Cassal di Caelkriss

Kiki Strike is the title character of Kristin Miller’s Shadow City fiction series for young adults. It’s a fun and interesting read, really well written, and really well researched. I had started reading it shortly after I came back from a trip to New York, and I found myself being able to almost picture the exact corners of the locations that Kristin was writing about. The characters are a blast, and the interactions between them hold a lot of wit and charm.

I enjoyed the books so much that, after reading the second book, I was inspired to do sketches of the characters. I had planned on eventually painting them, but not any time really soon. However, I recently had the itch… that itch you get when you just have to complete something. It’s sort of like that feeling you get when you’re convinced that you can fly and you want to leap of the roof of a tall building just to prove it. Well, I leaped (figuratively) and this is what happened in the follow two days:

I’m sure I’ll find time to do the other characters soon, but for now my itch is leading me to work on other things.  Perhaps I’ll make the next one a tutorial.

Edit 12-21-2009
A few weeks ago, I had the idea to send this illustration to the author of the Kiki Strike series.  I was told by another fan that Kirsten Miller is very prompt in returning emails to fans, so I thought I’d give it a try.

Last week, she got back to me.  Here’s a snippet of what she said:

“I am completely speechless. (Yet oddly I can still type.) I can’t tell you how flattered I am to hear that my book inspired an artist of your caliber…  If you do end up sketching the other Irregulars, I would love to see them! … Thanks so much for this. It made my week.”

Well, that was a very pleasant read for the day.  Made my week too.  Well, as soon as I have more time to myself, I’ll get going on the other sketches.  But between church, wedding photography, wedding planning, and other work that needs to be done, we’ll see how much spare time I have.

Just last week, I did a shoot with a friend of mine at Elmhurst College.  He’s a regular performer at Six Flags in Illinois, and travels around doing workshops with showchoir groups.  He’s a huge talent, an amazing dancer and singer, and I was really privileged to be able to shoot his headshots.

Working with Erik in the studio was a really treat.  We did a session with several clothing changes in the studio, then went out to downtown Elmhurst to find an ally.  At one point in the studio, I had some music playing off of my iPod, and Erik asked if he could put some of his stuff on.  That was a great idea.  Once he put his music on, he really got into the groove of things, and we produced some really fun shots.

Elmhurst is a surprisingly photogenic town.  Besides what you see in plain sight (the trees, the beautiful homes, the great downtown lights), there are a lot of hidden features that are just waiting to be photographed.  Having gone to college there, I was familiar with some of these little crannies that were tucked away, and I’ve been itching to get out there with a model and a camera.

For Erik, we found a great ally between several buildings featuring several stairways and brick walls.  It was the perfect spot.  It was late afternoon/early evening in autumn, and the sky was giving some great natural even light.  We turned out some shots that we’re really happy with.

I hope to be able to get out there again soon, and get some more shots.  Here’s a few from the shoot.

So, a couple of weeks ago, I popped onto my deviantArt account and saw that they were holding a new art contest.  The new Tim Burton-produced movie, “9,” was being released in theaters on 9-9-09, and the art community site was holding a competition to see who could come up with the most creative “9″-inspired creature.

I’m not a huge Tim Burton fan, but I figured I ought to enter some of these contests to gauge how well I do in the fray of hundreds of artists.  So, I quickly scraped a design together and spent half a day working up the artwork that I would submit.  Here is the result:

I honestly didn’t expect to get very far in the competition, since there were hundreds of submissions and only 25 would even be considered as semi-finalists.  However, just a couple of days ago, I received an email informing me that I was in fact selected to be among the 25.  A pleasant surprise!

So, the final judging is still under way, but I’m just really excited that I was selected as a semi-finalist.  If I do win something, that would be totally cool.  If I don’t, well… either way, I promise to post about it.

Update 9-30-2009

Well, no prize for me on this one.  I wasn’t really expecting one, since I didn’t even expect to make semi-finals.  But it was interesting to see how I’d do.  Next time, I’d like to spend more time conceptualizing the design, and I’d also put more time into the execution of it.  I think what I came up with was alright, but definitely far from being refined.

I have issues with the angle that I chose to represent the design as well as a few other things.  I thought the sketch lacked the proper amount of detail.  The textures helped to hide some of the short comings in that area, but one can’t fully rely on cover-ups when trying to put forward a good conceptual drawing.