Elijah David

It's really hard to believe it's been a year since I last made major goals for my creative life. And what a year it's been. I've switched jobs (so has my wife, but through less stressful circumstances), and God has seen us through financial hardships small and large. Lorehaven  magazine launched.  My life has been a lot busier and less restful of late due to work being so full the last couple of months. Add on doing Inktober and NaNoWriMo, and holiday travels . . . I'm bushed. But I'm going to try to get back into the habit of blogging and being creative in other ways. But before I set myself some goals for this year, let's take a look at last year's goals. Writing: Edit Albion Apparent and get it to the publisher.   During the first half of last year, I spent a large portion of my writing time on this. However, I stalled out for several reasons I can't go into. When there's news on this front, I will share it. Finish writing "Pap...

We're officially into the autumn season and October (and Inktober*) has begun. That means our household is in for our annual spooky/Halloween/autumn movie marathon. One of our favorites to bring out this time of year is M. Night Shyamalan's The Village . It's been at least a year, if not several, since I last watched this one but it still makes me happy as both a consumer and creator of stories. However, it's not perfect, so I want to talk about what I (still) love and what doesn't quite work for me after all these years. Love: Ivy and Lucius These two are the heart of this movie (along with Ivy's father), and they are a demonstration of Shyamalan's ability to craft strong characters beset by extraordinary circumstances. Ivy is brave, but still experiences almost crippling fear. Lucius is passionate, but has trouble expressing that passion. Their story unfolds slowly but elegantly, and the climax of emotion and wit that is "the porch scene"...

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...

I know I'm late with this month's art post. I haven't been as actively computering this week and it's always slipped my mind when I've been active. So here we are. I did a couple of Narnia paintings centered around Shasta and joined the April Fae art challenge on Instagram, so I've been very steadily making paintings and drawings for the last two weeks. I also did some prep sketches for the next couple 100 Myths drawings, but I'm saving those for once the final versions are done, probably after April Fae is over. First up, the Shasta series. This first one is a rendition of Shasta's night among the tombs of the ancient kings of Calormene. Note the cat keeping him company. I loved the colors in that one so much I wanted to do a portrait of Shasta with the same scheme. But first, a practice sketch. Then the colorized version: Day one of April Fae was the Fool, so I drew a Faerie hunter who felt foolish for taking a bet. Day tw...

Welcome to another Watercolor Wednesday, featuring lots of drawing, a few knit/crochet projects, and some actual watercolor! (Ok, so it was done with pencils, but  it's still painting.) On with the show . . . Mirriam did an art auction in which art/crafting projects were acceptable tender (good news for this broke guy), and I won her painting of Azrael from her novel Paper Crowns  (and its sequels). [I bid on him because he looks eerily like how I imagine Merlin from Albion Academy , especially after Chapter 11.] In exchange, I created a wand holster to match the Gandalf gloves she commissioned a while back. et viola! Modified from this pattern After that, I had two scarves commissioned: one for a friend's wife's birthday in a blend of Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff colors (and I forgot to take a picture before I mailed it off! :( ) and one for my pastor using the same pattern as my Newt scarf, but in different colors. Yes, my pastor is a Ravenclaw and doesn't...

Since I've failed to get my usual Monday Musings and Watercolor Wednesday posts up on time, I'm doing a combo post. First up, the art news. I finished the second in the 100 Myths series, after many failed attempts to get a sketch worked out. Presenting Jill Flame, a fiery counterpart to Jack Frost. And here's a side-by-side view. As a side note, my wonderful wife got me a Faber-Castell brush pen for Valentine's Day, and I'm itching to try it out. You'll probably see some drawing with this in future art posts. A quick run-down of some books I've read since the last review roundup: Hellboy Vol. 2-4: Volume 2 is a solid follow-up to the first, and in many ways serves as a sequel to the first volume. The third and fourth books are collections of short stories (some as brief as a few pages, and some the length of a regular issue or two) that are scattered through Hellboy's history, from early youth (like the comical "Pan...