Currently pausing forward progress on my novel rough draft by going back and readjusting/revising generic mountainous forest setting description to…this.
Aka I did my research wrong in the beginning and I need to go back and adjust several chapters to be more awesome.
(Current wordcount: 245k)
So, last week I hit a few milestones! Unlike my 100k blog post where I went into all kinds of detail about my novel-writing journey to that point, this post is going to be fairly short. I think. <.<
200k reached April 19, 2018 😀
I hit 200k on my novel wip. The day before, I also wrote the scene I’ve been writing towards since April 2015–so, three years. I wrote it all in a day, so that means I ended up writing 3k: 2.5k that afternoon and another 500 words of tinkering and adjustment in the hour before bed. I don’t think I’ve ever written 3k in a day before, especially not while sick, but probably not even when I was healthy. I’ve written much more than that in collaborative writing sessions, but writing solo where all pieces on the board to figure out are mine is different.
Honestly? I’ve been kind of exhausted and reeling ever since. This scene is a crucial turning point. The fall-out of this scene would also traditionally be the spot for a cliffhanger, since it changes everything for the protagonists up to that point, but I’m not going to split this into two books, so I’m going to keep going.
Nevertheless, reeling.
At this point I have no idea if I’ve pulled it off. I’m sure the answer is both yes and no, and that I will need to adjust things that come before, during, and after the scene to make it really clinch.
However, let me just say, it was EXTREMELY WEIRD to feel both the relief and satisfaction of having completed The Scene and the sadness and anguish for the characters and the turmoil they are now in. I’m not a writer who cackles gleefully or otherwise enjoys putting characters through a difficult time, so…WEIRD.
~
In any case, my other bit of news is that I’m on track for this month’s Camp NaNoWriMo. I’m working on revising the fairy tale I’ve chosen to be my sequel to Persinette.
The fairy tale is 96 old book pages, and I’m retranslating/revising another 30 of them this month.
~
If you want to check out my novel’s first chapter, join my fiction mailing list.
If you want to support my fairy tale and folktale translations, see my patreon.
Till next time!~
Back in 2011 when I started this blog, I named it “Gods, Witches, Space & Stars” as an encapsulating summary of the type of stories I was working on at the time: switching back and forth between what I called my “Gods & Witches” secondary fantasy world and some science fiction.
I first created my “Gods & Witches” world in 2009 for Brandon Sanderson’s SF&F writing class. As part of that class, we were to begin a whole new writing project rather than continue working on any pet projects. So, I began a Rapunzel-inspired story set in a secondary world of–you guessed it–gods and witches, where “gods” had creation magic and “witches” had destruction magic. The repercussions for using their magic were inspiring awe, reverence, and a compulsion to worship or follow (gods) or inspiring intense fear and hatred in anyone in the vicinity to the point of their wanting to kill you (witches). There’s a bit more to it than that, but my idea was to take folkloric trends and human tendencies and press down on them, exaggerate them, or make them a bit more concrete and a bit less abstract.
I ended up writing something like 76k of the first book of my planned duology (The Witch’s Tower (Rapunzel retelling) / God’s Arrows (Cupid & Psyche retelling)) before running into several problems I was unequipped to solve at the time.
One, The Witch’s Tower was far bleaker and more tragic a story than I actually wanted to write. And although I retooled the ending and overall arc several times to make it lighter or more hopeful, I kept running into the fact that although I mentally wanted to write something more uplifting, I emotionally couldn’t. Frankly, I was carrying too much emotional baggage from my own life that I needed to confront, work through, and heal in order to be able to write anything else. Writers write from our hearts and our subconscious as well as our minds, after all.
Two, even though I’d been writing collaboratively with friends for over a decade by this point, I had comparatively little experience crafting plots solo. The 76k I’d written barely scratched the surface of the story I wanted to tell, and I was frustrated by its lack of substance. I wasn’t sure at the time if this was due to my intense love of long-story formats or if I simply didn’t know what I was doing. I suspected it was more the latter, (although frankly it’s probably both).
It was really hard for me to reach the decision to set the world and these stories aside, however I don’t regret it. I spent the next several years experimenting with and learning from short fiction, from 1k one-offs to my 44k novella. I won’t say that I’m a master of plotting now, but I’m increasing my ability to tell if my pace is a plot problem that needs solving or if I simply need to go ahead and indulge my love of wandering through character and worlds.
