Art brain

I don’t want to edit anymore. I want to paint and draw, so why fight it. Here’s a picture of the background progress on my Ice Dragon. I like it! It looks like velvet. It’s slow work, but also very zen.

I also got a book called Perspective by David Chelsea (recommended by RuthLampi at Balticon). It's an awesome book and is totally blowing my mind. I have wanted to learn to paint distant landscapes and cityscapes forever. A few years ago, I took an art class for just such a purpose, but it turned out to be useless. I have been really discouraged about it since. None of the books seemed to have what I was looking for. They all seemed to talk about fading into the distance and all. I understood, but it never looked right when I tried it. This book is teaching me why and I love it. It feels like I have been given the keys to the kingdom of art or something and I am only a third of the way through the book! I think all this time I have been looking for a class on perspective, but that's not something they teach in community art classes.  I used to figure out perspective slow way - with trial and error, but now I’ve been given rules and tools to use. Watch out world! Anyway, I love learning new things! Here is a sketch I did last night while learning the rules. It’s not much, but you can see the beginnings of a city block and it doesn’t look wonky! 

These are some flags I designed  on a whim for the novel I am writing. They are just design sketches, but they make me happy!