story sketch: unfolding wings [update: 04-15-2011]

[meeks]

This sketch is based on "unfolding wings," the first in a series of beautiful poems by ysabetwordsmith about the Origami Mage, an Eastern style hero from an asian inspired fantasy world. Please visit Penultimate Productions for more of the Origami Mage and her rival the Kirigami Mage (along with some other fantastic poetry series!)

cleaned-up sketch:


detail:


rough sketch:

This picture is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License, and may be freely used under the terms of that license with a link back to mikaspace.net Please see terms of use for details.

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Comments

Re: Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

Yay! I'm glad to hear that. meeksp is running this project on a creative commons basis, so if we want to use the illustration(s) later, that's negotiable. I already put a link to the sketch from my "Serial Poetry" page so it's in with the other Origami Mage stuff.

Re: Yes...

[quennessa.livejournal.com]

Perfect! We will definitely talk all together when it's time to do the book! YAY!

Re: Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

*happy dance*

As the series develops, I'm getting a better idea for what needs to happen in order to complete it, areas where the story arc is well filled-in and areas where more needs to be written. That also helps reveal what the major turning points are; those will be good spots for illustration.

In a Western-style story, the major points are often based on external action, whereas in an Eastern-style story they are often internal realizations. That can be challenging to illustrate -- which is why Eastern art has its own set of symbolism, useful for cluing the internal action. That's pretty cool to play with. When I'm writing the poems, I often look up references on symbolism so that the descriptions will highlight the internal action, if you know the connections. So I was really pleased to hear from an artist that this tends to create strong visual images in the poetry.