Then in 2014, my friends at World Weaver Press did a #SFFLunch Twitter chat on my birthday and I jokingly suggested they create a dragon anthology for me. Aaaand they agreed! Haha, I’m still highly entertained and pleased by this.
After looking at the worlds and stories I had to hand to see where I might craft a dragon story to submit, I eyed my Gods & Witches world and characters and realized that allowing the mentor-figure of The Witch’s Tower to encounter a dragon in her backstory would set her on a much less lonely, wearying, tragic path. It would also unravel a good deal of the resulting situation and plot I’d written out in that 76k, and sort of create a “what if something else had happened” alternate direction.
In other words, if I wrote a dragon-and-girl friendship romance story with this character in this world, I could not only practice my plotting, but I’d create much more light and hope and a greater potential for happiness within my own inner worlds. It felt like a much more suitable way to say goodbye.
I took up the challenge; I wrote the story. I saved it a couple years to submit to the anthology, but unfortunately due to a few things the anthology never got off the ground.
However, I’ve also sought help and feedback on the story sporadically over the years, and I’ve learned a lot from my experiences revising. From cutting a scene on one reader’s feedback, to putting it back in with a different approach on the very next reader’s feedback, revising this story has given me a lot to think about concerning what’s right or wrong in regards to storytelling and the relationship between a writer’s intent and readers’ expectations. Especially since, in my quest to write a lighter story (despite the protagonist’s difficult past), I originally undercut the protagonist’s emotional arc and made her a bit colorless and the ending weak or difficult to understand. I’ve definitely grappled a lot with the balance of dark and light in this story. We will see what impact my revisions have made.
Now it’s time to share it with the world and move on to the next big adventure: another world, another novel that’s now well over 100k and pleasing me much more.
I should probably change the name of my blog to something more suitable to what I’m writing currently, but first, my announcement!
I’m giving away this story, “The Dragon’s Gift, Once Given” for free to start off my new fiction-writing and releases newsletter. The story clocks in at roughly 12k, right between short and long, haha. I’m still happy with how I wrote their relationship. A dragon with a sense of humor? Check!
Enjoy! 🙂
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Click to sign up for my fiction newsletter and receive a copy of “The Dragon’s Gift.” (Link deleted. Now no longer on offer as a freebie. Thanks to all those who were interested!)
Well, this post is going to be a bit different, since I’ll essentially be presenting and reviewing two out-of-print French books, but stick with me.
Two Christmases ago I received several collections of Alsatian/Lorraine and Breton/Gallo folklore to feed my obsession. Among them were Alsatian-centric Dragons, fantômes, et trésors cachés : légendes, traditions et contes d’Alsace, with text by Guy Trendel and illustrations by Thierry Christmann (1988) and Contes populaires et légendes d’Alsace. Translating to: Dragons, ghosts, and hidden treasures: legends, traditions, and folktales of Alsace, and Folktales and legends of Alsace.
I’d gone into the request for more books of folklore hoping that, since folktales belong to the people, that the folklorists would be presenting their tales as-told-by the people, maybe with some light editing for readability. I know of collections that are essentially dictations of oral recordings, with names and ages stated of the individuals telling the tales. Adolphe Orain, for example, is a 19th century Breton-Gallo folklorist who did just that.
However, while researching a few of the tales in Contes populaires, I looked into the resources quoted in the bibliography, tracked down and compared the present telling to the original recording and discovered that it had been significantly pared down and adapted. I was then presented with the conundrum–does the folktale still count as belonging to the people in the past, does it still count as being “public domain” and open to translation, if the tale has been adapted and altered so much? If the folklorist has added so much of their own touch? What is the nature of folklore, as it’s being passed down?
If you’ve been following my folktale and fairy tale translations on little translator, you know I’ve been sticking to–or trying my best to stick to–tales that are freely available. But I didn’t realize when I started how many grey areas there would be to try and avoid.
Last year I translated the tale “Le chasseur vert” or “The Green Hunter” from the collection Contes populaires and offered it to my Patreon supporters while I was in the midst of trying to figure all this out. Since I’ve come to the conclusion that it would be better to stick to only translating folklore from their original publications in the 19th century and earlier and, unfortunately, avoid any modern folklore collections, I’m going to make a change.
