Medusa - Images

Here are the images I threatened promised you with. Actually, they are the same image, but from two different periods in my learning the craft, is it were.

The subject, as the title suggests, is the Gorgon Medusa. I have always been a fan of Greek Mythology, especially Perseus and Theseus . I'll never know why that is; perhaps it was because of the monsters they fought.

One of the joys of drawing Medusa is you really can't do it wrong. So what if the face is misshapen, or the eyes are misaligned? She's supposed to be ugly after all. Am I right or am I right?

Below are the images:

The top one is the original, more or less as I drew it. I'm thinking around three years ago, give or take. All I did was scan it into the computer, clean it up a little, then added color. It's not great, as the sides of her face look a bit uneven. The eyes are excellent, but I can't remember if I "cheated" on them or not (i.e. copied and pasted the eye shape I preferred)

The bottom one is a touch up job I did today using Jasc Paint Shop Pro. What I did was "ink" the out lines of the various parts of the face. I evened the sides of the face by cheating. I also cheated with the low hanging snakes near the neck, and with the neck itself. The hairline (snakeline?) I moved down a bit, thus giving her head a bit of a smaller look. I also took out the snake eyes; they really weren't working, and, in the end, weren't necessary.

While there are differences, I think I maintained the spirit of the original with the touchups. Whether Medusa herself would be pleased, I can not say.

Wild Ride - A Photo

In order to make up for a more or less lackluster day (as if there haven't been oh so many before this!) I present something you don't see every day:

It's sad. I look at that picture and think, "Gee, I wish my desk was still that tidy..."

More images tomorrow. Come and see if you dare!

MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA (cough, hack) HA!

(I'm in a strange place right now... Real strange.)

It's Interesting...

...that I just have to delete a fair sized (and fair written) post, and yet I'm fine with keeping something as vapid as "Serious Belief" up.

I must be tired.

Serious Belief

That's one of the most important things when you're a Writer of the Fantastic.

Serious Belief.

I don't mean you have to believe what you're writing is real, nor that you can't have a good time when writing (snickering at the perdicament of your characters, say.) You just have to believe it when you're writing it and take it seriously. Never say "I'm above this" or "I could do better than this". Because unless you are a master of the craft (and sometimes not even then), it will show in the work and weaken everything.

Examples are abound in the various arts. The best come from films. Compare Tim Burton's Batman films to Joel Schumacher's. Or Tom Holland's (Fright Night) to that of Schumacher's vampire movie (Lost Boys).

(Looks like I'm picking on Schumacher, doesn't it? Well when you put nipples on the Bat suit, you should expect some grief. Decades worth, in fact.)

Of course, there are exceptions. Parodies, for instance, and the like. But I think its a good rule of thumb not to wink at your audience, nor elbow them in the ribs and whisper "But we all know better, don't we?"

Second Thoughts on a Post

I had a post for today. Good sized, real nice. I even published it.

And, not five minutes later, I pulled it down. There was nothing wrong with the post that I could see. It just felt off some how. Like I shouldn't do it.

Thus we are left with this random post. Such is life.

Personal Cowardice - an Annoying Bit of Autobiography

This is a little tale of Cowardice, one of those annoying biographical bits I warned everyone about. Don’t worry, it’s quite long and no one’s going to want to read it all.

Once upon a time, towards the end of the nineties, I bought myself a PlayStation. It was the first game system I bought for myself using my own money and it was a blast.

(We are not going to talk about how old I was then, because that involves talking about the long period between me leaving High School and flirting with College, all the while struggling with writing something, anything. As well as highlighting how I wasted large chunks of my life doing so. If it was interesting, maybe, but sadly…)

Any way, I was excited. I bought my first PlayStation game, a RPG called "Wild ARMS".* It had this feature where you could customize certain icons, as well as the background and certain frames.

Which I did.

Over and over again.

I put more hours into doing that actually playing the game.

Such anal behavior is why the background on the Blog keeps changing, but that’s not the point.

Right now I’m sitting on a nice story I’m calling "Hero of Uillias Castle." It’s 39 pages double spaced and consists of approximately 9280 words, give or take an asterisk or three being counted as words. It’s a nice story, I love it to death, but a little voice in my head says it could be better. It could be better and if it was better it would sell. It would sell and I would be on my way.

I have another story, called "The Specter." Seven pages double spaced, over 1200 words. I love it to death too, but I don’t think it would go over to well at all. (Too short, not structured to my satisfaction, this, that, the other thing.) I can do something with it; I know I can. It's just I'm sputtering about and not making progress.

I’ve got another story… Well, could go on, list the other stories I’ve finished, came close to finishing, came close to starting, finished then deleted it all, finished then thought I saved but really didn’t, thank you so much modern technology and faulty brain. I could give reasons, excuses, proof of a massive conspiracy to keep me humble, evidence that Bigfoot and Elvis stole my brain, and perhaps something someone might find hard to believe. None of this matters.

What matters is I’m not even trying. I’m spinning my wheels, telling myself that there is a problem and not doing something about it. Or, worse yet, telling myself there is a problem when there is nothing wrong.

In other words, I'm designing icons for the game instead of playing. I might have the greatest of stories, I may have the worst of stories, but I’m not going to know until I ship them out.

The purpose of this Blog, I've said before and will no doubt say again to the annoyance of everyone including me, is to improve my writing. Between this site and my posts at various message boards, I feel better about my writing and my writing skills than I have in years.

I feel good about writing. Better than I have in years.

I feel frustrated. I can feel the seconds crawl over my skin as they go passing me by. And they’re giggling, the lot of them. Little snots.

There is only one thing to do.

Sometime this week, I‘m going to start working on "Hero of Uillias Castle" and get it to where I want it to be. I’ll give me until the end of May. If I don’t finish it to my satisfaction, I’m going to make sure what I do have is ship shape and I’m going to send it out, warts and all. See if it’s all in my head.

I’m also going to hammer out a publishable “The Specter” (One with a better name, damn it). That bad boy is going to sing. I’ll give myself to the end of June. If I don’t finish it, then I drop it and move on. It’s waited this long, it can wait a bit longer.

The Comparison Essay I was planning for this week… probably won’t be finished in time. Again. Sorry about that. (Yeah, like there are thousands of people dying for that opus.) I’m going to keep on plugging on it, though, as trying to summarize Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and make the summary as interesting as the movie is a trick.** Plus, I said I was going to do it.

I’m going to set a deadline for it too - before mid May. That I’ll hit or give up on the essay, one of the two.

If I think of a story or (God, please) figure out a way of restarting the novel, then I’m going to do it too. I’m going to work my fingers to the bleeding point if I have too.

I’m going to see my blog profile changed or know the reason why.

I will keep you posted as to how well I do.

Well, that’s far too many words on this subject. Close to a thousand if my word counter is to be believed (Give or take an asterisk or two, as well as HTML commands). Four pages or so double spaced. About standard when I’m hot.

Sadly.
_______________________

* - Fun game, by the way. It’s being re-released in an all new edition for the PlayStation 2 later this year.
** - Summarizing Godzilla is going to be especially fun, as I don’t intend to refer to Raymond Burr’s character once. Not that I don't like Burr, mind you...

Fun Fact

I typed "welltun cares presents" into Yahoo today and had a link to this site pop up. My God, is that cool.

Tried it with Google and saw the name connected to "Blogshare", a fantasy stock market. Weirdness.