Storming the Castle - Sort of

Here’s a shot of my latest painting still in progress, a pure raw rendering with none of the final painting that I do over the rendering. This painting is based on a story that my daughter Lexi is making up. The concept is, and this is always subject to change either by me or Lexi, is that this is the castle of the evil witch. Lexi has just escaped from the castle, running from the highest tower, across a dangerous rope bridge, while being chased by Trolls. She wants the painting to be at the end of the chase, where she has just crossed the bridge, and she wants to be cutting the ropes on the bridge while the Trolls are still running across.

The good news is that the most intricate part is done. Designing the castle was difficult and tedious. But I’m rather pleased, as this raw rendering looks pretty good. The castle looks forbidding enough, I added a blue glow to it. The rock that it sits on is basically a terrain inverted with a smaller rocky terrain on top of it.

The bad news is that I’m struggling with exactly how to display the scene she wants. The rope bridge has to look random and dangerous enough, and I have to be careful of too many patterns, as they eye will catch that quickly. I have to build the terrain that is the other side of the bridge, which will be closest to the camera. Lexi will have to be kneeling down cutting the bridge (with the broom in her hand). I’m worried that her image will not be very big, and hard to see what she is doing. And then there’s the trolls. Well, I don’t want to think about them just yet. Then I need to think about the background, and this is critical as it can't take away from the effect of the castle and cliff it sits on.

This is why my paintings seldom end the way I anticipate they will.

The Story of The Fenian Avenger

My current literary project, titled The Fenian Avenger, found its beginnings in an unusual way for me. (by the way, the blog painting is a concept drawing as one of the scenes from this book)

Looking back on my completed projects, such as The Code of the Eight and The Trinity Covenant came out of the mythology and story of an agent code-named Diablo. The books chronicled his beginnings as an FBI sleeper inside organized crime, his infamous rise through the intelligence community, and his culmination with his involvement in the Project Integrity organization. Diablo and his stories came from a high-level concept that brewed over time.

Other books, such as the one I am editing at the moment The Franklin Castle, tells the story that had its beginning in a real life event in which I spent the night in one of the most haunted places in the world (Cleveland’s Franklin Castle) as part of a college scientific paranormal investigations unit. By the way, nothing happened to me that night in the house. The idea germinated with me for years to tell the story of people who go to a similar event at the Franklin Castle, with a scientific team that discounts the idea of personal experience. I even found a way to slip Diablo from my other books in (he never was allowed to have this much fun saving the world, so here he gets to help two teenagers solve the mystery of the house).

But, in The Fenian Avenger, I did something completely different. I had no idea what I was writing about prior to the first day I sat down and starting story forming. I let the roll of the dice determine theme and signposts and nature of the protagonist and antagonist. I had in my mind that I wanted to do a story about a superhero. Beyond that, I had nothing.

After a long weekend of hurricane outlining, I had the semblance of the treatment of a book. At a simple level, it was the story about a boy in an alternative version of Ireland, where there is great poverty and depression, and where the government and police (called the Garda Síochána na hÉireann, meaning the Guardians of Ireland or just Garda) is corrupt. His father is an inspector in the Garda, and has been warned off putting any more heat on a billionaire Irish businessman. In exchange for his cooperation, a Garda foundation offers to assist the inspector and his wife have a child, with the condition that the Foundation be allowed to educate and train him. From that beginning, Eamon Malone was born.

From a young age, Eamon is special. His intelligence is off the charts. Not only his logical and reasoning skills amazing, but also his artistic ability is incredible, playing Chopin at the age of three. Physically he is bigger and stronger than any other boy his age, besting his instructors by the age of ten.

As years go by, his father is still ridden with guilt over compromising his morals in return for this son. He learns that his son is being taught combat skills, and is concerned that the Foundation has engineered a weapon and not a boy. He attempts to pull Eamon out of the Foundation.

The act proves his downfall, for him and his wife disappear, leaving Eamon a ward of the state. As the Foundation attempts to come in scoop him up, Eamon escapes and hides with the aid of his friend Angus, who is confined to a wheelchair and lives a recluse life in an underground mansion and has illegal access to all important government computer systems. Angus, like Eamon, has a distaste for the corruption as the downfall of his parents were at the hand of the same corporate mogul that lost Eamon his family.

Together, they become the Fenian Avenger. Eamon the brawn, Angus the eyes.

As the weeks went by, and I spent more time with the treatment, I was able to add more back stories and character development to turn this into something more interesting (I hope) than a comic book.

Recently, I finished the first draft of the first part of the book (there are four parts in all). And I’m very pleased. My first drafts are not readable, but the starting of a brief narrative telling of the story. It’s meant to be simple, as I will often change critical elements and have to go back and change previous chapters.

As a writer, you often get mired in “downer” chapters. These are chapters that are important in advancing your story, but by themselves are not very interesting and often get chopped out and referred to in a flashback or dialogue. I’m three chapters into the second part, and I’m at one of those chapters. Suddenly, it’s not interesting to write this story and I’m not excited to get to lunchtime so that I can write a little more. It’s agony, and it causes me to adjust things in previous chapters (for the better of the book), but that’s work that takes away your forward momentum. I’ve been on the same chapter for a week, and I am so over it.

It is my goal to be done with this chapter by mid-week this week, and that is why I’m writing this. I want to move on to interesting chapters with the Avenger gets into danger attempting to find all important clues.

The Story of the Abandoned Mine

One of the things that my children and I do is make up stories. We do it in a number of ways. One variation consists of me coming up with a starting point, and we pass it from person to person, with each adding the next event. We find that this allows the story to go in a number of directions.

Another variation actually started during our music studies last year. We homeschool our children, and one of the subjects I teach is music. I felt it was important before they learned to play an instrument that they have an understanding and love for music. Our music class talks about genres of music, instruments, and a visual aspect of music. The visual aspect is them communicating what they see when they close their eyes and listen to this music. I found that they were quite good at making up stories. I started finding classical soundtrack music from movies, and that style of music inspired wonderful tales from my children.

So, I started asking for the kids to come up with a story, and I would paint a picture with them in it. I will publish some of those stories as we do it, and the artwork that has come out of it.

Today’s story is a tale of Devin’s adventure searching for treasure in the abandoned mine. He imagined that he found a map to a gold mine that had been abandoned and forgotten about for years. He bravely took his flashlight and entered the mine. After several turns, he happened upon a horrible scene, two skeletons of adventurers like him who had died in the mine. He was on his guard, which was a good thing as up ahead the wooden support gave way and nearly toppled on top of him. But still he managed to get by.

This painting was a lot of fun to do. It was interesting doing a concept of a long tunnel. I started with the infinite tunnel idea, but it didn’t look right for a mine. I wanted the mine to feel small and claustrophobic, and showing a turn ahead in the mine was a good way to do that. I liked the touch of the two skeletons, but struggled with the texture to show them. A standard bone color blended in too much with the dirt and overall color scheme of the mine. I ended up adding almost a blue tinge to the bones to make them standout.

I always struggle when I have to add a photo of a real model to my paintings. To my eyes, it never seems perfect. For this one, I took a picture of Devin with my iPhone just to use a test subject in the renderings. The photo was good, but grainy compared to our more expensive high-resolution digital camera. But the look was great, I found that I had to do very little with the picture of Devin other than cut out the background. He really looks like he fits perfectly with the scene.
I added the flashlight at the end in Photoshop by creating a very bright Adjustment Layer with Curves. Then only showed the beam path of the flashlight. About the only other things I did in Photoshop was add a photofilter that gave the scene a golden look, and added a soft focus look.