RatCreature's Journal

It's for a little bit of text for a HP fanart I'm doing. You remember how in my previous entry I was looking for a piece of HP fanart I remember seeing, that was drawings of HP magical creatures, but faking to be excerpts from an old book about magical creatures from the HP universe? Anyway, I still haven't found that again, but I've decided to do my own version of this, because I like drawing monsters and think it would be cool, and the underlying concept is general enough that I don't think it would be perceived as copying someone else's idea if I did another version.

I've decided to go not for a medieval bestiary, but a later style of the time when there were fledgling natural sciences and the first real encyclopedias like Diderot's with plates of observed plants and animals, a more 18th century feel. The necessary style is quite a challenge for me, mostly because I really never draw in b/w ink with lots of crosshatching which is pretty much non-optional if I want it to look even remotely reminiscent of copperplate engraving. So I spent much of today trying to get used to crosshatching, but then again, I guess artistic challenges are good even if you fall on your face, it's not like you can improve without trying. So I'm not too worried about that, even though the end result probably will not look authentic, there will be b/w pictures of magical beasts at least.

However there is another problem, and that is the text. I guess I could do just illustration plate pages on their own, but I'd rather have a little bit of text beneath. My idea was to just change the small basic information texts from "Fantastic Beast & Where to Find Them" into a more old fashioned style and remove or change the concepts cropping up that would be anachronistic for the 18th century, e.g. mentions of allergies, but I have really no clue what style and words were common in the 18th century, much less 18th century English.

Thus I wanted to ask whether there would be anyone willing collaborate with me in this, and to edit a couple of these texts to transform them into something that could be from the 18th century. Or write different ones that would work as something from an 18th century work, I'm not picky. Based on the length of the entries in FB I'm thinking that the final page layout would be the illustration plate with the bit of text beneath because the typical text there is under 100 words, but if someone wanted to write longer 18th century style articles on magical beasts, I can also imagine posting this as a true fanart/fanfic collaboration, though I'd probably still only format the first bit of text in the art itself, and then we'd post the whole as actual text along with it or something, because I think longer texts formatted as graphics are not reader friendly.

The drawing I'm currently working on is the Bowtruckle, and I might do more if this one goes well, though I haven't decided which ones, and am open to suggestions.

So, does anyone want to help create excerpts from a 18th century reference work on magical beasts?

Fandom: Temeraire Series by Naomi Novik
Characters/Pairings: Iskierka
Media used: only pencil so far
Rating/warnings: G, none
Notes/comments: I seem to be on a dragon kick lately. But I like Iskierka. I hope she looks enough like a baby while still fitting the description that they look just like smaller versions of the big ones. But making the head long and lean like I normally do for dragons to make them look ferocious didn't work for me for a baby dragon. The hatching pose took a ridiculous amount of time to get right. Maybe I'll do a real process post once it is inked and colored, showing excerpts from all the steps that were like tooth pulling, like the dozen thumbnails and head design sketches, and failed attempts. OTOH that would be kind of embarrassing, now it looks like I sat down and just did a pencil drawing as a process step...
Preview:

( the pencils are behind the cut )

Fandom: DCU (Outsiders)
Characters: Shift, Puppet!Nightwing, Puppet!Arsenal
Rating: G
Media used: pencil drawing (still to be cleaned up and colored)
Warnings: None
Notes/comments: Still a WIP, this are the finished pencils, but I'm going to color it. It's an illustration for sister_wolf's Nightwing/Arsenal ficlet Show, inspired by this: "[...] Shift forms his hands into little puppet versions of Arsenal and Nightwing and mimes them beating up on each other like Punch and Judy."

( The Nightwing and Arsenal Show, largish pencil sketch, about 100K )

I usually don't post birthday wishes, but I happened to work on fanart for the fabulous Hanging Work AU, when I noticed that it's cereta's Birthday today. So I thought it would be nice to post it today as a present, even though it's not colored yet. (The colored version is going to be posted soonish, I just couldn't finish it in time for Lucy's birthday.)

It's an illustration for the last scene in the series, for the story Aiding and Abetting III: Resolution of Claim, i.e. for this passage:

Five minutes later, he stood in front of the mirror, needlessly adjusting the sleeves for the fourth time, brushing nonexistent lint off his shoulder. Alfred had done an amazing job. The colors were more muted: the green that took up most of the body was almost black; the red that covered his shoulders and moved down his arms in stylized wings was more blood than apple; the yellow was only there in the insignia. But they were still his family's colors, still the colors he'd learned to fly in.

He felt as much as heard Batman's presence behind him, just before a gloved hand grasped his right shoulder, then slid down to the stylized "R" on his chest.

"Should I ask?"

Dick took a deep breath. "Robin," he said. "Call me Robin."

( pencil drawing, ca 56K, Bruce/Dick slash, obviously, but nothing explicit )

Oh, btw, I also made a new icon for birthday wishes. So:

Happy Birthday cereta! I hope you enjoy your present, and it's hopefully going to be finished soon.