine was actually the inspiration: For my birthday she had draw for small pictures playing off of POMT and I loved it so much I wanted to do something like it for someone else. So. This is my interpretation of Aldon. A million years ago I had found a picture on sxc that reminded me of him, and I emailed it to Jolene. That's what I based this off of.

Special thanks to: Laura, for her immediate and candid advise in what has wrong or right, my mom, for her constant help through the whole thing, and my grandma, for her encouragement to not be afraid of shading. So basically: all the artists in my family.

(it looks a little weird in this scan. Just imagine it's perfect)

The model.

Writer's Block

Was bored and couldn't write.

Model: Jolene
Picture&Editting: Me

Sea&Mist

I was feeling lazy but I wanted to do something with fonts and brushes, so I made this.

The character is Mist, and she is engaged to Mereith (Mereith = guardian of the sea), a sailor who has just mantained the rank to get married (captain). He goes on his first trip in his new ship, and she has high hopes because on his return they are finally going to be married. He promises to make it back in nine days, but the days drag on to two weeks and he has not returned. Debris starts washing up on the beach, and from it they think Mereith's ship was attacked and sunk. This is Mist at that time.

Stock:
~Ghost_addicted
DA

Choices; Stay or Run

Another one for Phil.

Stock:
=resurege
[other]

Background:
Sometimes he thinks he is crazy.

He is not sure when he began to think that; perhaps when the school-children started teasing him, perhaps when he saw the book torn apart. He doesn’t suppose it really matters when it happened.

Sometimes he wonders why he had to get into the tangled mess of his feelings. Sometimes he wishes for things he knows are impossible, and he is critical of himself and knows just how impossible the wishes are. He knows why he was sent away from his father, or he thinks he knows, and he guesses that is were it began to happen. When he did not think that his voice was something to be ashamed of, or something in the way, he talked a lot. But now his voice is the weight pulling him down, and he does not want to talk because he does not want to hear it.

He has many thoughts, very, very many, but he does not think anyone else would like to hear them in his voice, and he does not want to watch his audience try to understand and pretend to know what he is saying. His voice murders his words, and he supposes he can keep them in to treasure on his own. Perhaps that was when it happened.

His uncle always said he was not his father, and he knows this, but when he was small it was his uncle’s lap he sat in, and it was his uncle’s hands which steadied his learning hands, and his uncle’s voice that read him to sleep, and his uncle’s horse that he rode. Sometimes, when he was very little and silly, he would pretend his uncle really was his father, and he would make up exciting stories about what had happened to his mother and why his uncle claimed to have a brother which sent him away years ago. His father is just a man somewhere in the world, just a name that he thinks will never have a face. So it does not matter that he pretends the impossible.

There was always the book, though, and when he reads the book he can see his mother’s hands and hear his father’s laugh. And then he feels lost and longs for something he does not understand.

Then his mother has another son—so his uncle tells him—and he does not know what to feel, so he puts the son with the faceless names and tells himself he does not have to think about it, because he will never have to deal with a brother. But his mother dies and his uncle says they must go help his father. He is nervous, but he thinks it may be alright to put faces to the names.

They take the books and don’t give him back the one his father and mother made him. They tear it up in front of him, and he looses his father’s laugh and his mother’s hands. He does not care much for the laugh—he knows he will hear it again someday—but the hands were all he knew of his mother, and he is angry. His voice kills the protests shouting inside of him, and he knows no one can understand. His uncle says he must calm down, and he swallows the words again. They walk, and he tries not to cry—he does not understand why his vision keeps blurring. He never knew his mother, so why should he miss her?
In the end all he feels is cold, hard anger. And the next day, after the boys fight him for no reason, he knows the anger is hatred. He is afraid of it, but he uses it to hide from other, stranger feelings. He finds his sister in the fields weeks later, after endless walking and riding, and she is kind to him. She shows him his brother, and all he can think is that he does not stutter, and he does not look like a foreigner to these people, and he does not have to be sent away. And he thinks he does not like him, might even be jealous of him, because he does not know what it’s like to be given a new family and to stutter and everyone, even his uncle, loves him. He wonders why he came at all; his father has a son that will remind him of his mother, and no one wants a useless son who cannot talk.

He finds out that his father was a slave trader, and he feels betrayed. He does not want to see him—he just wants to go home and leave the names faceless. It is his uncle who holds him as he cries—he doesn’t know why—and he wishes a thousand times that he did not have any other father than his uncle, that he did not have to be the son of a trader and he did not have to care about how that felt.

He meets his father, and he does not know how to act, and he does not like looking at his scarred face, and he does not like his expression when his brother is with them. It is a long time before they are going back to his country, and he does not know how to feel when he sits next to his little sister in the cart, and he sees how she looks at him and he feels like a stranger. The farm is familiar when they get home, and he is glad for a time, because he knows how to act on the farm, and he does not have to watch his brother be adored by everyone all the time, and he does not have to feel his little sister’s big-eyed staring, and he does not have to talk to his father with knotted words.

His uncle is still his confider, and he still looks to him more than his father. Then she comes. He likes her at first–she is kind to him, and gentle, and jokes. But soon he begins to notice the way his uncle watches her, and the way he talks to her, or helps her. He begins to suspect, and in suspecting he fears–he does not know why.

Loneliness is something he must have always felt, created by his voice and his own lack of effort. But normally his uncle helps him forget, or he buries himself in work to not have to think about it. Somehow it got worse with his family’s arrival. Now he watches his uncle go with her, and he is angry at himself for feeling lost and alone. Once his uncle said he was too stubborn and pushed himself too hard, and he supposes this is true, because he refuses to show them any of the confused feelings, and he refuses to let himself think about them.

He cannot put the thoughts into words when his uncle asks (long after he has been seeing her, as if he was just an afterthought), and even those that he sorts out to himself he will not mutilate with his voice. He watches his uncle leave, and is empty. But he can not blame him.

No one wants a son who can’t talk, not even a pretend son.

So he is crazy, because he wants the impossible, and when he cannot have it he feels emotions he cannot make out.

Childish Dreams

The flower girls watching the bride.

Morning Comes

I was making ETOLT icons, and needed a Kala. I didn't like the background for this picture, so I set out to look for another background. I ended up searching sxc and this came out. I am very, very proud of it at the moment. Enjoy!

Kala is Jrohest's daughter. I imagine this to be at a time right after she has killed Likan, with Aneirin as they head back to Isrian.

Stock:
sxc
~THT-stock
=resurgere

Innocence Has Blue Eyes

I was trying out a new trick and this came out.

Stock:
=resugere
~Tragicstock

Christmas Letter Header

Made this for our Christmas letter.

Stock:
DA

Courage's Beast {2}

Second version.

Stock:
=Lockstock
~Morgiana
*CausticStock
DA
My Own

Courage's Beast

I was sitting around today and felt compelled to make this.

Courage's Beast is my Beauty & The Beast twist. I'm not sure if I like this blue one more or less than the yellow, so I'm submitting both. Comments welcome. If I find a Cedrin I'll add him in.

Stock:
=Lockstock
~Morgiana
*CausticStock
DA
My Own

Night

This isn't really like my sort of art, but when doing a photo shoot in my aunt's ballgown (now mine! mwahaha) this came out. I was actually just looking up and Laura snapped a picture, not posing for some dark depressing thing. Anyway. I liked the shadows and such so I decided to post it. Enjoy!

Psalm 31:7

I have always loved this verse, so I made a header.

Brushes:
DA (mostly *fence-post)
Rhysin.Graphics