There is something I can do with these more modern-day folktale collections, however, and that is to show you how awesome they are, present you with their bibliographies in case any of you encountering this post also wish to read original French folklore or do similar research as me, aaaaand give you a token translation as part of this review. I won’t make a habit of it, but I do still want to do all this cultural heritage justice. It’s really hard to do research across borders, and I want to make it easier.
So, without further ado, “The Green Hunter” from page 182.
“The Green Hunter”
The Green Hunter hunts men.
A poor woman from Saint-Amarin valley went on pilgrimage to Thierenbach. Once arrived at the foot of the Freundstein castle ruins, she considered for a moment the vulture nests perched atop the rocks and, at the thought of every lord past, present, and future, she began to murmur inwardly against God who would not give her even enough to buy a new pair of shoes.
All at once, she saw a small pile of écu blanc coins shining at her feet. As she bent to collect the treasure she cast a furtive glance around her; consequently, she perceived at some distance away a hunter clothed in green who was watching her beneath furrowed brows. Seized with fright, she left the coins behind and continued on her way through the forest, quickening her pace and regretting the loss of such a great fortune. On the other side of the castle ruins, she met a man walking alone, though he had a certain air of charm and grace and a smile on his lips. This affable gentleman condescended to address her and inquired after the reason for her sadness, sympathized with her, approved her complaints, took part in her grousing, and even encouraged her: together they broke the valley’s silence with their ranting.
Suddenly, the stranger’s eyes gleamed darkly. A terrible smile split open his mouth, revealing pointed teeth. It was the Green Hunter.
He took a cord from his pocket, strangled the old woman, and hung her from a branch.
One of the great things about taking a survey of folklore collections’ table of contents is that you can start to see a pattern.
For example, there are many familiar themes: Catholic saints and miracles are as important as tales of ghosts in the cities and faeries in the woods. “Une nuit dans les bois” features a man who gets lost in the woods and what he discovers. “La chasse maudite” is yet another tale of a sort of Wild Hunt. “Le guerrier dormant” is about a mysterious sleeping warrior–a historical figure who might awake when needed to save them?
But there are also repeating, specific tales: “Le pont des fées” or “The Faeries’ Bridge” has been told in so many different versions for this region that I included it in my growing collection of translations. “La légende de l’horloge” or “The Legend of the Clock” also is a local favorite. Likewise, “The Silver Rose” which features in “Petit légendaire alsacien,” and “The Legend of Hans-Trapp,” a sort of bogeyman to scare children into being good. Not to mention, a whole slew of legends about the Strasbourg cathedral.
The repeating themes and tales are what I look for when trying to find something representative to translate.
Another use for surveying tables of content is you can see a pattern of everyone’s favorite go-to folklorists for the region, which you can then use in your own research. Names such as Auguste Stoeber (who wrote in German), Prosper Baur, and Abbé Charles Braun figure repeatedly.
As for the book’s collection itself, I think it’s really well curated. Especially in the “Petit légendaire alsacien” chapter which has a whole slew of bite-sized tales that paint a fantastic magical realism picture, from the countryside to the city streets. I think it has something for everyone and something for everywhere.
So, here is the table of contents and the bibliography. Go ahead and skip over them if you don’t speak French or German. 😉
Table of Contents.
Bibliography
The second book I’m discussing today has pictures! Some in color, some in ink. I really like it because the folklorist not only tells the tale, provides illustrations, but as you can see on the right next to the key icon, there’s even commentary on the tale’s themes, cultural trends, etc.
“The Haunted Coach of Rosheim”:
This is one of the folktales that inspired my retelling short story “What She Saw by Lantern Light.” In the original tale, it’s a young, newly-married woman who makes the overnight trek from Rosheim to Strasbourg to be there for the early morning market and encounters the flying diligence coach, as you can see in the illustration.
In my retelling “What She Saw by Lantern Light,” I changed the protagonist to be a younger girl trying to support her family and I also added a few other inspirations into the mix to make it my own, which I’ve discussed previously.
The retelling appeared in Kate Wolford’s Frozen Fairy Tales, and I suppose it’s been out long enough I can spoil it, haha.
