Illustration No.7 (Seventh of a Series)

YOU MISSED OUT ON THE SALE,

BUT MY E-BOOKS ARE STILL RIDICULOUSLY AFFORDABLE! 

Monster Is in the Eye or the Beholder: $1.99

Any of the three "big books": $3.99

How much do you pay for a cup of coffee?

 

       This illustration belongs with Chapter 22 ("The Theft of the na'ka'fi'zi|") of "The War of the Stolen Mother."  I published that chapter on the Ruminations of a Remembrancer blog as an entry in the Third Sunday blog Carnival for August and it's had quite a few page views.  I also put a second version of this illustration there, but now I'm at a point where I want to discuss those illustrations, so we'll start with the original.  na'ka'fi'zi| means "holy stone image" -- think of the Palladium (the statue of Pallas Athena) whose presence was supposed to keep the citadel of Troy safe.  In the myths Odysseus steals the Palladium.  In my version, Za'dut the trickster plays the part of Odysseus the trickster.  However, Za'dut is a Worker and doesn't have the strength to carry that big stone image, so he elicits the reluctant assistance of A'zhu'lo, who is Ki'shto'ba's twin.  Then when they get to the apex of the fortress, where they know there is an opening, they discover that it isn't large enough for the Warrior's big head to fit through.  At one point, A'zhu'lo gets stuck.  That's what I'm showing here, in a cut-away view.  It's all very farcical.

       Now to discuss the technique.  As you can see from the date in the lower right corner, I produced this back in 2003, so it was among my earlier drawings and it was done on my old computer, which had Word 97.  At that time I was using a lot more textural fill -- note the stone texture on the image and the hatching on the floor.  Those aspects never worked very well with  Word 2007, which I have now, so I discontinued using them, but they remain on these converted drawings. 

       You can see the piece could use some work.  I seemed unable to make the cone-shaped tip of the fortress properly symmetrical and I sort of abandoned the individualized stonework on the edges.  Since it's a night scene, I drew the termites' legs in black and made A'zhu'lo's head gray, but I seem to have kept that orangish tone on Za'dut for some reason.  Of course, the two termites are wrapped up in the "magic skins" -- the cloaks of invisibility.  The antennae don't show up very well, and the vegetation growing out of the sides of the fortress needs more definition.  And those shadowy markings don't work very well.  Anyway, I think it captures the sense of what's going on, and I hope you'll enjoy the drawing (do click on it to enlarge) in spite of its imperfections.

       The next illustration I put up will be the second version of this one.

 

 

Click to enlarge