Elijah David

I didn't get around to uploading more art last month, so here's the rest of the AprilFae pieces, along with some other projects I've had going in the last couple of weeks. The AprilFae pics got loaded all out of order, so I'm just going to tell you what the prompt was and what I was aiming for rather than which day it was for. This one was "faerie fruit" and I thought an acorn was the most faerie fruit. I did a little postcard with an acorn, a pebble, and a dandelion seed. This is a little trading card for "spellbound." I wanted to do something related to Sleeping Beauty, which led me to thorns, and somehow that led to a ring of thorns. This is another postcard, this time for "harebells" (which are the flowers). I couldn't quite get the idea of an actual hare and an actual bell out of my head, so we wound up with this strange little picture: These are two bookmarks, one for "goblin egg" and the...

This has been a busier month for me as regards visual art. I haven't painted much, but I've been working on my sketching skills because one goal I've had for ages is to be able to sketch my own characters with some degree of finesse. I'm not going to be designing characters for film any time soon, but I'm pleased with my progress so far. Halcyon and Dammerung: Sassmaster Shapeshifters My watercolor this month is a fan art painting of Halcyon from Mirriam Neal's Paper Crowns  and Dammerung from Jennifer Freitag's Plenilune . These are two of my favorite books from last year, and two of my favorite characters from those books. I'm moderately pleased with the way the tails and bodies turned out, but the paws and faces were a bit wonky. I'm still not sure how to make the backgrounds seem more integrated. Step 4 is more of a guideline. I like to think of it as steps 0.5, 1.5, 2.5, 3.5, and 4. This hand-lettered piece was actually someth...

April Fools' Day is just behind us, so I thought today I could list some of my favorite tricksters in fiction. Cheshire Cat, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Quite possibly the first trickster I encountered, the Cheshire Cat is one of my favorite characters, especially Disney's manic version portrayed by Sterling Holloway. The right balance of wise and demented, the Cat acts as both guide and roadblock on Alice's journey. He's the epitome of the trickster in that way. Bartimaeus, the Bartimaeus Trilogy The initial narrator of Jonathan Stroud's fantasy trilogy, Bartimaeus is the sarcastic and slightly unreliable djinni at the heart of the books. Beneath all the snark, he has a heart much bigger than he wants you to think. His friendships with his masters make him one of the most complex characters in YA fiction. Robin Goodfellow/Puck, A Midsummer Night's Dream I love him so much I put him in the Albion Quartet. 'Nuff said. The Marqui...