Month of Love 2018, prompt “blue.” My attempt at a Mead Schaeffer-style duotone piece.
I struggled a lot with this prompt, starting and scrapping a couple of different ideas before this one came up just a few days ago and grabbed me enough to finish. For whatever reason, if I had to assign a color to it, women loving women always felt blue to me (perhaps because of the Sapphic -> sapphire similarity, or gay being frequently signaled by pink), so this felt apropos.
My second Month of Love piece.
Much as I love the androgynous and soft butch looks, I also really love femme ladies and fancy dresses. :3
Tara Abernathy (from Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence) for the first prompt of Month of Love 2018, “Black.”
I’ve been wanting to do a piece for the Craft Sequence books, which I discovered and fell in love with maybe a year ago, and this was the perfect push.
Modeled for by the lovely @labillustration, a great artist in her own right.
My first entry as an official artist on the Month of Love!
An updated portrait for my Pendragon knight, Tyrelaine. It was supposed to be of her regular self after a supernatural-beauty curse was broken, but, uh… I fucked up and made her possibly prettier than the portrait I did of her while super-beautiful. >_>
For the third Month of Fear prompt, “paralyzed.” Thought of those moments when my mind was just empty with no desires nor willpower to do the stuff I had to do, and basically all I could do was lie flat in bed maybe scrolling mindlessly through the internet. It feels like a white void physically pressing you down.
Done for the Month of Fear 2017 second week, “shiver.”
I really enjoy doing the Month of Fear/Love challenges, because they give me an excuse to try things I don’t normally do. Er, yes, I could just do them anyway with my own stuff, but… I don’t, for some reason. So it’s great as an impetus.
Done for the first Month of Fear 2017 prompt, which is, unsurprisingly, “howl.” (I am gud at title.) An exercise in limited palette and trying to be a bit looser with my rendering.
Commission I did for a friend’s BF’s birthday, of an ulfhednar, a Viking wolf-warrior. Lots of fun, even if I did have to scrap it midway through and start over (the original one I went with just wasn’t well-composed).
The splash (hehe) image I did for Team Meeting Games’ fun little game jam game, Don’t Spill Your Coffee,now on Steam Greenlight! While the Supremo edition is still being worked on, you can play the original build from itch.io.
Done as a wraparound cover for the first in a theoretical YA series about an order of gryphon riders.
Done mostly because the image popped into my head and I really wanted to do something that would make my twelve-year-old self scream in glee. (Though it ended up changing a fair bit from the first image in my head.)
Artist Priscilla Kim generously shares with LFF about her work in the realm of fantasy realism and painting women almost exclusively, her latest project, advice for aspiring artists and more…
Where are you from? How did you get into creative work and what is your impetus for creating?
I can’t say I have a specific place I’m from, as I moved around a lot as a child, but I am generically an urban American. I’ve most recently lived in Austin, Texas, but currently I’m traveling around the world for 2017, seeing a few countries and working remotely on the go.
I’ve been a reader for as long as I can remember, and so originally I wanted to be a writer. (It’s still a goal, it’s just taken a back seat to being an illustrator.) That slowly shifted over time into art, starting from when I picked up roleplaying in my early teens and wanted to depict my characters.
Ultimately, I create because I enjoy the process of creating. It doesn’t get much deeper than that. I really enjoy the mix of calm and problem-solving that making an illustration provides, and I like having something at the end of the day that I can point to and say, “I made that.” I paint in the realm of fantasy realism because it’s what I’m drawn to the most; the subtleties and challenges of capturing light, color, form, everything in a realistic fashion, while also injecting magic, is endlessly fascinating.
Tell me about your current project and why it’s important to you. What do you hope people get out of your work?
While at the moment I don’t have firm plans, I do have a pet project - a series of illustrations, and possibly also some writing, showcasing a world based around a post-apocalyptic King Arthur, reincarnated as a girl in a world where most humans have died and the remainder have pulled in on themselves in tribes. It’s aimed at a YA audience, and I’m hoping that it pulls readers away into a new world with beloved characters in the same way that my favorite books/series did for me as a child and teen.
Artwork by Priscilla Kim courtesy of the artist.
Does collaboration play a role in your work—whether with your community, artists or others? How so and how does this impact your work?
If collaboration is defined as something where multiple people have equal or near-equal impact on and sweat in a work, I can’t say that it’s something I do much. I tend to hole up in my room or at a coffee shop working alone, most of the time. I do, however, end up soliciting opinions and feedback on almost everything I make. There is no piece so precious that another set of eyes can’t provide a fresh perspective.
Beyond collaboration, though, I would be utterly lost and floundering without the community of artists that I’ve found; the support, feedback, and camaraderie has been irreplaceable. In a real way, I don’t know how far I would have gotten without them. Considering the political climate, how do you think the temperature is for the arts right now, what/how do you hope it may change or make a difference?
Honestly, my work is mostly entertainment - entertainment that I hope connects with people, as all the art I’ve been affected by has connected with me no matter its source, but I don’t deliberately seek to make big statements about the world or effect lasting change.
