Some past work - part two!

So, here's for the next few embarrassing bits of past work!
These are all rough sketches/ideas for paintings that never happened. They were done about ten or so years ago I think, alongside a massive and very unfinished creative writing project. When I was writing I would visualise strongly the scene, atmosphere, feelings I was trying to convey and found it was often compelling to have to draw it as well. I drew constantly whilst I wrote and re-wrote, drawing my characters over and over until they were almost real to me. Sometimes I had the imagery in my head before the words and so I would draw the scenario before writing it, other times it would happen the other way round.

'Across the pyre' ( drawn about 2000 I think)

In many ways I think writing and illustration have always been a bit of a conjoined process for me, though I know I don't have what it takes to be a 'proper' writer - I get too attached to the language and just can't be ruthless enough to pare it down which makes my writing a bit heavy going (even I will admit!)
Also, although I love writing, trying to do someting novel sized (and highly convoluted) was so, so hard - I didn't have the conviction or the confidence to battle on with it. So although there are passages and characters I love in it, I think it will remain abandoned.
However, attempting the whole process has given me a huge respect for those talented writers who do see their work through to completion despite the struggle. It is much harder than you'd imagine and takes a lot of nerve, determination and hard, hard work as well as clinging on to the shreds of self conviction!

'A tattooing rite'

These all feature the same character, who was a brooding troubled soul... a lot of my writing then was quite dark, probebly a bit uncomfortable to read I imagine - and also probebly not particularly good for me either because I would empathsise so deeply with my characters in order to write about their emotional complexities...

'Sea-stricken'

I managed to find the bit of writing that comes directly from or alongside this particular drawing... its been a bit chopped up and I'm afraid I'm not even going to attempt to put it in context, but anyway here goes...

Brynn awoke from dark dreams with again the same panic of falling on the queasy tilt of the sea, the dreadful pitching of the ship that he could not grow used to...

... The wind was dark and bitter, slicing with vengeful spite across the bows of the ship, harsh with spray and brine. The grey seas heaved, coiling dark wreathed, hollow echoes rising in a deep anguished rage. The chill changeless wastes spanned from everywhere to nowhere spent, dissolving endlessly into distant sky, the world swallowed from all sight...

...Brynn was uneasy, the day felt tenuous, poised upon wrongness. The dim spectres of the winds stirred his sense of omen with a fleet foreboding. He could not grasp it nor explain his restlessness. The dark knot of cloud drawing down over the sea lowered with gathering threat, and still closer some fell sense of danger grew upon him.

"It is a cold treacherous entity, the sea, dark tramelled and vengeful. To think that our lives are held in such a fragile husk of wood against that terrible strength, the cold drowning tides drawing at the timbers so that they shift and groan. So desperate little bark between us and that vast crushing drag of ocean. It could splinter our vessel in a breath and drag us deep into dark tides forvever cold." Brynn muttered faintly.
His gaunt face was distant as he spoke and cast with a brooding dread as he gazed out over the endlessly shifting waves, shuddering as if some fell presence haunted him.
Morak (his companion) sighed. He had no wisdom to answer the Wizard's disquiet, and he had neither patience nor conviction to draw Brynn from dark brooding, no words to stir him from this self inflicted thrall of disaster...

So there you go, a double embarrassment of old artwork and old writing, may you make of it what you will! (sorry if its a bit grim!) :)

Please respect my copyright of these images and words, thankyou.