Color study for Wix, the fairy knight from the story I'm working on. I've been having a lot of fun incorporating bits of Celtic, Irish, and Welsh mythology as well as medieval fairy folklore. This is in keeping with the fact that what we now call "fairies" actually evolved culturally from the Tuatha Dé Danann of Irish mythology, a race of highly magical supernatural beings who are largely cognate with Celtic deities. Which, honestly, I think is a lot more interesting than little butterfly-winged women sitting on flowers, in the Victorian tradition.

The book explores how the once-powerful Tuath Dé lost the British Isles to mortals and became reduced to diminutive, rarely-sighted beings, and what might happen if the fair folk ever decided to try to take the mortal world back. It also details a journey through Annwn, the otherworld, where time and space and physics don't really work the same way as humans are used to.

Also, in the book, fairies don't always have wings, just when they need to fly.

 

And more sketching from the Idaho Museum of Natural History. As part of their super fun timeline of Earth's evolutionary history since the Devonian, they've got a beautiful 3D print of a Dinogorgon skull, and I've attempted to do a life reconstruction before, but it keeps staring me in the face every time I walk past it and I just really wanted to try a frontal view. I feel like one sees an excess of side views of gorgonopsid faces in both paleoart and photos of fossils, and while they did have very lovely profiles, let us not forget that these creatures also had a front end.

I went for a bit of hybrid media this time--brush pen for the line work, put down some grayscale marker for the shading, and added color with colored pencil (and white gel pen for a bit of highlighting, but gel pen doesn't really play nicely with pencil).

Dinogorgon didn't have a fat face--it's got these wide flanges on its skull that likely anchored powerful neck and jaw muscles.

 

Finally got to doing another sketch at the Idaho Museum of Natural History. Here's their oviraptorosaur mount from a different angle because ovis just have the most lovely profiles.

(Also because - to my deepest shame - I only recently learned that scleral rings are actually located inside the eyball, not outside of it, and thus most of the eyes on my life restorations are actually too small. My hunger for scientific accuracy compels me to therefore re-draw every fossil mount with correctly proportioned eyes. Alas, this is the sort of thing that happens when one majored in animation in college instead of paleontology.)

You may notice that I don't usually restore a dinosaur the same way twice. That's because I don't really have a "headcanon" for how any particular dinosaur ought to look, outside of what's been confirmed by fossil evidence (for example, Borealopelta was reddish-brown with a lighter underside, Microraptor was extensively feathered, etc.). So I enjoy experimenting with different looks, including feathering extent/patterns, pupil shape, and the like. Honestly that's one of the fun parts about paleoart for me, is that there's a considerable amount of creative wiggle room.

 

I'm so glad the first two Golden Sun games were put on Nintendo Switch, because I've been playing the life out of them. I hadn't played them since they first came out, and now I'm falling in love with them all over again--the gameplay is well-thought-out and satisfying, and the plot and lore are great.

I just wish there was more Golden Sun for us to enjoy! Another game in the series is way overdue, and honestly, I'd love a Golden Sun MMORPG. You could pick your Adept element and then wander the wide world of Weyard, having adventures with friends or on your own, finding Djinn, learning summons... I'd sink so many hours into that.

Anyway, here's a random character design just because.

As a side note, I have no idea how I ever finished the first Golden Sun game without a walkthrough the first time around (that was in the Dark Ages before readily accessible online walkthroughs). I actually didn't get very far into The Lost Age because I reached a point where I just had no idea what to do. So it's been super fun to actually get further in the game this time and realize just how much I missed out on. I have no idea how they managed to pack that much RPG into one GBA cartridge, and I'm not complaining.

Hollyweird must go

Much of this blog post is based on an op-ed letter I sent to a newspaper, which didn't get published, and I'm not really surprised because I'm kind of a maverick. But it's mavericks who get stuff done. And I felt that the message was important enough that I can at least share it on my blog.

I write this with the full knowledge that it will shock and offend people. And I don't mean the kind of offensive that's morally repugnant. I mean offending people who have gone along with society's status quo and lulled themselves into believing they don't have to make an effort. Who prioritize money and comfort over integrity. They won't like what I'm about to say, because as a Christian, I follow a divine Master who is inviting humanity to rise from the slums of mediocrity and minimal effort and discover the joy, fulfilment, and potential of walking a higher path and not settling for the devil's destructive lies.

Christian leader Jeffrey R. Holland put it masterfully in this talk about what it means to truly be a disciple of Christ. It's not the easy or popular thing to do, but history has shown that what is easy and popular is never what is truly worthwhile. 

To accomplish anything with real meaning and impact, people have to stretch themselves, think for themselves, and stand their moral ground, and a prime example of where this isn't happening is the entertainment and media industry. And not just the creators and executives--I'm also calling out audiences for letting things slide.

Real talk: Hollywood is crumbling, and it's time for a revolution on both fronts.