Last year at DarkoverCon I encountered a colorful character named "J.F. Bibeau," a French-Canadian transplanted to Baltimore where he was enjoying life designing costumes, doing theater, and writing fantasy. He was marketing his self-published fantasy tale, "Felsic Current." "Felsic" takes place in a bizarre world much influenced by Terry Pratchett as well as J.K. Rowling, in which magic, or "current," is a physical force which uses animal blood as an energy source. The animal blood is contained in wands made of bone called "amposteos." The story of the book is how a number of renegade magic-users as well as various government and military figures fight a campaign to save a magical sanctuary and in the process, they re-discover some perilous secrets about their world's past.
Magic, in the book, is not only dependent on a large syringe-wand filled with animal blood (human blood just won't do, for some reason), but the magic user must dance out his or her spells. Thus my portrait of a Felsic Current user portrays him as doing elaborate movements in order to master the current coming from his bone "amposteo." The costuming in the book is described as ranging from late medieval style to a contemporary modern look. There's plenty of political satire, scientific amusement, and slapstick action in the book.
Once I found a suitable photo-model caught in a magical dancing pose, I put my bloodless stylus to tablet and produced this portrait of a Felsic mage working Current in a forest setting. This took quite a while to do and is part of my digital character portrait learning program. It's done in Photocurrent, 7" x 10", February 2011. Click on the picture for a somewhat larger image.
You can read more about "Felsic Current" and other stuff J.F. Bibeau is doing on his Felsic website.
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