In general, however, I am saddened by the decreasing importance of the arts in the public mind, even as more and more of our media and everyday life is defined by the artists who make our entertainment, education, advertising, and everyday design.
On the other hand, the increasing access of the internet and the ability to connect with other artists and see art of all kinds online has, I think, resulted in a much broader palette of options for any beginning artist. You can get a stellar education and exposure just from resources obtained online, especially with the amazing databases that museums are photographing and putting up.
Artist Wanda Ewing, who curated and titled the original LFF exhibit, examined the perspective of femininity and race in her work, and spoke positively of feminism, saying “yes, it is still relevant” to have exhibits and forums for women in art; does feminism play a role in your work?
Absolutely. I tend to paint mostly women, 80% because I just enjoy painting women, but the remaining 20% because I want to give a greater role to women than I have historically seen in the genre arts. I really enjoy seeing different takes on strong heroines with agency, and want to return the same. I’ve joked before that I paint warrior women as wish fulfillment, being tiny and not physically-imposing, but it’s one of those “just serious haha” jokes. I think everyone likes to feel strong, in one way or another.
Ewing’s advice to aspiring artists was “you’ve got to develop the skill of when to listen and when not to;” and “Leave. Gain perspective.” What is your favorite advice you have received or given?
Make a lot of work. Use the process to a) get better, and b) figure out what you want to do. Everything else comes with doing the work.
Les Femmes Folles is a volunteer organization founded in 2011 with the mission to support and promote women in all forms, styles and levels of art from around the world with the online journal, print annuals, exhibitions and events; originally inspired by artist Wanda Ewing and her curated exhibit by the name Les Femmes Folles (Wild Women). LFF was created and is curated by Sally Deskins. LFF Books is a micro-feminist press that publishes 1-2 books per year by the creators of Les Femmes Folles including the award-winning Intimates & Fools (Laura Madeline Wiseman, 2014), The Hunger of the Cheeky Sisters: Ten Tales (Laura Madeline Wiseman/Lauren Rinaldi, 2015) and BARED: Contemporary Poetry & Art by Women (Edited by Laura Madeline Wiseman, 2017). Other titles include Les Femmes Folles: The Women 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 available on blurb.com, including art, poetry and interview excerpts from women artists. See the latest call for work on the Submissions page!
Check it out, I got interviewed by Les Femmes Folles!
Okay, I lied on my previous Month of Love entry - I guess that won’t be the only one I did for the month this year. :p For the final topic, “light.”
Got inspired by another painting (”Sycorax,” by Abdul Abdullah) and the initial idea for this popped into my head, though it ended up very different in the end.
My yearly one piece for Month of Love. (Well, I suppose two years isn’t quite enough to make a habit, but I do find it funny that I did exactly one image for Month of Love last year, too.) Directly inspired by walking on the beach at Hokitika, New Zealand, and seeing the pieces of half-burnt driftwood there, bleached grey-white and charred black.
The Herald of Immanent Radiance, the Silver-Winged Phoenix Ascendant, the Golden-Tongued Prophet of Transcendence, a.k.a. Jain (or Jainyara, if you’re getting fancy). Zenith Solar for my Exalted game.
Second piece for Yay! LA’s Legends Every Day summer series, featuring my favorite sci-fi game, plus a couple of detail shots (because I spent a lot of time painting faces, dammit).
I feel like one of the reasons it connected with so many people is because of the way you can tailor your Shepard, including appearance and decisions, so I wanted to play with that idea and show a number of various Shepards reflecting into infinity.
This has apparently been the year of Lesbians in Art for me.
Did this earlier this year, finally getting to show it off!
The GIF unfortunately looks like hot garbage at preview size (had to downsize it a lot to get it to play on the dashboard), click here (or above) for a higher-quality version.
Art done to accompany the Eddie Lacrosse short story “The Key to the Coward’s Spell,” by Alex Bledsoe, available on Tor.com in August! ADed by Irene Gallo.
SinceMage: the Awakening 2nd Edition is out now, I can finally share these! <3 I got to do the iconic characters for the Paths, which was pretty freaking awesome. Mage has always been conceptually my favorite of the WoD lines, old or new or Chronicles, though I only ever got to play one brief, glorious session of M:tAw 1st.
Binged on Life Is Strange over the weekend, sobbed a lot, listened to the soundtrack a lot, and have now moved on to the next stage: fan art.
Sketched this up last night as a cool-down, trying out the same process I use for my studies. I think this may be the first thing I’ve done purely for fun in yonks.
My entry for the first week of Month of Love, “Heroes.” Of course I had to do a piece for the first hero I remember loving, Alanna of Trebond, Olau and Pirate’s Swoop from Tamora Pierce’s Song of the Lioness quartet, who almost certainly (alongside Aerin from the Hero & the Crown) instigated my lifelong love of kick-ass warrior women.
I’d been meaning to do some pieces for the series once I had some free time anyway, so this was a good excuse!
Illustration commissioned for the cover of Fantasy Magazine’s Queers Destroy Fantasy special issue, sans text design! The issue also contains an interview with me, which will be available on the web in the next few weeks. :3
