Frigid

I often feel
cold
and detached
You see this
in what I say
Or more
in what I write.
Cold
So very cold
and numb.
Clinical.
Sterile.
Just deliver the message
And leave you empty.
It's freezing
And these are my words
So...
      So...
C
  o
    l
      d.

So Very Dry

My tears are dry
I can only cry
I cannot speak
I cannot ask for my family
I am lonely
I am a failure
I cannot face them
I cannot speak
I...
    I...
Crying.
The tears are back
My voice is still gone
I am gone
Alone
And Failing
And Disappointing
I...
    failure...
              crying...
I am only crying
How many times...
Will the tears dry up...
                        and then start again.
So far away
Not here
Not here at all
I...
    I...
        I...
I am alone
Alone.
All...

                   alone

Naming Lightning

(Please excuse my horrible handwriting in the photo)
So I think I've got my lightning girl's name at least halfway figured out.She's definitely going to be Rela Nicole 'Something'. I just need to figure out if I like Rela Castro, Rela Ruiz, Rela Vidal, or Rela Cohen better. I don't think I like Cohen as much as the others. Perhaps I'll look up the meanings of the other three names and see if that helps me decide. Anyone have any opinions on these names/ideas?

Lightning in a Strange World

So here's another drawing of my lightning girl this time digital and a back view. I'm thinking there's definiely going to be some dimension type travel in this story but there's a lot of world building that still needs to be done on that front. On another note I think I'm going to solidify this girl's in story age as 11 years old.

Icicles

Made in Photoshop CC

You can buy a print of this artwork here: DA and Redbubble

Snowman

Made in Photoshop CC

You can buy a print of this artwork here: DA and Redbubble

Sympathy

Hopeless

Pathetic

Lost

        all

             fight

No will to

                 fight

They never even

                                    pushed you

                                                         You just

                                                                         fell

Hopeless

                    Pathetic

No one pushed you

                                     You just fell

                          down

No

       will

               to

                    get

                          up

Just keep on

                            existing

In guilt

            for being

                                 useless

by your own doing

                                             Your own

                         lack of will

Hiding

                                     and

Broken

For no good reason

You isolate

                       yourself

Because of your

                                failure

That you know wouldn’t happen

If you hadn’t

                      fallen

On your own

                      accord

Without any

                      push

To

      give

              up

                   your

                             will

Hopeless

                      Pathetic

And deserves

No

Sympathy

My Painted World Of Colors

Bring my world alive with color
Find the pattern where I will thrive
That will take me high into the sky
A sky of bright blue pastels
Help me make my pattern of paint
A rainbow of hues bright and alive

I struggle to keep my world alive
I’ve let my world become gray in color
And now I’m crying over fading paint
My world cries out as it ceases to thrive
My beautiful hues turn into a dull pastel
My once bright blues now make a muddy red sky

Why won’t you help me repaint my sky
And bring this place back alive
And make bright again my blue pastels
Why won’t you help me fix my colors
Why won’t you help my world to thrive
And help to brighten my fading paint

My world is melting into a swirl of black paint
A pitch black arrow has torn my sky
Painted songbird takes a dive it cannot thrive
Like hot wax this place will melt alive
My world is hopeless now for color
And now I see none but one pastel

Now it’s gone that last pastel
And now it seems you’ve hid my paint
It seems you never cared for my color
I should have known as things faded from my sky
You never cared if my world was alive
You never wanted me to thrive

Now I struggle to survive and wish to thrive
And wish to see again my bright pastels
And wish to see again my world alive
With splashes and splatters of beautiful paint
With bright hues of blue high in my sky
I wish, I wish to see my vibrant colors

I don’t know how to stay alive
I cannot find a way to thrive
My world fell apart, no pastels, no color, and you stole my paint

Snowflake

Made in Photoshop CC

You can buy a print of this artwork here: DA and Redbubble

Wind

Made in Photoshop CC

You can buy a print of this artwork here: DA and Redbubble

The Frost Flower

This bitter white flower

Prone to trampling feet

The horrid winds will beat

A heart so cold, like glass will shatter

Cruel blizzard, white flower lost forever

So fragile will break like glass on concrete

Nature’s tantrum it cannot defeat

So lonely and frozen the lovely frost flower

So build a white wall, strong and tall

A fort meant to defend

A wall that will never fall

Frost flower now will not hear the call

Of the whirling wind the world will send

Protected now from all

A Forever Surrender

I will never never surrender,
Madness and Brashness are to blame,
Frayed mind will fight Forever.

You say stay sane, I say never,
This war is when insanity came.
I will never never surrender.

I think this plan is very clever,
A night lamp’s light shows my game,
Frayed mind will fight Forever.

My scattered mind will render,
All counter plans quite lame.
I will never never surrender.

I’ll fight through stormy weather,
I’ll fight through raging flame,
Frayed mind will fight Forever.

With nothing to lose and everything to remember,
I will not lie and play at acting tame,
I will never never surrender,
Frayed mind will fight Forever.

Magenta

Made with watercolor pencil, colored pencil, and black pilot pen

You can buy a print of this artwork here: Redbubble

Lightning

Trying to get some first goes at the character designs for my Shadow Hunters project drawn out. I have yet to decide on a proper name for her but this girl will be the character associated with lightning in the story.

Inktober 2018

Hello everyone!

I just wanted to announce that I'll be participating in Inktober again this year. This will be my second go around for the event and I am excited for it! I won't be posting my Inktober drawings on this blog this year but they will be in my DeviantArt gallery and on my Twitter if you want to see my drawings.

