This one went quickly too, which is honestly freaking me out a little. Maybe eight hours total? I suck at keeping track of that sort of thing though. When I’m doing commission work I have to keep a written log as I go because there is just no way that I will remember what I did later on when it comes time to make the invoice.

So, shit is going down this weekend. Saturday and Sunday I will be showing my jewelry at Art on the Rocks. (Sadly, this will not be ‘on the rocks’ this year, but I digress.) Those of you in the upper Michigan/east Wisconsin/middle south Canada area, I urge you to come on up/over/down. It’s a nice regional art and craft show, and the U.P. is very pretty this time of year, so if you like hiking, biking, kayaking or anything of that nature (heh, Nature. I am a punny woman.) it’s a great place to visit. Also there will be lots of lovely jewelry for sale…*cough*

I am borderline terrified. I am 85% prepared, but that last fifteen percent involves everything I shipped to myself arriving intact and on time, pricing my inventory, setting up the ability to take credit cards (this may not happen in time…@#&*!) and getting myself and my inventory through the airports. Wish me luck… please?

I’ve had this one in my head for awhile. Possibly because of that, it went really quickly when I sat down to draw it.

That was a good thing, for I am phenomenally busy this month. I started a second job (hooray MONEY!… boo free time) I did two logo designs (hooray commission work!… boo free time) and I’m preparing for a big jewelry show at the end of July, so I’m making chainmail until my arms fall off. (hooray professional acknowledgment/money!…boo free time.)

Unfortunately, as all of the above is for pay, the blog is sort of my last priority right now. And no, I’m not about to beg for money. I’m not that desperate yet.

Hopefully, there will be no interruption of the blogular service you’ve come to enjoy. But if there is, take heart: things will be back to normal by the end of the month. They’ll have to be. I’m running out of sleep-credit to pay off my sleep-deficit.

So somebody won.

That’s right. Some rat-weasel guessed it already.

However, I decided that it might be nice to give you reader-folk the option of working it out on your own, while relieving the tension of that minority of people in the world who won’t sleep until they get it.

This is the answer. No clicky unless you want to spoil it for yourself!

I’ll keep posting on a weekly basis until the series is done, and will continue to answer questions and give out hints. A summary of progress so far:

-The correct answer is less than twelve characters long.

-There will be twelve illustrations when I’m finished.

- Not ‘headgear,’ ‘mentorship,’ ‘party,’ or ‘pair’.

- However, the illustrations can (and probably should) be grouped into pairs, and most of them will have a pair of things in them.

- As suggested above, #3 and #4 can both be called ‘knights’.

I had to stick fairly close to photographic reference for these, because of that ’straight line’ problem I mentioned.

But I have offically learned how to do water reflections. I did remarkably well on this awhile ago, but I sort of thought it was a fluke. After doing these reflections with no particular reference, I think I’m on to something.

Also, in the roof in the background, I nailed the transition from shine on the roof to open sky. Edges fade out in that situation, and it’s the sort of thing where if it’s not right, everyone can tell.

Also, I think you guys need more of a hint. So I mentioned in comments that it might be helpful to ponder these illustrations in pairs. For example, everyone in #3 and #4 is riding a horse.

Today’s extention on that hint: What is a word for someone who rides a horse? (Other than cowboy or samurai, of course. That would be easy.)

Feh. More buildings.

I do like the two figures though. They look like people look when they have a conversation, which is of course exactly what I was going for.

Also, the tree in the background is old. I drew if for something else during college, and re-purposed it for this illustration, because the building seemed to need a foliage-incursion.

Happy Weekend! Boy do I need it…

Well, I’m finding myself drawing way more buildings than I thought I would. Yech.

See, I don’t like straight lines. Or rather, artificial lines. (I don’t like perfect circles, either.) I’m really more an organic lines sort of artist.

Which of course means that I have to force myself to do buildings and machinery occasionally. It’s part of ‘making myself into a well-rounded artist’, which objectively sounds like acadamic bullshit, I know. The problem is that it’s sort of true: If you have anything that you categorically shy away from drawing, you’ll find yourself increasingly limited in what subjects you’re able to draw. Let me put it another way: How many of you, when you draw a person, have them convieniently standing with their hands behind their back or otherwise surreptitiously out of view?

This one is just ‘okay’.

I tried to appoximate the kind of thing I did with the bamboo in the previous illustration with wildflowers, and it didn’t really work. Turns out that bamboo can be reduced to two colors (black and white) and be parsed pretty well by a human brain. Wildflowers, not so much. Also it was a pain in the ass to find reference photos at the angle I wanted. The internet failed me.

But the western tackle (For you non-horse-y people out there, ‘tack’ or ‘tackle’ is all the crap you make a horse wear so you can take advantage of it being stronger and stupider than you. ) doesn’t look too bad, considering how unfamiliar I am with it. And the horses are okay, and the people are okay, and the mountains look like mountains… This one just doesn’t have anything about it that’s great.

I really, really like this one.

Well, I like it now.  At the time, when I realized what I needed (again with the picture bossing me around) for the background I considered crying, flailing, and chanting ‘I don’t wanna, you can’t make me!’ Because yes, I did all that bamboo by hand, not a filter. Don’t get me wrong, I tried to use filters, but it just didn’t look right.

Any guesses yet?

Part two in my series. Remember kids: Free personalized art for whoever correctly guesses the concept which links the illustrations in this series, with smaller prizes for amusing guesses.

In this one, I got a bit more comfortable with the style and detail level, which is somewhere between what I do for a full color image and my old standby black-and-white line style. And yes, I used some photographic reference, especially for the bottles and the facial hair. Man they knew how to grow facial hair in 1850.

And here it is a bit bigger, for those of you that want to check out details.

I thought we might play a little game with this project. The game is called ‘What noun links these pictures?’ It works like this: I’ll post one illustration from this series per week, on Saturday. Whoever correctly guesses the unifying theme and posts their guess in comments first wins. Yes/no questions are allowed. Also, I’m not above bribery. I will design a new free desktop wallpaper for whoever guesses it first. I’ll also happily hand out smaller prizes for guesses I think are really really close, or just extra amusing.

hints to start:

- There will be twelve illustrations when I’m done.

- The correct answer is less than twelve characters long.