Naked Pixels

Recommended Reading: "The Fairy Artist's Figure Drawing Bible"

In July of last year (It feels a little odd still to call 2009 "last year".) I wrote about The Fantasy Artist's Figure Drawing Bible by Matt Dixon. This is a similar book, also published by Barron's... The Fairy Artist's Figure Drawing Bible by Linda Ravenscroft. It gives a lot of the same basic information about color and technique, as well as choosing your tools to work with, and is laid out in almost the same way. Instead of focusing on common races, creatures, and archetypes from general fantasy settings, however, this book focuses completely on drawing fairies.

(Note: For consistency, I will do my best to use "fairy" in this post. Should a "faerie" sneak in, though, that's not entirely a mistake... it's the way I normally spell the word.)

Like The Fantasy Artist's Figure Drawing Bible, this book is most useful to me as a reference book. I also think the two go well together. There are many artists who specialize in drawing fairies and close-up peeks into their world. Fairies are often very much a part of general fantasy settings, however, and the other book doesn't focus on them at all. This book can help you add fairies to your pieces that are already populated with ogres, dwarves, dragons, and wizards.

The section in the book on wings really got me thinking about how different wings on fairies can make or break a piece. An autumn piece done in reds and oranges, with falling leaves and plenty of acorns, isn't really where I'd picture butterfly-style wings. Styling the wings after those of a Monarch butterfly helps, but a fairy with wings inspired by leaves may actually look like more of a part of that world, rather than just being "at home" in that world.

Most of the fairies in the book are the popular happy, cheerful, flowery fairies. But hardcore folklore enthusiasts know of the Unseelie Court, as well, and the book does offer tips on drawing some of the fey who can be thought of as "going bump in the night". (Something to think about for drawing faeries when Halloween comes around again.)

My favorite thing about the book may be all the tips for drawing clothing. It's not that difficult for me to think of fairies wearing dresses made of leaves, or hats made of acorns or mushrooms, but I'm not sure I'd come up with some of the other ideas in the book on my own. I like pieces that have fairies almost, but not quite, blending into the world around them... making the eye search for them for just a second before seeing them. A lot of the clothing advice in this book would make drawing something like that a lot easier for me.

Whether you're learning to draw fairies as something other than simply tiny humans, or you just need an easy reference book to keep the details from becoming to generic and repetitive, I really do think The Fairy Artist's Figure Drawing Bible is worth taking a look at. Now that I've been pleased with two of these books, I'm going to be looking for others.

Webcomic Wednesday: A Few of My Favorites

To help put you more in the mind of Wednesdays being webcomic days here, I have a short list of some of my favorite webcomics to share. I actually read a lot more than this, but I have most of them bookmarked and have to go back from time to time and read through the archives. There are a lot of great webcomics on the internet, and I could never keep up with all of them!

Digger by Ursula Vernon: This is an on-going story, rather than stand-alone strips, and a difficult one to describe. The tag line pretty much covers it: "A wombat. A dead god. A very peculiar epic." My favorite character all along has been Shadowchild, and I hope we see more of him soon!

Looking for Group by Ryan Sohmer (writer) and Lar deSouza (artist): A favorite among many World of Warcraft fans, and for obvious reasons if you're familiar with WoW. Still, the story stands on it's own. There's no reason you'd have to be a WoW fan to enjoy the comic, although being a fan of the fantasy genre would certainly help. I dare anyone to say they aren't tempted to hug Richard now and again!

Complex Actions by Talthos (writer) and Silkspinner (artist): This one is definitely for gamers! It really is more about gamers than the games, though, and not in a way that makes gamers look much different from anyone else. The way a gamer starts seeing game elements everywhere after a while isn't all that different from when I was sewing and started thinking, "I wonder what quilt that could go in," every time I looked at a piece of fabric. That includes bedsheets and people's clothes. And the frustration over waiting for a game's release can be very similar to waiting for the release of a book or movie. These are regular people... who play video games. And the comic is both well-written and beautifully drawn.

And finally...

xkcd by Randall Munroe: Stick figures are awesome! Honestly, I can't imagine xkcd being drawn any other way by this point. This is very much a math and science geek comic. The alt-text on each one really completes things. I first read xkcd when my husband sent me this one:

(Just in case you ever wondered how geeks say, "I love you.")

World of Warcraft Art

Millions of people are caught up in the excitement of BlizzCon 2009 this weekend! And I do mean that literally. If you aren't a fan of Blizzard's games, you may not know that World of Warcraft has over 11 million subscribers. That's just one Blizzard game... it doesn't include (though it certainly doesn't exclude, either) fans of StarCraft and Diablo, or the original Warcraft games. So this seems like a good time to write about the art of the world of Azeroth.

It's not difficult at all to find screenshots and fan art on the internet. There are also books...The Art of World of Warcraft (which, sadly, the Barnes & Noble site says is out of stock) and The Cinematic Art of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, for example. Wow.com has an entire column, "Around Azeroth", devoted to interesting in-game screenshots. And there are several webcomics inspired by WoW that range from hand-drawn fan art to image manipulation using (legally) Blizzard's images. Azeroth is a world that people want to see!

Azeroth in a Nutshell (For those who don't know and may not really care.)

This is my extremely short explanation of things for non-fans who only need to know enough to understand this post. If you find you want to read about the lore of Azeroth and understand the story better, there are many lore-oriented websites, and the WoW wiki is one where you can look things up, instead of just reading years' worth of story from start to finish. (Not that it isn't worth reading... I personally think it is.)

The races of Azeroth are mostly divided into two factions: The Alliance and The Horde. The Alliance is made up of humans, gnomes, dwarves, Night Elves, and a people known as the Draenei. The Horde is made up of Orcs, Taurens, Blood Elves, a tribe of trolls, and the Foresaken... sort of a collective of individually aware zombies who have formed a cultural identity. Overall, the histories of Alliance races don't differ much from the histories of Horde races, except in the specific details (and especially not when elements of the history come from the actions of other forces that affect all of Azeroth), yet each side blames and vilifies the other, so they remain at war.

Cool story, bro... What does that have to do with the art?

Azeroth is a big world, with many regions. These regions are each beautiful in their own way, and attention was paid to detail even if players are simply going to be running through. Forests where bears can be found often have trees that show the deep gouges of having been scratched by bears. Water in some regions is murky and green, and crystal clear in other regions. Different plants are found in different regions, and not just the type that can be gathered with the herbalism skill. Different wild critters (extremely low level, mostly for decoration creatures) are found in different regions. The art makes the world seem more alive.

Cities built by different races also have beautiful characteristics unique to each race. After seeing some of the areas that would be considered beautiful by more traditional standards, it was difficult to believe a city in the middle of a harsh desert area could be as breathtaking, but Orgrimmar was just as beautiful to me as anywhere else... just in it's own way. The Foresaken (those zombie-like people) even manage to turn cemeteries and rotting buildings into works of almost Gothic beauty.

That's how good the Blizzard artists are. They can make dirt where almost nothing grows beautiful, and can put just enough life into death that it can almost make you feel unworthy to look at it. And that doesn't mean other areas are "even more beautiful". It means they're just that good at bringing out the real beauty in "ugly" things.

Even if video games aren't your thing, there are many books by authors like Richard Knaak and Christie Golden that focus on the lore of Azeroth and would appeal to fans of the Fantasy genre. But even if that's not your thing, either, I'd suggest looking up some of the art. There's much to be appreciated and enjoyed there, and quite a bit to be learned from it.