Screenwriting, Lyrics, Art, and Investigation
Encaustic paintings that reference landscapes or personally-played avatars from video games.
Here’s the last in the series I began as part of my gaming guild’s art contest. The winners have been declared, and I tied for third place. First place went to someone who created a fabulous, fully functional siege ballista (not to scale, lol). My piece was Elder Scroll-adjacent, at best, and I feel the judging was completely fair. And I really enjoyed creating the Aquariums.
This is the version I entered into my gaming guild’s contest. I can’t say it’s my favorite of the series, but the original screenshot was the clearest and most representative of ESO. We can sort of see the Medusa-like monster outside the glass, which is what I wanted.
One of my guilds is running a contest for an ESO-inspired piece of art. This is my first attempt, something that allowed me to practice perspective. Doomchar is a house you can own in-game. I used a greenhouse as my tableau, posed a screenshot picture, and went from there. I figured, let’s do more undersea fish art! It’s as good a reason as any to be inspired.
My beloved main toon on the PS EU server, Gazes-at-Shoes, is retiring. Because of technical issues, I no longer play The Elder Scrolls Online on PlayStation, only on PC. She looks somewhat fierce here, but she was always a sweetheart and a joy to game. My new toon wouldn’t be half as fun if I hadn’t learned it all first with Gazes.
No Bonnie waits to take my toy. The digital world, imbued with just as many tea parties and heroic adventures as Andy’s room, isn’t suited for introducing a plaything to the next generation. My first Barbie doll in the early 1970s would look, except for cosmetic differences, like a Barbie of today. Gaming moves too fast, though, for that. Not only do hardware and programming advance, but human reflexes and multi-tasking abilities become more sophisticated. I like the next shiny as much as anyone. Therefore, my girl is gone, an old file in a junked console. The friends I made through her, real people inhabiting a virtual screen, are left behind, too.
Lol, well, this turned into more of an elegy than I expected! Gazes lives in the cloud, so any time I renew my subscriptions and find a PlayStation with the proper software, I can see her again. It won’t happen, though. I’ve moved on.
This was a completed piece, a screenshot of an Auridon sunset from The Elder Scrolls Online game. It was so unremarkable I never posted it here. Over time, the color faded. (I don’t use archival papers. Maybe I should reconsider!) Now it’s another repurposed piece. Pink from the sunset, barely fading through at certain points, is all that remains of the original.
This is another repurposed piece, with the mum added to a finished encaustic. Hilariously, I never published the pig (below), although I thought I had. (I’m busy looking through the archives this morning so I can link to a post that doesn’t exist . . . lol.)
Well, he’s a good boi, but I didn’t do him justice, and now he’s under a flower.
Our girl from Mariokart 8. Since the internet, for some inexplicable reason, has few Toadette screengrabs, let me also include the original for others to find.
The original is so colorful. I almost regret how I covered the pink castle with encaustic layers. What do you think: Did I put the focus rightly on the toon, or did I lose the charm?
