Fell and Fey

Some Silmarillion in between, though at least slightly inspired (as probably shows) by Star Wars – ever since I saw Kylo Ren’s costume, I felt Fëanor would really look great in a high collar and flowing coat-tails. I’ve put him in black and gold before, so that was something that always belonged to him, for me.

And though you might say otherwise, the hair is 100% Fëanor, too. ;)

Gold leaf (22 karat, a slightly paler colour than the 23 karat I usually use):

Watercolour, gouache, and gold leaf on Canson Montval, 42×30 cm (painting itself an inch smaller).

Original available here

Prints with gold leaf available here.

Rey

… or how Daisy Ridley’s character killed the Mary Sue trope.

There is just so, so much to love about the new Star Wars movie. As always, I’ll give you the art first, so you can skip the rambling if you like.

Watercolour and white gel pen on Canson Montval paper, 21×30 cm. Sorry, still not a portrait artist. ;) Original painting available here!

This movie has just done so much with me, and Rey is no exception. She continues a great tradition of females that are unusual on the big screen (again, the Prequels didn’t really add a lot to that – Padme almost ruined every progress that Leia had made). What I love most about Rey is that she is basically Luke. Luke with a bit of Indiana Jones, in fact. She’s a young zero-to-hero figure living on a desert planet who can do basically anything (the Indiana Jones factor). People whine that she’s a Mary Sue (which she is most definitely not, since she isn’t an author insert for JJ Abrams. Not that I know of). Of course, what those people mean is that she’s just too good, too perfect, too proficient, too fast. But firstly, those people wouldn’t even notice it if a male protagonist was that much of a wunderkind (or have you heard people whine about Indiana Jones? Neither have I, rightfully), and secondly, those people are ignoring the factors that play into Rey’s apparent ease at success. The only reason why Rey is able to whomp Kylo Ren so thoroughly at the end of the movie is that Ren is practically dead on his feet at the time. And as for bypassing that compressor, of course she knows her way around with junk!

Rey is such a wonderful heroine that it makes you wonder why it took Hollywood so long to take this plunge with a strong, likeable, female action hero whose gender simply has zero impact on the story. She’s smart, she’s funny, she’s strong, she’s tragic, she’s tenacious, she’s determined. And she’s cute, but frankly, so is everyone else, so she is in no way dependent upon that one female domain.

It makes me infinitely happy that my daughter, and my son, both get to grow up with a movie that has Rey in it.

Seriously though – Lucasfilm acting all surprised by how successful her character is? The fact that she’s the centre of the story might have been a dead giveaway for the astute-minded, but even if that wasn’t, how is it possible that John Williams gave her her own leitmotiv and somehow the merch producers missed that? *whiplash-inducing headshake*

Torn apart

… in which I refuse to feel ashamed for loving Kylo Ren.

This piece was a commission for Deanna, one of my fantastic supporters over at Patreon. She threw a few ideas my way and we ran with Ben Solo as a young Jedi in training, corrupted to the Dark Side by Snoke, torn between the light and the dark but having his path laid out for him through his fear and aggression.

Torn apart

I can’t believe how much fun it is to figure out this character, and seriously, the only thing that’s keeping me from taking the path to the Dark Side of Fan-fiction is a deeply ingrained aversion against being rendered AU in two years’ time. Art will have to suffice. I put enough story in that to satisfy my needs for explaining the character, but try to leave it symbolic enough so it’ll still work when Episode VIII is out!

The reactions to Kylo Ren are really interesting. Most critics agree that he’s one of the most interesting characters this franchise has had, and certainly the most compelling bad guy. When you’re a teacher in Germany, that picture is slightly different. Quite a few of my students tell me they hated Kylo Ren.

Why? I think he’s too close to home for many people in a certain age group. He embodies the aspects a (male) teenager might dislike about himself. He isn’t cool and badass. He certainly wants to be, and sometimes he fails at it utterly. (Of course, female teenagers usually like him a lot more as they want to pull him back to the light. By his hair or otherwise.)

The expectations for the character were certainly high. In the lead-up to Episode VII, he was everywhere, even on mineral water. You expected him to be the next big bad, and were prepared to embrace your inner badass when you saw him on screen. I think the marketing really has a lot to do with the bad press Kylo Ren gets among younger fans of Star Wars.

And then, of course, he’s got it especially hard in Germany, as the guy who lent him his voice also voices JD from Scrubs. (Funnily, he also voices Dean Winchester, but I never would have known. For Kylo Ren, he definitely gave it a lot more John Dorian and a lot less Dean Winchester.) I don’t know if teenagers in Germany know much Scrubs these days, but the rather whiny voice doesn’t really help. My ears did a couple of double-takes when I heard Adam Driver’s original voice. (His clipped “I’m being torn apart” becomes a melodramatic “Ich bin innerlich zerrissen” in German, which is best translated as “I’m rent on the inside”. Way to kill off that character for German audiences!) My kids will have to endure the movie in English as soon as it comes out on DVD, I can tell you! Here, kiddo, it’s English. It’s good for you. Your resident English teacher says so.

Next stop: Rey!

The Force, it’s calling to you.

So I’ve fallen in love with Star Wars again, and the more I think about it, the more I know why that is. (Scroll down for the art if you’re not into rambling.)

Last week, I dug into my old diaries and found what I wrote when I first saw Episode 1. I was surprised to read myself gushing over a movie that is today considered as bad as they get. I even loved Jar Jar Binks. But even then, I wrote that I loved it all because it was so bad. Literally. I’d been prepared to love it all and when it turned out to be silly, I told myself I loved it for the trash factor. Back then, I was okay with that.

