Puddle Phone Photo

I wanted to share this photo just because I think it looks sort of poetic. Not that I know anything about poetry. This is from Crocker Park, a development that had the potential to be cool but is just kinda lame and trendy instead. You can click on this one for a larger view.

Fantasy and Spreadsheets

Yeah, who knew I could put those things together in a title? So I've spent the last two hours plugging ages of faeries for my novel into a spreadsheet to see how things break down. It's been shockingly helpful.

There are a couple of tricks with my faeries that make figuring out character age difficult. The first trick is that the faeries age at about human speed during childhood, then at around age 11 when they begin puberty their aging slows dramatically. At around age 13 they "change" getting their wings, horns, lengthened fangs and become sexually mature (sort of... about as sexually mature as you would expect a girl who just got her period to be: aka able to reproduce but not necessarily recommended).

The other trick is that this group of faeries lost a war about 18 years back. When they lost, the victorious faeries slaughtered all the elders (faeries over age 70) and all the faeries of reproductive age (13-63). When the leader of the tribe begged, they left some children alive, but killed all the children that were descendants of the remaining faeries (there's a practical social reason for this which I may explain later). So what had previously been a healthy population of faeries (ok I know that sounds ridiculous, but bear with me) was left at 25-30 older faeries and five children aged from under a year to eleven years. It took five years before the oldest of these (a female) was able to reproduce. The next oldest female (in terms of reproduction the adult males are still viable, so male children are irrelevant) was only five years old at the time of the war, which means she would not be able to reproduce for approximately eight years.

This all sounds a bit cold, and it is, but by playing with these numbers I've discovered some interesting things about the society I'm creating. For one thing, I've got all sorts of extra reasons for the frustration and bitterness I've already put in there. That's nice to know. The main thing I've realized though is that for the female children left after the war, life would have been hell once they reached reproductive age. The oldest child for example, had five children in the course of thirteen years, all by very old men (faeries). The oldest of these children was taken from her, the next oldest lived, the next was mutilated, the next was stillborn and the last lived. At the time the book takes place, she's pregnant again. Possibly even more devastating than her status as a broodmare is the fact that she would have been forced into sex pretty continually as soon as she matured until it was evident that she was pregnant and then again once the babies were born. This is not only because of the brutal nature of the characters in question but the practical concerns of rebuilding a population that was growing from 300 or so pre-war, and shrunk to 25 immediately after.

She's not a particularly important character but knowing this makes her more important to me. It gives me a better understanding of my creatures and my story. I also now realize that whatever desperate measures this group of faeries take, they are probably doomed in the long run since they have only three blood lines to start from. Suddenly, just by putting something as simple as ages into a spreadsheet, I know all sorts of things about the society I created that I never would have imagined on my own. Now that's weird science.

*Pregnant image is an altered image from a photo I found on flickr. Linked.

Phone photo 02-11-08

A cool bug Matt and I saw sometime last year.This is one of my all time favorite phone pictures.

Quack. Or whatever they say.

Here's a penguin.
What? I said I'd (try to) post a drawing every day. I didn't say they'd be good. At least I inked it.

Waterbird

Sheesh, I thought a heron would be less complicated than a hawk. NO.
I'm not sure whether to abandon birds because they're a huge pain in the ass, or keep working on birds because they're a huge pain in the ass and with any luck I'll get better (faster) at them. Of course I'm strange, and have regressed to my old habits of using a hard pencil (5h and 6h... what am, I freaking kidding?), it goes much faster with a soft pencil. On the other hand, even with the hard pencils I'm being lazy; I haven't inked anything in ages. Inking takes me even longer than the hard pencils so I guess it doesn't really matter.

A Lion of a Cop-out

I did this drawing from a zoo pic because I didn't really have time tonight to draw anything else.That's the busy busy life of a procrastinator.

Hummm

I generally don't care about hummingbirds one way or the other.In fact for the most part hummingbirds kinda creep me out. Yeah yeah, Matt thinks I'm weird too. I wanted to draw from this hummingbird picture though, because I loved the delicacy and simplicity of the wings. They almost look like insect wings more than real, bird-feather wings.

Wing Study

Here's a study of a hawk's wing.I'm looking for pictures of baby wings... spread wings that still have their pin feathers. Does anyone have any or know where I can find some? I just need them to draw from, I know I found some several years ago but I didn't save them, and can't seem to find any as good.

The Long Awaited Cuttlefish

Was it worth it?
I won't be posting anything else tonight because I got distracted drawing cuttlefish. Can you blame me? They're ugly-adorable, I think they must be the walruses of the cephalopod world. I promise I'll post something interesting tomorrow.

Tentacle-y

My drawing of the day.It's supposed to be a blue ringed octopus, but since it's in black and white it's kinda hard to tell. I'm on kind of an ocean creature kick if you hadn't noticed.

Shark Attack

Well I meant to draw and Octopus today, but I got distracted and ended up reading about all sorts of different ocean animals instead. So... here's some sharks.
The one on top is a tiger shark, the one on the bottom is a great white (small print: not to scale). And just in case this drawing is too boring for you I threw one in with the background from yesterday.

Nautilus

Today I wanted to draw something little and detailed, so I drew a Nautilus.
Actually I don't think they are that small, but it was fun to draw. I apologize for the psychedelic background, I put it in there intending to calm it down some, but liked it in spite of myself.

Drawing of the Day

Here's a drawing of a red tailed hawk from a photo found in a google search.
One of the nice things about soft pencil is how quick it is to draw with. This drawing took about half an hour to finish. Initially I was wanting to do a study of a hawk wing and ran across the picture. I liked it so much I decided to just draw this instead.