How to use this Page

Add a Comment

More jacket art for Escape from Netherworld—it’s about a group of role-playing gamers who are somehow transformed into their characters and transported into an alternate realm: Netherworld. Yesterday I showed you Twiggy the dwarf. Here’s Borhai the warrior who starts out as a regular gaming guy named Dave.

My pal, the extraordinarily talented Gina Datres, is the book’s designer and she called me in to illustrate the jacket. After some discussion and rough sketches back & forth we hit on the idea of 3 individual images of the gamers going through their transformation. For the 2 guys, I drew the gamers in pencil but fully rendered their characters in paint. I work with watercolor (gouache), so I traced some of the drawing with a wax candle. Since watercolor won’t stick to wax, you can see the drawing of the gamer ‘through’ the painting of the character. Piper, the elf-girl, doesn’t change in size enough to make that idea work so I made her hair a magical element that swirls around her as it grows.

If you’d like to buy a copy of Escape from Netherworld just click here.

Author: David Kuklis
Designer: Gina Datres
Illustrator: John Manders
Editor: Nan Newell
Published and Printed by:
Word Association Publishers
Tarentum, PA 15084
ISBN: 978 1 59571 994 2
Available for purchase:
wordassociation.com   —   1 800 827 7903
barnesandnoble.com
amazon.com

As usual, here are the rough sketch, tight sketch, color study and final painting.

Add a Comment

Hey, gang! Sorry for the interruption in posts—I spent most of last week in New York City visiting art directors, editors and creative directors. Now I’m back and I want to show you something I worked on this summer.

Here is jacket art for Escape from Netherworld—it’s about a group of role-playing gamers who are somehow transformed into their characters and transported into an alternate realm: Netherworld.

My pal, the extraordinarily talented Gina Datres, is the book’s designer and she called me in to illustrate the jacket. After some discussion and rough sketches back & forth we hit on the idea of 3 individual images of the gamers going through their transformation. For the 2 guys, I drew the gamers in pencil but fully rendered their characters in paint. I work with watercolor (gouache), so I traced some of the drawing with a wax candle. Since watercolor won’t stick to wax, you can see the drawing of the gamer ‘through’ the painting of the character. Piper, the elf-girl, doesn’t change in size enough to make that idea work so I made her hair a magical element that swirls around her as it grows.

If you’d like to buy a copy of Escape from Netherworld just click here.

Author: David Kuklis
Designer: Gina Datres
Illustrator: John Manders
Editor: Nan Newell
Published and Printed by:
Word Association Publishers, Tarentum, PA 15084
ISBN: 978 1 59571 994 2
Available for purchase:
wordassociation.com   —   1 800 827 7903
barnesandnoble.com
amazon.com

Let’s start with Twiggy the dwarf. As usual, here are the rough sketches, tight sketches, color studies and final paintings.

Display Comments Add a Comment

work in progress shots

Display Comments Add a Comment

"The quiet midnight warrior, without a sound, brings glory to her King ."

It is rare for one of my paintings to stop me in my tracks and send shivers down my spine. But the more I gazed upon this wee painting, the more in awe I became.

One: it is rare for my paintings to appear looking at the viewer. "Lusinga", "Roseilee", and "Mourning" are the only ones....recently...that look at you. "Lusinga" and "Mourning" are some of my top sellers.

Two: The movement feels like a quiet moment, paused or in slow motion, as she passes by me while I'm on a night walk.

Three: Her wisdom and strength just presses upon my chest and makes me hold my breath....in a good way. The only thing I can compare that to is when I've seen a buck in our front yard during the winter. It's such a serene and heavenly moment that you want to last forever because of the majesty it represents.

Four: I see God in her eyes and in her breath. I'm astounded by that.
And Five: No colored pencil except for the drawing itself under the paint. I'm pretty proud of the richness I was able to create without relying on the colored pencil.

It's hard to believe she's only 4x6 inches, and the piece took me less than 48 hours. This is truly a piece by me from God. And I am in awe of his Majesty.


http://www.etsy.com/listing/81823852/print-fairy-in-golden-owl-mask-halloweenv

Display Comments Add a Comment

In the Eden Dance Palace trial of 1931, in which four Nazi storm troopers stood accused of criminal assault and attempted murder, a lawyer for the prosecution requested the presence of Adolf Hitler as a witness.  Who was this fearless lawyer?  Hans Litten.  In Crossing Hitler: The Man Who Put the Nazis on the Witness Stand, Benjamin Carter Hett an Associate Professor of History at Hunter college and a former trial lawyer, tells the story of this historic confrontation, as well as the man who for a brief moment posed a serious threat to the Nazis rise to power.  In the excerpt below we learn a little about who Hans Litten was.