“What She Saw by Lantern Light”is available at various retailers.
In any case, I mentioned earlier that I look for repeating themes when I translate. Location is another. Certain locations in Alsace tend to collect stories. One of these is Nideck–the Nideck castle, Nideck waterfall. There are many tales of the giants who lived at Nideck, and about the nymph who lives at the falls. Wangenbourg castle, which isn’t far from Nideck, is another with several tales to its name. Hohenstein castle is another.
To demonstrate, I translated “La dame blanche du Hohenstein” from this collection. Not only does it take place at a folktale hot-spot, but it also features a White Lady, a common creature in French folklore. In the tales I’ve encountered, she often bears a key, and…well, you’ll see. This is from page 35.
“The White Lady of Hohenstein”
Numerous people out walking at the approach of evening have seen a lady, dressed all in white, haunting the Hohenstein castle ruins. She sits at the top of a boulder, so close to the sheer drop that she seems to want to cast herself from its height. She extends her hands beseechingly to every passerby and utters little moans and cries of despair.One day, a very long time ago, a reckless–albeit dependable–man who lived in the area was passing nearby when he saw the white lady. Believing it was only a tourist who had lost her way and could not manage to climb down from her difficult position, he scaled the rock to help her. He was just about to take hold of her when the lady handed him a key, begging him to find in the ruins of the old fortress a strongbox:
“You will see a monster crouched atop the coffer, but do not be afraid; it will flee as soon as you insert the key into the lock. You will open the coffer and find a treasure. Take as many gold pieces as you can carry, for they will be yours; but above all, do not forget to return to me the key I have just given you.”
Somewhat surprised, our exuberant fellow set out on his search for the coffer which he did indeed discover. On the lid sat a horrible monster, just as she had said. But, courageous, the traveler inserted the key and the beast vanished into thin air as soon as the lid opened, revealing marvels, gold, and precious stones within. Eager, he stuffed as much as he could into his pockets, even clutching so much in his hands that he could no longer retrieve the key for fear of dropping a single coin. Carrying his treasure, he returned to the white lady who, at his approach, uttered a cry of despair. The key, her salvation, was missing! In an instant the riches taken from the coffer transformed into a fistful of dust that the wind swept from his hands. Desire had once again triumphed over vows.
And so, the white lady still awaits a being of exceptional quality who will not forget their promise or sell it for a little gold!
I really enjoyed this collection. There are shape-shifting rabbits, men with wolfish eyes and wolves with human eyes, scarab beetles that might be gold, a wicked black stallion who keeps a lady captive, a man on fire, a pet dragon, cow-ammunition à la Monty Python, and last but not least, two white cat mages:
Hold onto these two. You might see them again later 😉
Table of Contents. (Note, not all accents included, for speed of my typing).
Bibliography.
Just skimming through that, even for the non-initiate it should be farely obvious that this region–situated right on the border of France and Germany and contested between the two throughout all of time–has resources in both French and German. It would be really cool to pair up with a German literary translator sometime and do a collection of folklore and fairy tales from this region.
Maybe someday….
I’ve been a fan of both Enchanted Conversation and World Weaver Press for years. So when I saw the announcement that Kate Wolford would be heading up a joint anthology of original or lesser-known fairy tales set in winter, I decided I would write towards her prompt. I never actually expected that she would like it, though I did try to hit both her theme and word count goals as a sort of experiment for myself.
What follows is a spoiler-free behind-the-scenes glimpse into the story, why it turned out the way it did, for those who like to read such things.
~~
When I sat down to write the story in April (2015), my grandmother, for whom I’d been the primary caretaker the first six months or so of her brain cancer, had just recently passed away. My own health, since I had my own chronic illness to contend with, had been thoroughly shot to pieces, but as part of my recovery I’d decided to return to writing again little by little.
I also had no workable computer at the time and so the idea was that I’d trial out writing a couple short stories on my 7″ tablet paired with a new bluetooth keyboard before delving into anything longer. This set-up created the interesting effect of only being able to see a few lines of story at a time.
If the tale is packed full of details, it’s because if I didn’t write them, they would not exist. Whatever ended up “on paper” became the story in my head, not the other way around.