Now, after seeing The Force Awakens twice, I’m only slowly understanding how much the prequels let me down, and how much Episode VII lives up to its very first sentence spoken: “This will begin to set things right”.

Yes, the obvious plot parallels to IV and V bothered me after the first viewing. Not so much after the second. JJ Abrams felt sure Star Wars needed a reboot, and I think it worked fine. My only qualm remains Starkiller Base, but I can apply my Episode 1 practice here and like it because it’s just so ridiculous.

What I love more and more is the characters. Those characters! I can’t even decide which I love most.

JJ Abrams gave us a female protagonist whose gender isn’t even an issue, as well as a black hero whose skin colour is never even mentioned. (It reminds me of the novels of David Weber, where skin colour and gender are totally secondary.) He gave us a daredevil pilot who is kind and likeable instead of selfish and badass. He gave us a villain that is so much your typical entitled manchild that teenagers hate him and adults love him for being such a complex figure.

 

Poe Dameron

How can you not love Poe? I’m hoping the rewrite of Episode VIII will enlarge his role.

Video of the painting process is here.

You can buy the original painting here.

Scarred

I didn’t fall in love with Kylo Ren until really late in the day, but as you’ll have noticed, fall in love I did. I can’t wait to find out what turned him to the dark side, and whether anything might turn him back to the light. I’m also semi-guiltily digging through Youtube to locate anything with Adam Driver in it. I can’t believe how versatile he is.

You can buy the original painting here.

Han Solo

I never really liked Han in the original trilogy. “I happen to like nice men”, and as opposed to Leia, Han never managed to convince me he was one. But in this film, he breaks my heart. He started out as a cocksure smuggler who hadn’t even realised he’d lost his way; he found a terrific girl, found purpose, and ended up losing purpose, and the girl, and his way, as well as their son. The Force Awakens gives us what Han Solo “used to be” and tries to be again, but too many things have happened to be that person again. The Force Awakens is so psychologically astute and I connect with it on so many levels, and I keep discovering new ones.

If you like these (or my other work, to which I’ll no doubt return to, in case you were beginning to worry) – please consider supporting me on Patreon! Early access, special deals in my Etsy shop, digital and physical content, and a chance to win commissions and other goodies!

The Force, Awakened

Three weeks after “The Force Awakens” has hit cinemas, the Star Wars fans are coming out of the woodwork. It’s amazing how many there are. They’ve all lain dormant for the last 15+ years, apparently, including me. Teacher colleagues I’d put down as the most no-nonsense, non-SciFi, and certainly non-space-opera people on earth are discussing Rey’s parentage and Kylo Ren’s story arc with me during breaktime. The geeks awaken. In the least expected and most delightful places.

Just mid-December, I had found myself seriously considering all the steps I would have to take to get rid of the old “GoldSeven” tag and set myself up as Jenny Dolfen instead. And then The Force Awoke. And how it awoke.

Twenty years ago, I was a major Star Wars fan. Ah, the days of the Special Editions! Midnight premieres, binge-drawing Luke Skywalker (mainly 1997-1998), Star Wars role-playing for two days on end.

Luke, 1997

Landing on Dagobah, 1998

We played a pen and paper RPG campaign that ran for three years (1998-2001), centering on a female former TIE fighter pilot who fled the Star Destroyer she served on with a captured Rebel agent. (You can imagine how wildly I cheered during the escpae scene with Finn and Poe.) She found herself on a Rebel base in a place called Yavin – and then the Alliance needed every capable pilot. So she flew against the Death Star as Gold Seven – and was the lone Y-Wing you see returning to the base with Han and Luke.

Rhun and Sam, 1998

Comic page of their first meeting, 1999

(I wrote a long fanfic/novel about their story, which can still be found here. The link leads to parts of my old site.)

Then Episode 1 happened. And it all evaporated. All those characers I was prepared to love – Obi-Wan, Padme, Anakin – fell flat or were barely there, or just obnoxious.

While I was optimistic for Episode VII and the trailers made me giddy with excitement, I didn’t dare get my hopes up too far. I expected to like it, and move on. [Spoilers ahead – but if you’re still reading this, you’ve probably watched the movie a couple of times already!)

And now I’m fangirling over Kylo Ren. Sorry not sorry. What a compelling story, what a great reboot, what a wonderful feeling to be “home again, Chewie”. And that’s saying nothing about Ren’s hair, which is almost Fëanorean in its qualities. Along with his whole “tragic flaw” thing (okay, flaw sort of makes it sound manageable), this was the first Star Wars villain ever that really drew me in. Sure, Vader was formidable, the Emperor was sublime, and Anakin was… conflicted on the surface, but the writing and the actor never managed to make me care for his conflict. The Force Awakens, on the other hand, made me feel for a brattish, insecure kid while running a lightsabre through his own father. Well done, JJ Abrams. Well done!

Is it 2017 yet?

My first Kylo Ren, drawn as Patreon commission for Juhi. Still trying to pin down Adam Driver’s very un-Elven facial structure at that point.

 

“I Will Fulfil Our Destiny”

Even while I was planning this one, I was scared stiff of the composition and that lightsabre. I still can’t believe I managed to pull it off! *happy*

Process video (narrated, including ideas to paint lightsabres) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMwicEAFCnw

I sincerely thought Star Wars was one of the fandoms I had left behind for good, and it feels so good to be back. Chewie… we’re home.