Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Gateway Journal Entry - Day 01 : It's the Little Things

A drawing of a lamp. Hardly seems like an exciting way to start off my travel journal of Gateway, but when I saw it, it seemed oddly appropriate.

I guess it's because so many things in this city are more than "just a lamp", like they often are back home. The uncommon is common here in Gateway, a city that teems with creatures and beings and people from an unknowable variety of places.

This lamp is in the lobby of the pension that I checked in to this morning after a very long and "tricky" journey here. The old lady who runs the place, her name is Szerta I think, tells me her grandfather bought it from a travelling junk salesman in the Nathru-Val. She says they used to be very trendy a couple of centuries ago…. I don't know if you can see it in my drawing, but when you turn the light on, a bit of smoke comes out of the cigar on the little face in the middle… there were, apparently, a variety of lamps like this that had little smoking faces…. I guess it's no weirder than the wall-mounted singing fish that were popular back home several years ago…

It's just one of the many bizarrely intricate and fascinating things that I seem to be finding around every corner here. I consider myself very lucky to have been given this opportunity to come to Gateway and draw what I see.

My mysterious benefactor/client has made sure I have enough time, money, supplies, and resources to really dive deep into life in Gateway, and record it for curious types back home. Although I have planned to be here for about a year, I can see how it would really take a lifetime to truly explore this unbelievably vast and intricate city, maybe two lifetimes.

So, I am going to unpack, study some street maps (no easy task, I assure you) and plan my route for tomorrow. I will try to post these as often as possible, but, as you can imagine, it's tricky getting information back and forth. Wish me luck!

A falconer-monk, and some domed monasteries....




Tuesday, January 18, 2011

"The Offering" Framed!

So, the great Gregg Spatz, fantasy art collector extraordinaire, sent me this image of "The Offering", a piece that he commissioned me to make, in its shiny new frame... and I DO MEAN SHINY: according to Gregg, this frame actually has STERLING silver in it, and was "damned expensive"! Wow, how about that!




Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Horizontal Format Sketching

Doing more sketches in a horizontal / film-aspect ratio format. I noticed that I almost always impulsively start my work / sketches with a very similar vertical rectangle. I think making some of my pieces look like little scenes from a (for now) non-existent film is kind of a neat idea. What do you think?

I am also going to be concentrating a lot more on environments as the main subject matters of my pieces, with figures occupying the space and providing a frame of reference instead of being the main focus.

Thanks for checking them out!