In the bleak midwinter…
The opening line of the Frozen Fairy Tales prompt also happened to be the title of one of my favorite carols. I’ve included the version that has meant the most to me over the years, trekking with me through the snowfalls and dark nights of my time living in Armenia, and soothing my grandmother’s anxiety as we sat together in her living room in our last month together. I tried to capture the essence of the song in my story, both consciously and unconsciously.
“And a woman as had her wits about her.”
The Secret of Roan Inish is perhaps my favorite folktale movie of all time. I watched it religiously when I was younger, to my sister’s bemusement. If I was going to write a own folktale retelling, I had to pay homage to it in some way, if only in a turn of phrase. Everyone with Netflix should check it out.
‘Not old like me. I mean old. Old like darkness and stars,’ she said to the flames.
Terry Pratchett’s Thief of Time has been my “bedtime story” audiobook of choice in recent years. It never fails to sooth my own anxiety and help me conquer my insomnia (a frequent, pesky demon since my chronic illness struck). One of my favorite scenes is when Nanny Ogg tells Susan, granddaughter of Death, her own hearth-tale about the lady Time giving birth to a mostly-mortal boy. In honor of Terry Pratchett’s passing and in thanks for all the comfort and relief, I paid tribute to this scene by giving my favorite line a cameo.
Christkindelsmärik…
(Photographer Claude TRUONG-NGOC, Wikimedia Commons)
The original Alsatian folktale I based my retelling on starts off with a newly-wed young woman setting off on her first, midnight trip from Rosheim to sell goods at the market in Strasbourg. Making the switch to Strasbourg’s world-famous, centuries-old Christmas Market seemed like a perfect change to make, given the winter theme.
Sunday’s child…
The concept of a child born on Sunday being able to see into and participate in the world of spirits and faeries I borrowed from a different Alsatian folktale, which I translated from an oral telling under the title “The Faerie’s Gift of Tears.”
My own family lore…
I grew up with stories about my ancestors, including how one Swedish ancestor of mine (a young woman) would regularly walk for long hours of the night to “commute” between where she worked and where her family lived. And there was this one time where she thought she saw something frightening in the dark…. I won’t tell you what it was or what it turned out to be, but the imagery has stayed with me. My grandmother also told me a couple tales of her family members encountering friendly ghosts. So, there’s that.
I just finished “updating” my translation website to reflect the current state of affairs. Knowing me, I will probably only get a full website working when I have something to show for it, aka when Persinette is ready to sell. But never fear, I am making good progress there. I’m on task to finish my second translation pass by the end of the month, which makes me very happy.
The “little translator” image was made for me by Myriam Bloom. The cover art for Andromeda was designed by Niki Smith.
So, I’m officially asking for readers willing to alpha/beta-read my novella Queen of the Eight Banners. (I have an alpha-reader who reads along as I write, but she didn’t see the whole thing from start to finish, so you can probably call yourself either an alpha-reader or a beta-reader and get away with it. 😉 )
If you’ve never done this before, basically I’m not asking for an editor’s feedback, I’m asking for your reader reactions, so you don’t need any special training to do this. I’m looking to know what interested you, where you were bored, if anything confused you, if you liked/disliked parts, if it makes sense, if the characters were believable. I don’t care about grandiose, high school English-class stuff of theme or tone or whether or not a secret authorial message has come across.
Check out my post on Alpha-reading if you want more ideas of what I’m looking for.
As for whether or not you should volunteer – Queen of the Eight Banners
So if you don’t like literary historical fantasy with political maneuvering, magic, and some battle sequences that isn’t fully novel-length, this story is not for you. If it’s not for you, don’t waste your time and mine by volunteering. Don’t worry, even if we’re friends or I’ve done you favors in the past, you’re not compelled to read it. 😉 But if you’re interested? Great! I’d be ever so grateful if you took the time to help me out with this.
I need it back by December 1. So you have September, October, and November in which to read it and give feedback. Sound good? (If you’re in school, you probably want to start and finish it in September before midterms and projects get crazy. Just sayin’. )
Simply send me an e-mail if you’re interested. Or if you don’t have my e-mail, leave a comment below using the e-mail where you want me to send you the file. I’ll be sending out the story as a Microsoft word .doc file sometime later this week. You’re free to leave comments via track-changes and/or comment bubbles along the way or at the end of scenes or chapters, whatever floats your boat.