Who was Hans Litten?  Years later his closest friend, Max Fürst, remembered him as “more than a brother…’a part of myself,’” but also as a fanatical warrior who fought with the desperation of “one who fights the last battle.”  Countess Marion Donhoff, editor in chief of the Die Zeit (Time), believed that Litten was “one of those righteous men for whose sake the Lord did not allow the city-the country, the nation-to be entirely ruined.”  Kurt Hiller, a friend from Berlin political circles and later a cellmate in a concentration camp, called him “a true Christian by nature, and also by conviction.”  Another fellow prisoner was more sardonic: “A definite genius, but not easy to live with.”

Photographs show a serious, bespectacled young man, already growing portly and inclined to a double chin, with thinning hair combed back from a widow’s peak and worn unusually long for the time (”Only soldiers and slaves get their hair shorn,” he liked to say).  He was tall: his closest friends’ small daughter remembered him as “the big man with glasses,” and a youth movement friend described him as a “tall, pale young man.”  Beyond his height, the photos do not suggest a man who would be striking or memorable.  Yet people meeting Litten for the first time invariably gained a strong impression.  Rudolf Olden, a distinguished lawyer and journalist, remembered the first time he saw Litten.  It was in 1928 at a meeting of the League for Human Rights (Lifa für Menschenrechte), a very modern kind of political lobby group that had grown out of a left-leaning association called New Fatherland founded during the First World War by Albert Einstein and the future mayor of West Berlin, Ernst Reuter.  Litten asked a question during the discussion.  “The speaker had a striking head, a smooth face, rimless glasses over round bright eyes.  He work his shirt open at the throat, and short pants, below which the knees were bare.”  Olden took the young man for a schoolboy.  After the debate, one of Olden’s friends, smiling, told him that the “boy” was in fact the Assessor, or newly qualified lawyer, Hans Litten.  The next time Olden saw Litten was in a courtroom.  Olden was struck by the contrast between the “childlike face” with the eyes that “gazed pure and clear through the glasses,” and the calm expertise of the lawyer who refused to let anyone intimidate him…

…In her later years his still-grieving mother would remind anyone who listened that “Hitler’s first victims were Germans,” and there were many reasons why, almost from the beginning, the Nazis condemned Litten to imprisonment in a concentration camp, hard labor, prolonged interrogations, beatings, and torture.  To the Nazis Litten was half-Jewish, as he was the product of what Germans in the early twentieth century called a mixed marriage.  In politics he stood far to the left.  And he was a lawyer, a profession for which the Nazis had scant regard.

But above all it was Hitler’s personal fear and hatred that landed Litten in the concentration camps, and this fear and hatred stemmed from the handwritten summons of April 1931.  For when Hitler appeared in court in May 8, Litten subjected him to a withering cross-examination, laying bare the violence at the heart of the Nazi movement.  The Eden Dance Palace trial exposed Hitler to multiple dangers: criminal prosecution, the disintegration of his party, public exposure of the contradictions on which the Nazis’ appeal was based.  It was only through luck that Hitler survived with his political career intact..

…Litten’s resistance to the Nazis went on after the “seizure of power” of January 30, 1933.  Although he was one of the first to be arrested after Hitler was made chancellor, Litten fought back even from the concentration camps.

ShareThis

Display Comments Add a Comment

he Vicereine picked her way down the gentle slope of the gully step by step. She stopped near where Cici had fallen and very slowly began to crouch down. Using her staff for support, she allowed her hands to slide down the smooth twisted wood bit by bit. She winced and groaned in pain several times before coming to rest on her knees. She sat hunched over for a moment as if exhausted, clutching her staff to the side of her head. Her cowl hung down, covering her face. A few locks of white hair were visible along her back and along the edge of the cowl. Cici tried again to stop crying, but her ankle was very swollen by now, and her shoe was beginning to hurt her foot.

After a few moments, Reina finally placed the staff flat on the ground next to her. Cici felt a hand under her own and turned her head. She gasped as she saw a grayish slender hand with jewel-encrusted rings on all four fingers reach down and take her by the wrist. Cici sniffled and looked up. The woman seemed to be busy concentrating on something.

“Do not pull against the tree trunk.” Reina said.

Cici sniffled again. She didn’t know what to think. She was sure the robed woman was really mean, but now she sounded different. Reina looked at Cici’s dirt-streaked and astonished face. The woman’s gold-colored eyes made Cici feel better.

“I am not your enemy,” Reina said. “Sit up.”

Cici realized she wasn’t really stuck. She was just snagged on the tree and had been pulling in the wrong direction. She stopped pushing against the ground and gradually crawled sideways far enough that she could push herself up. The moment she tried to move her foot, however, she was rewarded with a stab of pain from her ankle. Cici cried out and pulled her foot up to her hands.

