Northern dreaming

These faces are a bit older work. As I have said, I haven’t kept much, these I found between the pages of a book. I have tendency to draw pictures of my characters. The two of a woman with long hair in a bun are supposed to be the same individual, and her two brothers. There is also a younger sister, but her picture I didn’t find. I haven’t written their story yet. Maybe because these are probably my oldest characters, I have had them since I was a teenager, their story has turned out to be very hard to get right – with the newer stories the characters can change a bit if the story seems to demand it, but these guys are very stubborn. And persistent. I really do have to write them some day, I think that may be the only way to get them to stop bugging me.

The mountain view sketch is new. I might turn it into a painting, not sure yet.

Some more photos.

The skull is a replica, in case anyone was wondering, but it looks like it may have been molded from a cast made of a real one, the details look very convincing. I have bit of a weak spot for bones, I have always wanted to get a few real skulls. Maybe that of a cow, and a horse. I do own a sheep skull, unfortunately one without horns. If I can find the painting I once made of it I will scan that and show it here, but right now I have no idea where I have stashed it. There is no space to hang anything on my walls, mostly because most walls in my apartment are hidden behind book cases.

Okay, some rather crude ones. As you can see, I do women a lot better than men – mostly due to more practice. I have taken several live model drawing classes, and every single time all the models have been women, and most of them very young women. Men I have drawn primarily from photos.

The painting is a part of an old one. I rarely keep my works, and I haven’t done much painting for nearly two decades. That one is something like 30 years old, kept mostly for nostalgic reasons, it was the first time I tried to do a space view.

Oh yes, the scanner problem turned out to be the USB cable. I have a cat who has a very doggy interest in chewing things and I found some obvious teeth marks when I finally looked at it – I had simply unplugged it from my old printer, which I hadn’t used for months, and most of the cable was hanging behind the desk so when I plugged it into the new one I didn’t look at it much – so I’m afraid this may have been one of those ‘the dog ate my homework’ excuses, except for real. Anyway, once I finally managed to get to a store and buy a new one things started to work.

The couple of poses where she is just not pointing the thing at the sky are not correct. I know a bit about historical European swordplay, but since the time I last attended classes was several years ago and I never advanced past the beginner stage I didn’t really remember much at the time these photos were taken. Right now I have again started with the beginner course, so if we can do a second shoot sometime maybe I will be able to instruct Nina to pose in ways which might, maybe, make anybody who knows sword to feel at least partway happy. Or at least not make that person cry.

Nina is, by the way, left handed, and so am I. But if you want a picture of a right handed person you can always flip one of the ones where she’s holding the sword (or anything else) like a southpaw. 🙂

I’m drawing. But before I can show any of the results here I need to learn how to use the damn multi-purpose printer-scanner thing I just bought. Having some problems to get it to play nice with my computer right now.

So, the main reason for all these cloak pictures was to get some idea of how a full circle cloak folds when she is in different positions. And even though we took lots of those, if I can get Nina to model for me again I still want to take more. Right now I got her standing in different positions, I’d like to get some where she is sitting, or bending, or kneeling – well, if you draw you know. Everything possible. And a few with bit more wind. 🙂

I will probably use some of these pictures for covers, after playing a bit with some photo editing programs, but the big thing was to get reference photos, as many as possible.

Something difficult to draw without a reference.

The lady in the pictures is Nina. Good sport – not that many people I know who are willing to run around dressed in a cloak and/or tunic and waving either a sword or a big stick in a popular sight seeing spot, and she didn’t even get paid for this – and an excellent model. Her dog will also have a part in a couple of the photos, but unfortunately her husband wasn’t willing to play the part of a vampire for us.

and perhaps getting upset over the fact that he never shows up, later raising a storm.

These are from last Saturday, taken on and around the same castle ruins. We took over 300 photos that day, with the idea that if you take enough there will be at least some good ones in the lot.

Yep, that small pond in the distance really is part of the sea. This part of the coast has lots and lots of islands. You’d have to drive some distance to find a beach from which you can see open sea. Besides, that is the only spot near the ruins where you can include some view of the sea in a photo without getting any of the houses on the opposite shores in it.

So, a few more cloak photos.

 
There was some wind, but not very much, that day. That’s why there are several in the photos of the previous days where the model is going through or standing in the same doorway, that one was the only place where we could get the cloak to move well without her moving. I do also have a few where she does the moving, but since this is the model who doesn’t want her face to be visible I’m not going to put those here, she is mostly recognizable in them.

This doorway we took several pictures in simply because it’s the most photogenic one you can find there. The castle used to belong to the Catholic bishops, and after the reformation in the 16th century it was torn down. There isn’t much left, and the castle was not particularly big to start with, so while it is rather pretty in a few places there aren’t many of those places.

These are rather boring, just some trees, the sword stuck into ground and a few of the ruins without any figures in them. But who knows, they might be useful either as reference pictures or for backgrounds.

The original reason which started this project of building some sort of photo reference etc library for myself was that when I wanted to draw a person wearing a cloak I didn’t find any good reference photos of a person wearing a long full circle one on a windy day. So, since I happened to own one myself I got the idea of asking some friends if anybody would be willing to pose for me wearing it, outside, when there was at least some wind. Now presumably there are such pictures on the net somewhere, but they aren’t always so easy to find. Yes, I do know about deviantART, and a few other places too, but the problem with them seems to be that if you are looking for something specific there is just so much there, and in no clear order, and the right search terms aren’t always all that logical either. In some ways it’s easier to build your own library, at least that part you can do with the props, models and backgrounds you have access to.

And since this turned out to be something I enjoy doing, win win.

Oh yes, as you can see I figured out that gallery option again. Not said I will still remember it next time. 🙂

Well, let’s see if I still remember how I did this yesterday…

I spend nearly a couple of hours yesterday taking pictures at the ruined castle, with a friend who doesn’t mind showing her face posing with different props. I’ll probably start putting up some of those sometime next week. These older photos were mostly taken last spring, and then I had a model who does not want any pictures where she would be identifiable to put up on the web, so there will be nothing where her face shows.

Right now I have only one sword and one cloak, so it’s just going to be that same green and on spots faded cloak in every picture, and that same sword with the somewhat goofy looking brass cross guard and pommel (as far as I know it’s a model meant for show fighting – lousy balance, doesn’t look good close but shouldn’t fall apart immediately if you were to hit something, like another sword, with it) I bought cheaply from a used goods net auction. If I ever get the money I intend to buy something better. As for cloaks, I think I’ll make one or two new ones some time next spring.

I mainly mean to use these photos myself as reference when painting or drawing, but playing with them turned out to be fun, even if I don’t have a good image editing program. Maybe I should buy one, after all. Right now I have been using a couple you can download for free, but what you can do with them is rather limited. Well, it’s also likely I haven’t even learned to use them properly yet, I’m not all that great when it comes to using computers…

And talking about not being good with computers, yesterday I did find out how to put the pictures up as that gallery, where you can move from a larger version to next without going back to the thumbnails, now I haven’t been able to figure out how I did that.

Oh well, maybe next time.