The thing I love about doing fantasy art is the freedom it affords me to play with color. I can give someone blue hair and purple skin and it’s fine cuz it’s a fantasy painting. I also like to imagine the stories of characters that I’m creating. This one is called Daughter of the Sky. She’s a person who comes from a world where the sky and everything in it are considered sacred. She wears feathers in her hair out of respect for the creatures that live in the sky and she has a gust of wind tattooed on her face. I imagine that her people live on high cliffs in order to be as close to the sky as they can manage. It’s just fun to play with the imagination sometimes.
The other thing about color in a fantasy piece, or in any piece for that matter is that it can be used to help tell the story. In this one I tried to only use colors that you might see in the sky. I was playing around with the idea of the sky being so important in her world. I also wanted it to feel a little strange and even foreign because those things that are normally warm colors are cool and vice versa. Not only that, I just thought it would be fun to draw a purple and blue person.

One thing I’ve learned about myself over the years is that I have different creative moods. Sometimes I’m in the mood to draw, sometimes I’m in the mood to write, sometimes I’m in the mood to play the piano, paint, read, garden, whatever. The interesting thing is that if I allow myself to do the thing that I’m in the mood to do I do really well. If I force myself to work on something that I’m not really in the mood to work on the end result is mediocre. This tells me that my mind is a lot more open and alert when my heart is involved. In fact my whole body responds better when my heart is in it. This is obvious, I know, but it’s just kind of interesting to think about the unity of the heart, the mind, and the body and how this unity influences creative endeavor. I’ve found also that this applies to accademic persuits. When I’m in the mood to study history I can read half a textbook in a few days and really absorb the information. If I’m not in mood, I can try but I usually just end up reading with my eyes while my thoughts wander. I can discipline myself and with a bit of effort get the information but it’s just not as stimulating or satisfying. I wonder if other people experience this. It applies to sports as well. Jobs, hobbies, relationships, anything we do really. Unity of heart, mind, and body. Okay, enouth rambling for today.