-Questions? I am happy to answer them!
So, for 2013 I’m doing an experiment with how I keep track of my writing. In 2011-12, my writing process was to simply open TimeStamp and clock an hour’s time and then to mark my monthly calendar each day I wrote with a letter corresponding to the project I was working on–so “Q” for Queen of the Eight Banners, and so on. I’d also jot down monthly word count and hours of writing achieved, (but I’ll admit on the monthly level, those always looked so pathetic).
But this year I’m taking inspiration from Holly Black’s writing accountability process and Mary Robinette Kowal’s use of spreadsheets and seeing what happens if I do something similar.
I still open TimeStamp and use it as my tool to both “get in the writing zone” and keep myself focused without any interruptions. But this year, due to the amount of various projects on my plate that I want to clear (oops, how did I get so many?), I’m only writing for a half hour each day. And now I’m also jotting down word counts. It’s quite fun, actually! I didn’t expect something so clerk-y to feel so rewarding.
My mindset is simply to record what happens. The only thing I feel responsibility towards is achieving that half hour. Everything and anything else is happy happenstance, and I like how Holly Black’s system records life circumstances and takes those into account. So…want a peek?
Guess what? I FINISHED PART 4. I MADE MY GOAL. IT FEELS SO GOOD. WHO CARES IF THOSE LAST 300 WORDS AREN’T THE GREATEST. I DID IT ANYWAY. HAH!
Despite the fact that there seems to be only one rule about how to learn to write well (just write, buddy!), there seem to be a bajillion rules about what makes a good story. For example – Everything needs to be plausible , all the characters need to have a purpose, every scene must streamline to fulfill plot purposes, if it doesn’t, it needs to be cut, and so on.
I’ve noticed that all the rules about what makes a “good story” these days are grounded in logic, pragmatism, and economy. (You’d think we’d got a certificate of graduation for the “Age of Reason” or something.) So I was tickled pink to read this in Rothfuss’ January Reddit Q&A:
Reddit’s I AMA Fantasy Author w/Pat Rothfuss
galaxyrocker:
Hey, Pat. I’m not sure if this has been answered, but I remember reading somewhere that Auri wasn’t originally part of the story. In a sentence, why did you decide to include her?
PRothfuss – AMA Author:
There is no rational reason I could give you that would be satisfying. I could explain to you some of the functions she serves in the story. The role she fills.
But that wouldn’t be the real truth. Not the true truth.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t a reason. Merely that it is not a quantifiable, rational thing.
Some questions are not in the realm of raw logic. Art is one of these things. And so is Auri. You might as well ask, “Why a butterfly?”
There are so many gems, so much potential gold in stories that don’t necessarily tick off every rule in the rulebook. I tend to feel defensive about this, though, (and have to justify my inclusions under the “subplot” heading). Like a dragon guarding her jeweled horde. There’s no imperative, logical reason for that horde to be there. Is the dragon “using” it? No. Could that gold and those jewels be better spent? Probably. But if every story were crafted entirely by logic, then where would whimsy be? Life would be so colorless without it, in our lives and in the lives of our characters both.
So, cue me immensely relieved to discover I am not the only one who feels this way, and that it is perfectly acceptable to do this. Thus I thought I would share, (as I combat my overdeveloped sense of responsibility in all aspects of my life). For now, though, it seems like only epic fantasy authors are allowed to be whimsical with their nuts and bolts, and add in more for the sake of life rather than stripped-down, pragmatic story.
Thoughts? Though I will say, I’m not advocating dumping every idea into a story willy-nilly, just…giving us more room to breathe.
Last year I got really discouraged with my rough-draft writing. I wanted whatever I was writing to come out exactly the way I wanted it to go on the first try. In other words, I didn’t want writing to be a process, I wanted it to be the equivalent of spilling a perfect story out onto the page. Granted, some of my frustration was illness-based. I have a lot less control over my process now than I used to.
