Black swans downriver - and loads of thoughts I'd like to share.

Still looks very scribbly, but a lot more work has gone into this now. 

I've been thinking about my art a lot this year. Star Wars has been an exhilarating experience - so many new people, plus commissions and even bigger work opportunities that might follow (and I'm not saying it's over, it's just  died down a bit). Needless to say, my Star Wars art is about as popular as my Tolkien art. And yet, I've recently read dozens of angry rants about fanart. Never directed at me, thankfully, yet! But the art community is suddenly casting an extremely critical spotlight on fanart as a whole. That's coming from inside the art community; completely; hardly from outside it. 

Now I've never been shy about my Tolkien art. I don't even see it as fanart at all, and I know pretty much nobody else does. I've got as good as a permit for making money with it. That very probably won't happen with Star Wars, but at least at the moment it looks as if Disney/Lucasfilm is pointedly looking the other way in the face of a slew of fanart, much of it used commercially.

But somehow, I feel I want to move somewhere. I've considered many things to turn my attention to, from my own long-abandoned Rhyddion story to guppies, even, haha. Rhyddion very probably won't be resurrected - I've hit too many snags with the last few incarnations to just carry on. And while guppies are adorable, they don't hold my fascination as much as other things do. 

I don't do fanart because it attracts followers. I'm sure you know that. I draw what fires up my imagination, even if that won't attract followers (even scares people away in droves - Cannae, anyone? XD)

I'm also a rotten storyteller. I'm a good gap-filler; I'm pretty sure I am, and I still think that what I've done with Cannae and a lot of fanfics as well as "missing scenes" from the Silmarillion was genuinely good, but I've been forced to accept that writing a Fantasy epic is not for me. And unfortunately, epic Fantasy (with or without space ships) is all that interests me as an artist. So I will never start my own web comic or something like that.

So right now, I'm thinking that this piece might be a first in a row of mythological pieces, drawing from all sorts in influences. The Mabinogion alone has a lot that I've wanted to paint for a long time (Taliesin, Blodeuwedd, Bran and Branwen), but from the Nibelungenlied to King Arthur, there's a lot of stuff I really want to visit or revisit, and which has been mulled over in my mind for a long time. 

Just throwing that out there. As always, happy for any thoughts. :)