“Will you help me cast a healing spell?” Reina asked. Cici looked down through the blur of tears at her right foot. Her ankle was swollen and the skin around it was darker. She sniffled and looked up at Reina, then nodded.

“Sit up slowly this time,” Reina said. “Place your foot flat against the Earth. Gently.” Cici gingerly pushed herself up with one hand as Reina reached over and retrieved the Chronicler’s Lantern lying sideways on the ground. The robed woman placed the shining gold lantern upright next to her staff. The light from the lantern illuminated the side of the gully nicely. By now Cici was sitting up and rubbing her face with her hand, only succeeding in adding another layer of dirt.

“I am called Reina. What is your name?”

“I’m Cici. How come you wear so many rings?” Cici asked quietly, pointing at Reina’s hand while still rubbing her nose. Then she sniffled again.

“Because I like to collect beautiful things,” Reina replied, impressed by Cici’s inquisitiveness. “Do you like this ring, Cecilia?” she asked. Cici nodded, eyes wide. Reina indicated a heavy gold ring on her right hand set with a nearly transparent delicately faceted blue stone and decorated with a dozen smaller white gems.

“This ring is called the Soaring Chime. It was given to me long ago by a scribe named Giho skilled in the arts of gemcutting. He lives on an island in a place called the Princesses Crowns far away in the eastern sea. There are men there who dig deep into the mountains to find raw stones such as this one. The scribe spends years cutting and shaping them into Chimes. Chime stones can make sounds with magical properties.”

“What’s magical properties?” Cici asked, enthralled.

“It means this stone can ring, and the sound from it can heal your ankle,” Reina replied. “Will you help me make the Soaring Chime ring?”

“Can I?” Cici asked.

“Look carefully at the stone,” Reina said, offering her hand so Cici could see. “Do you see the upper edge? Where the tiny symbol is carved into the gold?”

Cici looked carefully and saw that the edge of the setting just above the oval-shaped sky-blue stone had a tiny symbol carved into the polished gold. If Reina hadn’t mentioned it, Cici would never have noticed it.

“All you must do is tap that symbol with your finger as if you are trying to make a bell ring,” Reina said. “Then, listen for the sound.”

Cici peered at the stone and the tiny symbol, then slowly reached up with her hand and held her finger over the ring for a moment. Then she flicked her hand, tapping the edge of the ring with her finger as if testing something she had been told was very hot.

A very soft and faint glow appeared in the center of the stone and Cici began to hear the sounds of chimes and bells all around her. First one, then a second. They began to play cascades of three tones, then five. Then ten. It sounded like someone drawing a stick along a series of bells, each one larger than the one before it, making a luxurious sound like the playing of all the strings of a harp from smallest to largest.

Cici looked at her foot and was startled by the greenish swirl of energy around her ankle. She saw a pale blue glow along the outer edge of her hand where she had been cut, and a silver shower of sparkling energy around the bruise on her knee. Her ankle felt much better. The music was so beautiful that Cici didn’t want it to end. All of her wounds and bruises were healed, and the music faded peacefully along with the glow of the Soaring Chime.

“It’s magic just like my lantern! Are you a warrior like me?” Cici asked. Reina’s expression changed.

“I am all that remains,” Reina replied.

LadyStar™ Call of the Huntress is Copyright © 2007 2008 Heavy Cat Multimedia Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Add a Comment

Teko’s Magical Treasure of the Week!

“Teko found the hooded sweatshirt with the Fury of the Venom Legion Winged Crimson Heart logo, which is the Magical Treasure of the Week! Be sure to visit our Gift Shop today. We made a ton of new stuff this week, and we’ll have more new designs soon!”

Add a Comment

Teko’s Magical Treasure of the Week!

“Looks like this week’s Magical Treasure is our brand new Ajan Warrior of the Sunrise black t-shirt.”

“Ooh, nice design. I guess this means we’re going to have a new Sunrise page in the Hall of Warriors pretty soon.”

“Yeeeee! I can’t wait. The best part is Shannon-sama donates some of what the Gift Shop makes to benefit the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls! We got lots more gifts in Shannon-sama’s shop too. See ya!”

Add a Comment

“Hiiii everybody, it’s me Jessie! This week’s LadyStar Chapter of the Week is a real neat one. It’s from our first book, The Dreamspeaker, and it’s a chapter that’s called Swifty River. It’s about when Talitha found this real spooky forest where these little lights float around the trees and a pond. There’s this little bridge that’s real important later too. We hope you like our story! Be sure to visit us every week for a new best chapter! Ja!”

Add a Comment

Rebecca  OUP-US

Happy Friday to you all! I am in Minneapolis this weekend for the American Association of University Presses Annual Meeting. If you are around you should come hear the panel I am speaking on at 3:30pm. We will be talking about my favorite topic, blogs. (more…)

Share This

Add a Comment