However, one day as I was musing over my frustrations, I realized something that has become quite a useful observation for me. I realized that any form of art never spills perfectly onto the page on the first go. In fact, the process of drawing, painting, or other art forms is just that–a process. Why should I expect my writing to be any different? When I draw, first I do a thumbnail sketch, then a preliminary pencil sketch with various amounts of erasing and redrawing. Then I wait a few days or draw something different so I can have a fresh view. Then I ink, then I apply markers, and so on. Nothing skips magically from my head onto the sketchbook page.
Writing is the same. Whether you’re an “outliner” or a “discovery writer”, no rough draft is ever the final draft. Ever. There is always something to tweak or make better. Sometimes you have to completely erase and “redraw” a section so that it comes closer to how you want it to go, and so on.
As soon as I realized that writing is a cousin to drawing, I instantly felt better. However, I’ve found some difficulty trying to explain my epiphany to others. So, in April when I was working on a watercolor experiment with the help of a friend, I took progress shots, and now I’m sharing them with you.
Here we go!
Step Zero- Initial Idea.
This is all in your mind. Some of it is vague, some of it is crystal clear and longing to be captured “just so”. You hope, just like every other time, that what you’re able to put on paper will match what’s in your head.
Step One – Thumbnail sketch.
Thumbnails, because they’re vague in parts, detailed in others, tend to capture your Initial Idea better than the steps following it. This can be a subject of frustration.
Step Two – Pencil sketch.
I didn’t take a photo of just the pencils, but you can see them here, lightly drawn, getting the basic shapes of what I want. Even just this first step took some erasing and redrawing to get the shapes closer to how I wanted them. Already there was some disappointment in how the sketch differed from thumbnail and my Initial Idea, but I kept going.
Thumbnail + Pencil Sketch
Step Three – Basic background.
Sketching with paint, is more like it. Trying to get a feel for how the background should function behind the foreground.
Basic Background
Step Four – More depth.
Hesitating, Considering
Step Five – Going All Out & Taking Risks.
I really didn’t know how to go from Step 4 to Step 5. How do you fill in a background with color and shapes so that it will function as a sort of hazy background and not detract from the foreground when it’s a finished piece? Yeah, I didn’t know. I badgered a friend (who knows a lot more than I do) with questions. I hesitated and considered for a long time. Then, gathering all my newly-acquired instructions, I made the plunge with crossed fingers and bated breath. Sometimes, we really don’t know what we’re doing or how to achieve the effects we want. But we try anyway and tell ourselves that if we break it, we can still fix it. The point is not to give up but to keep moving forward–and ask for help.
Fleshed-out Background
Step Six – Color correction.
The background turned out too blue for my liking. I have a huge dislike for blue and pink wildflower fields that certain impressionists have done. So I sought help again and tried a wash of yellow over it. Lines blurred more than I liked, but at least the grass is green again. I also tried my hand at some underpainting on the fairy. I didn’t do it quite right, but there was no harm to my attempt, and now I know better.
A Greener Spring
Step Seven – The Faerie & The Poppy.
More painting, and then I brought out my watercolor pencils for the foreground, which I enjoy working with. I ended up spilling orange paint on the wing, however, and was unsuccessful at blotting it all up, so it became an accidental feature of the piece. I freaked out at the time, but besides drifting further away from my Initial Idea, there was no lasting harm or foul, and I adapted the mistake to make it work with the rest of the picture. (Remember how this can apply to writing?)
The Faerie & The Poppy
Step Eight – Flattening, Inks, Details.
Next, my watercolor paper was curling, so I learned the technique to straighten the paper and did that overnight. Then I inked the foreground to make it pop more from the background, and added the finer details. I inked with a migraine at the time, so since I could barely see, my hand strayed many times from where I wanted it to go. Each time I made a mistake, I tried to adapt it so it appeared like something I did on purpose.
Flattening, Inks, Details
Here’s a close-up:
Close-up
Summary: The whole process took me about a month from start to finish. I worked on it off and on, weighing each step, trying to figure out how to get the piece closer to how I wanted it to go since most of the time I just didn’t know, and seeking help when I needed it. The process would have gone much faster if I knew more of what I was doing, but the process itself: the thumbnail sketch, sketching and erasing till I had what I wanted, the layering and tweaking of colors, waiting for things to dry before I moved to the next portion, asking for help and a more professional opinion, the final detail work, and adapting to my many mistakes–this doesn’t change.
Dragons, Faeries, Space & Stars 