A ramble and word-wander

I have too many Live Journals, but I don't want to delete them.  For some reason, every few years, I seem to drift to new blogs.  I don't know why.  I suppose I'm just capricious.

I looked up my old siabha_maellyn blog this morning.  It's been three years since I updated it.  I realize it's been ages since I've written anything as intensely personal as what I routinely wrote in that blog.  Even my poetry was torn from my heart and soul, sculpted in word-pictures what plain speech would never describe.  I mean, I still often ramble to de-stress about things in my personal LJ, but to really write out the intricate complexities of my thoughts and feelings... I think I no longer really know how to express them, to articulate things that run too deep for words.  That makes me sad somehow, as though I've somehow grown detached from myself, lost something of who I am.  Or maybe in trying to conceal myself from others, to put on a face that might be deemed acceptable, I've hidden from myself as well.

Today, I'm going to work on portraits.  I started one yesterday evening but wound up erasing it because I didn't like the way it was looking. (I wonder if I'm just being too self-critical again, as people always tell me I am)  Hopefully today's work will be more fruitful.

I wish I could blink my eyes and be in various parts of the world so I can visit with friends I haven't seen in far too long.  That would be absolutely perfect.

Greyscale Character Portrait Tutorial

So, I thought I would put together a little tutorial on how I create the character portraits for my weekly Discounted Character Portrait Days. I create these images in Gimp using a Wacom tablet; this tutorial will focus more on technique and less on the technical aspects of the program and tablet.

This is a portrait of timelord1's character Jaerus. She gave me a detailed description and a picture reference for his armor, which can be found here under the first character description. She also specified that she pictures Jonathon Rhys-Meyers in the role, so that gave me an idea of what the character will look like.

Click image for full size.



The very first thing I do is scour the web for references. As she has given an actor as a reference, I look for images of him. In other character portraits, I try to think of appropriate actors/actresses and use them as references. I don't always aim for a strict likeness; sometimes the reference is used very loosely just to give a *feel* of the character. But in this instance, I'm trying to give more of an impression that the characterresembles the actor, without really going for a tight likeness.

( There are a LOT of images under cut. )