Tag: Grimmleighs

art drop, Fantasy Art, monsters, Time Lapse Theater

The AMAZING On Again, Off Again Art Blog

Hi. My name is Leigh. I run Grimmleighs, and have been for the better part of a dozen years been trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.

The fact that I am nearly fifty-two is making this hard to deal with.

I have spent a lot of time either developing Grimmleighs as a art site to show off my monster creations, which can be popular and makes me pretty happy.

The rest of the time, I try to make Grimmleighs a place to showcase my love of miniature painting, which can be popular and makes me pretty happy.

I’m like a freaking pendulum in this regard.

Over the last two-ish years, though, fate has treated us to a pandemic, and life has treated me to a scorched esophagus from an ulcer that has been percolating about in my guts for most of my life.

The pandemic lit a fire under my ass, it seems, while the scorched esophagus has chosen my path. With my guts damaged, I can’t paint miniatures for very long without ending up in excruciating pain. I also can’t lay on my right side very well, but I’ll survive.

That pretty much kills the blog space as a place to post miniatures that I have painted.

So, welcome to my AMAZING on again, off again art blog.

I hope you enjoy my monster creations, they make me pretty happy.

He’s late for a date.

With my newly rekindled love of sharing monsters, I have also launched a YouTube channel and have been posting stories and time-lapse videos of my art. Here’s the first one, it’s a fun little story about a forest princess:

She’s going to be late for everything.

I hope you enjoy! This is a challenge for me as I am easily distracted. But I really like drawing monsters, so I hope they make you as happy as they make me!

Cheers!

Your friend Leigh.

Miniatures

Imperial Assault Figures

I have been painting miniatures for some game or another since 1983. I remember painting some old Ral Partha figures, which were made of lead at the time, and getting really frustrated with how poorly my Testor’s model enamel paints stuck to the metal. It’s been a while. I’ve learned a few things, and I don’t think I ever came down with lead poisoning!

I picked up the Imperial Assault boxed set and quite a few expansions. The miniatures from Fantasy Flight games are really nicely done, and capture the essence of Star Wars beautifully. While I do wish there was a little more variety with “mob” figures, I understand the need to keep costs down.

I have been waiting for things around the new house to settle into their routine before breaking out the paints, and now… that time has come.

The first three models are a Rodian, (I freaking LOVE Rodians) a Weequay, and a Trandoshan. I wanted to get some color on these little dudes without going too crazy on details… I have four of each of these to paint up, so I will be varying the color schemes in each run.

Starting to block in color.
Color blocking mostly finished.
Color blocking done, first highlight pass.
Second highlight pass, first shading pass.
More shading, more highlights.
Finished models!

Workbench

Tis the Season (for Shameless Plugging)

The wonders of the internet, folks. Seriously. I have been slogging through Shopify for the last few days, uploading art files for shirts and other goodies. When I got to this one, though, I just had to share! I am actually buying this for my own phone… I LERVE IT.

cutethulhu-iphone-mock

It’s already one of my favorite pieces that I have done, and being able to protect my super-sweet iPhone with it? SOLD.

Anywho, Shopify is pretty cool. It might be the smoothest, easiest to set up, goofball proof system I have played around with. I would seriously recommend it to anyone who is looking for a good plug and play e-Commerce solution. I’ll break it down a little more in a later post.

If you’re interested in this item, or some pretty cool Gorinka shirts, please feel free to click the “Grimmleighs Custom Tees” link on the right. I will be posting new stuff there weekly!

Workbench

Making a Splash

Water is hard. I don’t mean in the jump-from-too-high-go-splat sort of way, either. It’s hard to draw. Fluid, in general, doesn’t like to be constrained to two dimensions.

The latest pages from the Miller’s Daughters see the ultimate demise of poor Ophie, and that meant some water needed to find its way to paper. It turned out pretty nicely, and will be even better when I add shading later this week!

The second page shown is the Rake, sauntering off out of the woods, his murderous mischief quite managed.

monsters

the Vodyanoy

A friend of mine recently remarked that some plumbing problems we were having were due to Vodniks; my confused, vacant-eyed response led to a really fun story about some Czech friends of hers that blamed Vodnik on any plumbing problems that came up.

It’s been a few months now, and as the resident Cryptozoologist of Salt Lake City, I decided to do a little digging on my drippy little house guests.

