It's only castles burning

It's officially been a long time since I posted anything new here.  I've been medium busy, medium drunk.  More drunk.  I haven't had it in me to paint much lately.  Pathetic.  Here's the last two odd month's worth of garbage.


Wandering Parnassus- Experimenting with this swamp effect.  Successful.  Also more of these half-timbered tudor style buildings.  Those are my favorite.


Blood on the Snow- I had this pot of white ink sitting around for ages.  I finally decided to try something with it, and promptly became enamored with the way it can layer.  I went off on a bit of a snow kick after this point.


The Wolf Throne- This is my favorite of these snow things.  I like the rangy legs of the wolf.  One of my favorite canids is the Maned Wolf, I think that shows a it whenever I paint a wolf of any kind.  Good proportions on those beasts.


The Harvest- I consider this a failure.  The proportions on everything here just hit my eye all wrong.


August Company- Next.


Unquiet Spirit- This is an idea I need to mess with a bit more.  This was a 9x12" page ruined by my inability to properly conceive an image before I start splattering the place with ink.  I just blacked the whole thing out and tried putting white over it.  It works.  I've got a few other pages that could use the cover-the-whole-fucking-thing-with-black treatment.


The Wolf Throne- I enlarged this in a fit of uninspired boredom.


The Struggler-  I was starting to get bored just doing snow over and over again.  It shows, because this just sucks.


Sword Bearer- I realized that I had never painted a moose.  Problem solved.  More swamp.  General success.


All Guardian Spirits, Revolt- An incomplete scan, because the thing is too big for the scanner bed.  I've got a few of these big watercolor blocks, but I very rarely put anything on them that I don't end up hacking to pieces with a sword.  This is alright.


The Wild Hunt- This would be better of there wasn't ONE thing that I see which is unfixable and a ghastly disproportion.  I won't point it out.


The March of the Doe Cult-  This was unwittingly painted on the cardboard backing of a watercolor block.  They don't intend that this cardboard be painted on, so this almost disintegrated.  Luckily it did not, because I enjoy it.


Death Throes- More on the block.  The complete thing looks a little better, because it's got more negative space. 


The Tower and the Hydra-  I picked up a small 6x6" block and I enjoy the hell out of it.  It's an odd dimension, I've never really worked in a square.  I've found that the size and shape of whatever I'm working on has a lot to do with how much I enjoy painting on it.


The Tower and the First Reckoning-  Second in the tower triptych.  This place has got all kinds of problems, obviously.


The Tower and the Onslaught from the Forces of the Earth-  I was going to do a whole shitload of these.  I still might.  I started getting mentally fixed on it though, which smashed my ability to be creative.  I've started to get a better grasp on the traps I lay for myself.  I spin out volumes in my head, I rely on an idea, I stop developing it and start expecting it to do all the work.  The end result is always the same, either the idea fades and I'm left with a bunch of half-complete garbage, or I keep banging away at something until I realize it's become a stagnant impulse that could go on forever.  So I cut this off at three.

So there's my meager two months.  It's black dog days for me, perpetually haunted by old ghosts.  The bottle kills them pretty well.  The creature's always been good for that.  It doesn't solve any of my problems, but it sure does make them shut the fuck up for awhile so I can get some sleep.