For this month's Watercolor Wednesday, I decided to finally paint a picture I've been stewing over for months (since before Christmas, actually). Another Tow'rs-inspired piece, this picture takes its cues from their song "Swelling Sea".
The main images I wanted to include from the song were the Moon, larger than life and pulling on the singer and the sea, and the swinging "pendulum clock".
The rough sketch
Both of these made it into the rough sketch (although I did have to move the Moon to the right because it wound up too close to the pendulum at first). As I added some waves for the swelling sea, an abutment of land introduced itself, along with a lighthouse. Since the opening line of the song mentions a keeper (who I'd always envisioned as a gatekeeper or door guard), I decided the lighthouse was a fitting addition. It ended up being one of my favorite elements.
The finished product
I'm very pleased with the way the Moon and the lighthouse turned out. I was worried I wouldn't get them right (especially the lighthouse, which is presented in miniature compared to the overwhelming Moon). The pendulum clock turned out well too. But yet again, I'm finding backgrounds are far more challenging than I expect them to be. I'm not sure if this is due to my color choices, or the brushes, or just plain ineptitude on my part. Perhaps next month I'll find one of the paint-along videos on my favorite watercolor channels on YouTube and follow along with it to see if that improves my background.
Since I talked about my favorite heroic magic-users in fiction last month, I thought I'd tackle the other side of the aisle this time. Again, I'm using the term "wizard" to refer to anyone using magic. Saruman the Many-Colored Saruman begins life as a Maia (or angel) of Illuvatar, the Creator of Tolkien's legendarium. Selected as the head of the Istari (wizards) sent by the Valar (archangels) to Middle-earth, Saruman soon abandons the proscription laid on him against taking up leadership over men by establishing himself in Isengard, an abandoned fortress. In his attempts to study the work of Sauron, initially to help the forces of good defeat the Dark Lord, Saruman becomes corrupted by his own fear, bitterness, and longing for power. Changing his name from Saruman the White to Saruman the Many-Colored, he betrays his closest ally and one-time friend Gandalf and eventually becomes little more than a wizened old man whose only power lies in his voice. (S...
Welcome to the second half of my look at the film adaptation of Z for Zachariah . This time, I'm going to look at the differences between the book and the film and talk about how those differences affect the story. I knew going into the film that there were going to be differences -- primarily that there was a third character introduced into the main conflict, giving the film a love triangle of sorts. This is, quite possibly, the largest departure from the story in the book. I say possibly because I think there is something that better qualifies -- but more on that momentarily. The addition of Caleb (everyone has Biblical names here; even Ann is derived from Hannah) actually could have served to emphasize the book's themes very well. His appearance would have been a major concern to the paranoid John from the book, and the potential romantic tension between Ann and Caleb would definitely have rankled the possessive and outright predatory man O'Brien depicts in his ...
Sleeping Beauty is one of those Disney films I love to come back to again and again. It has beautiful animation, humor, and some interesting magical characters. But over the years, I've come to think of it less as Aurora's story and more as the story of fairy politics. This belief was only reinforced by our weekend attempt to introduce Samwise to the movie (he was about as interested as he is in anything not Moana , which is to say very interested for about 5 minutes and then sporadically interested when he wasn't playing with toys). Exhibit A: Her (In)Active Role This is something a lot of people criticize about Sleeping Beauty : its protagonist . . . doesn't do much in the film. She sings, she wanders the woods while the "dears" prepare a birthday surprise, she meets a man, she submits to having her life turned upside down, and then she falls under the spell of the villain. She also has the fewest lines of dialogue of any Disney princess ever. She si...
Very nice!
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