My dearest dragon boy. He’s a oneshot character for dnd. He’s a draconic sorcerer tiefling who thinks he’s a dragon. I wanted to make him a gentlemen boi. I liked doing his hair and scales.
Fine Art Fables: The Vila
Due to the atrocities occurring in Ukraine, I have decided this week to feature the nymphs, Vila, of Slavic folklore.
The Vila (also known as Vile) of Slavic folklore are depicted as very beautiful women with long flowing blonde hair and light colored robes. They live in the forests, in nature, and sometimes fountains. They are known to be vengeful creatures on those who cross them, specifically luring men to their deaths with their beauty. However, they can also be aids to heroes in battle, offering them cavalry and weapons. Village people would leave flowers and drinks outside of the caves they were said to dwell as peaceful offerings. They are similar to the women of the woods who would accompany Diana in Roman mythology, and Artemis in Greek mythology. Because of their vengeful nature and relationships with warriors, they are also similar to the Valkyries of Norse mythology; winged female beings that would aid soldiers in battle and take their souls to the underworld.
Given that Ukraine’s national flower is a sunflower, I thought that depicting this woodland nymph in a field of sunflowers would be fitting. I made her dress and ribbon of her hair blue, due to the secondary color of the Ukrainian flag. I also depicted her with a bow and several magical arrows because of the Vila’s connection with war. I kept the idea of long blonde hair as well. Because of their feared beauty, I kept her facing away from the viewer. 
Yesterday: Sessue Hayakawa
To shed light on those commonly forgotten by American media, especially those of color, I wanted to create a series that honored early Asian American actors and actresses in Hollywood. The focus of the first installment of this three-part series is Sessue Hayakawa, a Japanese-American actor who made his debut in 1914 and continued to act in Hollywood until his last performance before his death in 1966. He became one of the first male sex symbols in Hollywood by being typecast as the sadistic, yet devilishly handsome villain in his movies. He frequently preyed on young, often white women in his roles, drawing on the American view towards Japanese men at the time. Hayakawa is known as the first non-white actor to achieve international stardom, and was later rewarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, though he remains largely forgotten by most of the American public today.
To introduce my series “Yesterday”, I would describe the contents as including anything from the past, from as early as many centuries ago to as late as the 2000s. I often find myself fascinated by culture and history throughout the decades, and whether it’s a historical awareness piece or simply sketches of my favorite 90s films and music, I wanted to create a homage to that.
Evolving Emotions: Familiar Weather
You are perched
A wooden stool in the kitchen
Creaking beneath your weight
Staring out at
The meadow beyond
Past the chipped window frame
The light pours like water
Streaming through
Weathered glass
An alluring glow
Inviting eyes to
Dip
and Dive
Across the hills
And into the trenches
Its beauty is
Undeniable
But you can’t shake
The twinge in your chest
A stab at your tissue
Inside your head
It nags
A
Disturbing
Disruption
Amidst the serenity
The possibility
The hills
Vacillating
The trees
Snapping
The sky
Darkening
The rocks
Clamoring
The chirping of birds
Screeching
The rushing of water
Pounding
The movement of clouds
Hastening
The whistling of grass
Shrilling
Sending the mind
Into a frenzy of static
Quickening in pace
You feel it.
The light fades
In its place
Are gloomy clouds
Rapturous storms
An unbearable inundation
A pond fills the sink
Entering through the tap
Spilling onto the checkered tile
The countertops
And dull appliances
The rivers flow
With unending power
Through the opened window
The cracks in the walls
The age-worn door
Oceans form inside your skull
Waterfalls drain your eyes
Taking with it the innocence you held
Leaving hollowness behind
Wracked with exhaustion
All dries up
The sun burns flesh
The light lay strangely now
You were used to the ponds
The rivers
The oceans
Only for them to leave you
A battered husk
On a wooden stool.
Industrious Illustrating #2: Life Drawings 1
Hey all! I hope everyone has had a good and restful spring break so far! This week, I’d like to share some examples of life drawings from a sketchbook I maintained during the November of last year.
Below, I used watercolor and inks at a live nude model drawing session held by MDraw to study the model’s skin texture and gesture. I’m looking forward to MDraw hosting more life drawing sessions after spring break, as the entry free is pretty affordable (less than a cup of boba!) and I always feel like my skills have improved after a session.
Meanwhile, these life studies are far more loose and fluid. I looked at my classmates during a lecture and tried to capture the gesture and contour of their bodies first, leaving details and exact proportions second. The result is a study of motion in stationary subjects.
I don’t just draw human subjects, either. These three sketchbook pages are from an ink drawing project I did for Drawing: Observation class during that month. Professor Guilmet brought her fascinating collection of dried, pickled, and taxidermied animals to class for us to draw from. Once the weather warms up a little more, I might go to a zoo or a wildlife sanctuary so that I can draw some animals that are still kicking and breathing! Maybe they’ll find their way into one of my drawings.
If any of you guys are also visual artists, I highly recommend drawing anything you find interesting from live observation. No two people find the exact same images and objects interesting, so you’ll gradually develop a visual library in your brain that is completely unique to who you are as a person. And who knows, maybe your drawings could spark an interest in someone else toward something they previously didn’t see the value in. 🙂
The Rise of the Band Geeks, Episode 19: Faded Halftime
Metal drips
Onto the planes of the floor that lists
And slips into a field across which grit
Spills in rubber bits over spits of grass
Within the lip of a concave beast.
Teeth
Pushing forth heat and the beats of notes that scream into an impenetrable mass of
Teeming beings melted into a gelatinous sheen
Their wordless voices are shrieks that form a backdrop against the reel of notes.
What is it except burning muscles and the battery’s echoic surge
What is it except the metronome of our feet and the sheet music
Imprinted upon our brains
Like oily tattoos that ooze into the grooves of the mind
What is it except our numb fingers that fuse to the metal in the bitter wind
And snow
Drifting in eddies
As the final strands of warmth fade into mist.