The Vodnik is the Slavic cousin to the Russian Vodyanoy, a far more sinister fellow (they are all males) that haunts lakes and rivers. The Vodyanoy are frog like creatures, with aged bodies, froggy faces, fish tales, and long, stringy beards and hair. They paddle about on half sunken logs with their webbed hands, looking for unwary locals to drown. They seem to like wandering about without any clothes, too. Sound familiar?

gollum

The Vodnik, by contrast, seems more human like in features, although they are a greenish tint and tend to be covered in moss. They wear tattered, cast off clothing, and also loiter about lakes and rivers. Unlike the Vodyanoy, which are mostly malevolent, Vodniks can be beneficial or dangerous, depending on their mood.

One area that Vodyanoy and Vodnik overlap is that they keep little ceramic containers with them, in which they store the souls of people who have drowned in their domain. The crockery is considered currency to these folk, and a large collection of souls is a sure sign of wealth and influence. If the crockery is opened, however, the soul escapes in the form of a bubble, leaving the vessel it was in worthless.

Fishermen and people who make their living on the water will leave offerings of tobacco to the vodnik, in hopes that they will leave them alone or help them in their industry. A vodnik who feels slighted may attack local water features, such as dams, well, (possibly plumbing) and locks. This behavior has also been reported with Vodyanoy.

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artwork ©2016 L.G. Kade

Morbid Tales

The Angel

As I was proofing earlier pages of the Miller’s Daughters, I realized I had made a pretty big mistake. I had missed an introduction of the Miller himself, and went from a nice scenery page to a page detailing the family dynamic of the Miller and his children. Oops. Over the weekend I put together a new page to introduce the poor old chap, and thought I would share. Here are the finished inks for the page, followed by the same art with shading.

death

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I’ll be adding text to the bottom of the page, and amending the text that was on the original second page of the story!

Morbid Tales

Sweets

I’ve been trying to get a page a week finished on the Miller’s Daughters, but it’s not going quite as assertively as I would like. No bother, really, progress is still progress. Here is the newest page:

md-page-24-tapastic

The whole series can be found here… There are still some edits that need to be done to the long-form story, but it’s still a pretty entertaining read!

 

Uncategorized, Workbench

Monsters and Luchadores! Monsters! AND! LUCHADORES!

I get these horrific creative blocks from time to time, and nothing that I am working on has the power to move my pen. When times like these come up, I draw monsters. This week, though, luchadores worked themselves into the mix, because, well, luchadores.

Luckily for me, these little drawings got me fired up about the Night Circus, so I designed the background monsters for the circus:

img_0194-edited
the Night Circus artwork ©2016 L. G. Kade

I got lucky this week, too. The next page for the Miller’s Daughters decided to stop being such a brat, and I was able to get the inks done for that one, too. I should have the fully finished page up tomorrow!

img_0197

I have a few friends that extol the virtues of warming up with “meaningless” doodles before a drawing session, and I am really beginning to understand why. That practice not only loosens up your wrist and fingers, it also loosens up the creative faculties in your mind, making you a better conduit to express your thoughts!

monsters

Beware the Bower

In Leicestershire, England, there is a little cave carved into a sandstone cliff. There is an oak tree growing there, and tatters of thin, translucent cloth can be seen fluttering in the breeze upon its branches. This is the bower of Black Agnes, and should be avoided at all costs.

Where the story of Black Agnes (or Annis) originated is lost to history; some say she is the spirit of an ancient Anchorite who died in the cave, others say she is the remnant of the old goddess Danu, pissed as hell and haunting the cave. Some speculate that she is a remnant of the Hindu goddess Kali, with whom she shares some characteristics. Others say she was manufactured by exhausted parents who needed a good bogeyman to keep their kids out of the woods.

Black Annis is a stooped and aged creature, with sharp iron talons. Her skin is blue, which helps her blend into the night and hunt her favorite prey, which consists entirely of human children. Agnes would lurk outside of a home and wait for a child to wander away into the woods, were she would grab them and haul them off to her bower to eat.

The ancient oak tree outside of Annis’s cave was used to cure the skins of her victims, which she would later drape across her body as skirts and shawls. It is said that Agness carved out the cave herself with her iron-clad claws, and that she still lives there to this day.

annis
Black Annis, from Grimmleigh’s Mythic Horrors, coming soon. Artwork © 2016 Leigh George Kade