"Castle in The Clouds!" --Sketch Topic for 11/14-11/20

Might have to cheat and submit a screenshot of Dalaran (flying city in WoW) for this one :hide

Okay, well, I cheated, but not as bad as the aforementioned screenshot...



It's not quite in the clouds, and it's not technically a castle, but hey...

Time: Almost an hour, plus 4 minutes for the original sketch
Medium: Real live paper! With Sharpie and Crayola crayon on it.

Lol, thats cool!

Funnily enough, I was drawing clouds in photoshop the other night (while wasted). Didn't draw a castle in em though.

That is super cool, Pharren!

Castles are hard! Why did I pick this?

Now you see why I took the easy way out! Cardboard box is *much* easier to draw! I love yours, though (as usual). The angularity of the clouds reminds me of Dr. Seuss.

Where did yours go, Pharren? I don't see it in your post anymore!

I dunno? I just pinged my website and it's up... should still be there, unless there's some funky DNS something or other going on between the southern east coast and the northern west coast, which, imagining the thousands of miles of fiber optic cables and the number of computers between here and there, I suppose is totally possible.

Hmmmm...I think that I might do "Turtle" again next week just for the thread action!

....maybe not. I am starting to think though that an architecturally-based sketch topic is not the best idea for a casual activity.

Going to try to do this! And I think that it's good to have varying topics so people can try something new. Like for me, this is totally new which is why I wanna try it out.

Some of us are just slow like turtles *nods*.



The castle seemed built of the sunset itself, dyed pink and orange and purple in the fading light. A fluffy cloud was curled all around it, so just the towers poked out, but as they approached the cloud suddenly transformed into a great bear, with a roar like thunder and fangs like glinting knives.

Hester clung tightly to the North Wind, afraid now as she had not been when this journey began. Then she had thought only of her brother, and the evil witch who had taken him prisoner. She certainly hadn’t come all this way, tricking the North Wind into carrying her, to be frightened off by some great dumb bear.

The Great Bear gave another roar, this one so loud that Hester covered her ears, but she kept her eyes open and her head up. “Keep going! Don’t stop now!”

The North Wind blew straight through the bear, which was of course a cloud after all. Hester gasped in the cold damp as the bear went up in smoky curls all around her, then gave a breathless laugh. “Just an illusion!”

The North Wind, very nearly spent, managed to whisper out a final warning before dropping Hester onto the open drawbridge and collapsing into perfect stillness.

“It’s the trolls you have to watch out for.”

Wystro, your castle is really nicely done. I would wear it on a teeshirt. Or it would look nice on the wall for that matter.

Pharren yours is quite charming and I like the look on the kid's face. Also, you drew a person yay :).

I love that castle, Verileah! That color palette really conveys that floaty, delicate feel.

Added a wee little back story. When I thought of a castle in the clouds something Norwegian came to mind. Giant bears in the sky, castle with the chunky crenelated towers, and of course there had to be trolls hiding within.

Love all these castles! pharren, yours is awesome! Creative! Absolutely love yours, Wystro. Love curlies! Verileah, yours is fabulous! Love the 3d-esque look and I love that you included a story!

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Awesome moody castle, KaAnna! You guys have shown such imagination with this. Sketches are beautiful -- they're like a conversation with pictures! I sweat over the exchanges, but this is my weekly opportunity to be kind to myself and simply have fun. I hope that you guys have fun too.

I love seeing everyone's work! And I really love to be able to try fresh new ideas that I wouldn't normally do or think to do.

But really, the best part is overcoming the perfectionism. I get to just make it quickly and try not to be perfect. That's why they aren't necessarily my best, but this thread makes me try to feel alright about that lol

I try not to spend more than an hour if possible. Really, I'd feel better if I spent like 5 minutes max (it *is* a sketch, after all), but sometimes I just like the idea and have to do it some measure of justice, and the other times, I'm trying to keep up with the Joneses I guess :hide

I don't view these as a competition, but as an excercise... and I still feel somewhat competitive in that I don't want to put up something shoddy when everyone else is submitting masterpieces by comparison. So, I think I can dig where you're comin' from.

Being limited to Sharpie markers, felt-tip pens, 8 crayons, and a general lack of honest-to-goodness paper helps. :X

*grins* I'm so glad someone did a dark and stormy castle in the thunderclouds, I dig :D. I like where you chose to put your details and the angle.

I'm definitely still getting a feel for a good process for these weeklies. I wasn't kidding about being turrrrrrtle slow, but some of that is just the nature of my chosen medium (which I love, but it really is slow going).

Maybe restricting myself to pen and paper or something is a good idea. I really do like bringing things into Illustrator though; I get better at the program and learn something new every time. This time I made some brushes for myself that I'll be able to use again.

Veri, your story reminds me of The Northern Lights lol...or The Golden Compass as its called over this side of the pond :)