The Evil Queen Dorgana

I started writing a story when I was teenager, so quite a while ago now, I'v rewritten and changed it a lot over the years and still love playing with it. Most of it has changed since the original incarnation but one character in particular has always remained, the evil Queen Dorgana (although that name is quite new, a little tribute to my girlfriend Beena when she gets mad at me, her second name being Dorgan)

Her story was fairly straight forward stuff, she was a good woman, a healer and living a happy life in the woods until her great love was killed. In her grief she turned to dark arts to try and ressurect him, never succeeding but discovering several things along the way, how to make the undead and how to make herself immortal. All this darkness has clearly taken a toll, her growing big horns and being generally evil  an all.
Here's a guy she doesnt like...

Warrior types

Why arent they called swimmies

I have a very large family, sometimes they give me things. A good few years back one of my many uncles gave me a chinese calligraphy set for christmas because it lookes "arty". I have rarely used it but the other day I was filled with the urge to create a coy fish.

Granted it's not the greatest thing I'v ever drawn, but the whole process is a lot of fun, grinding the ink setting everything up and the way the whole style seems to be designed so that you have to think out what you're going to do very carefully but then when you do it, it's all go, long fluid strokes and dabs.

Abhainn na Laochra

 

My other piece for the exhibition. The same technique as the previous one, just with black ink.

On Mushrooms!

An ink wash piece for the exhibition on Monday (it's all chestnut brown ink by the way) took a few days

Traditional Cúchullain

Done again.

Meanwhile...

I have not been getting my art on much lately, I have been sketching a lot but nowhere near as much as usual, nor have I been animating as I should be. Tonight however I was filled with the desire to do something a little more worthwhile, so I started on a promised traditional piece to a friend. I'm sure you all remember the Cúchullain piece from a week or more ago, well its that, but as I said, traditional. So far, just a pencil sketch followed by alot of very faint ink washes until this

 

Apologies for the poor quality, its an A3 page and my scanner is only A4 so I had to take a picture. I have never been very good at fading my washes away in a smooth gradient, but I'm a lot better than I used to be, so I suppose practice does indeed make perfect. 

That big white line aross the corner is my headphones cable by the way and theres my sexy liquid holding tray at the top, I dont know what it's actually for or where I got it, but it does a great job where it is now.
So just a load more washing to finishing him up, then the easy task of a some complicated knotwork to finish it off that I definitely wont make any mistakes with.
Definitely.

Practice makes perfect

So, some sketching from today, more messing with the watercolours and I bought a set of water brush pens for 4 euro 50 yesterday, which was odd since there were single ones for sale next to them for 8 euro each, sense, it has left. The point is that I was watching the master James Gurney working in one of his vids on youtube and he was using them to ink, I thought "isnt that novel" cos I think like that, so I got them and started having fun. Let me tell ya, they are fun, one filled with a heavy mix of black ink and water so it flows well and the other with just water for washing, if you can and are so inclined, give it a try.

Tyr the God of Tuesday

Check out the Islander Art blog to find out all about this groovy guy linky link