Midnight

Made with watercolor pencil, colored pencil, and black pilot pen

You can buy a print of this artwork here: Redbubble

Original Story Project: Shadow Hunters

This one is more of an idea dump/just trying to pull together some stuff about the characters. I realize not all of the things on this- I'll call it a list- are technically complete thoughts.

---

Things are becoming unstable. They must put the world back to rights- restore the balance

An intelligent monster- can take on human form- maybe one of the main chars is descended from one? Wings? Tail?

Monsters are going mad-

Becoming power hungry?

Affected by chaotic…?

Lose sense of self?

Run wild

Ability to reason/logic

Monsters are corrupted?

Main chars don’t know this right off the bat

Govs are after this knowledge/power of them (monsters/main chars)

Bethesda and her father are gamers. She is named after the company because her father lost a bet. Power. Knows the most? Of their duties/the legends (but not that she is one of the eight) 14 or 15 years old? Half Japanese?

8 who keep things in check- fire, power, lightning, air, earth, water, light, darkness

Power binds the others

Guardians?

They are the Shadow Hunters?

The organization that works with the eight?

The old armies

Lots of knowledge is lost/no longer commonly known

Maybe they have to find certain artifacts?

Or the markers are merely identification- either magical/non-magical

Or markers and find artifacts?

Bethesda has a wand or staff (Wand that turns into a staff? Wand and a staff?)

Witches and wizards are ones who can summon monsters?- The monsters are bound to them or their will

Maybe the light girl is a witch? Or the darkness boy?

Darkness is college kid- dresses kind of goth, likes cute animals- keeps pics of them on his phone, half hispanic

Light does ballet- 17? Or 16? Darker blond than Lucy, grey boots, white leggings/pants, grey skirt with white fluff/layers underneath, white shirt, waivy hair?

Earth boy- Orange shirt, black jeans, red convers type shoes, maybe he plays baseball or is also a gamer?, wears fingerless gloves?, lighter brown hair (chestnut?), also plays kickball?, or maybe hockey?, 13 years old?, knee pads elbow pads, arm bracer thingies

Water and Wind- brother and sister (twins?), Chinese, teenagers

Wind- Yellow short sleeve button up (untucked), brown aviators jacket, swim team

Water- loves birds, light (mint?) green skirt, black leggings/knit pants, light blue shirt, black half jacket, light blue sneakers with green accents, braid? Name- Ara?

Lucy is Fire- 6 years old? Or 7? Artist prodigy. Visions? Red tu-tu, black tights, red buckled shoes, white t-shirt, very light blond, ponytail

Change the wraith colors from red and purple to light blue

Lightning- Dark blue hoodie, dark blue jeans, girl, black and white sneakers, blue hair? Hispanic?

So:

Darkness- black

Light- white, grey

Water- light blue

Wind- yellow

Fire- red

Lightning- dark blue

Power- Purple

Earth- Orange?

Ghost in the Mountains

Edited in paint.net

You can buy a print of this artwork here: DA

Magic in the Forest

Made in Corel Painter Essentials

You can buy a print of this artwork here: DA

Cobalt

Made with watercolor pencil and black pilot pen

You can buy a print of this artwork here: Redbubble

Castellum

This castle of dreams
This black palace
Here we hide ourselves
Among the crumbling ruin
From horrid nightmares strange
The death, destruction that they bring
This feeble structure
Once a strong and mighty fortress
Where proud soldier did stand
Where brave warrior did fight
Now nothing but pieces
A shabby escape
Where we flee to cower
It is final, we won’t survive

Crimson

Made with watercolor pencil, colored pencil, and black pilot pen

You can buy a print of this artwork here: Redbubble

My Ocean Blue

I'm struggling to keep
my head above the water
I sink into depression
And I see how it's pathetic
I feel like an idiot
every time I ask for help
to keep myself afloat
All attempts to keep from drowning
just drag me further down
Down into the Ocean Blue
I have no business above water
If i stay I will shatter
And so I sink on down
Down into the Ocean Blue
I have no business above water
If I stay I will be left behind
I can't keep up
I can't stay above the water
I sink into depression
There is no lifeguard
to save me now
The waves come crashing down
I crumble underneath their weight
And now slowly I will drown
All attempts to keep from drowning
just drag me further down
Down into the Ocean Blue
I have no business above water
If i stay I will shatter
And so I sink on down
Down into the Ocean Blue
If I stay I will be left behind
I will drown but never die
I will drown but never die
I will sink into the Ocean Blue
Staying above will shatter me
And the world will leave me behind
And I will be left
to drown deep down
in the Ocean Blue
My shattered pieces sink into
the depths of my despair
My only friend
is this Ocean Blue
That keeps me up
but drags me down
This Ocean Blue
My Ocean Blue

Original Story Project: Shadow Hunters

So I don't actually have a whole lot fleshed out plot or character wise- I mostly have a concept that I want to turn into a story. What I do have are some bits and peices to kind of start figuring that plot and character stuff out. I just thought I'd post what little story excerpts I do have and see if anyone has some input.

(Note: any names you see used are likely just place holder names)

---

We were lost and wandering through the woods alone. I sniffed; it was the smell of smoke. Someone had to be near. I stiffened. Halo, who was walking behind me stopped right in her tracks. “What is it?” she asked. Not answering her I moved to crouch down into the bushes and started moving in the direction of the smell of the smoke. Even having woken up seemingly in the middle of nowhere and lost I remembered enough from the last time I was here that there shouldn’t be anyone else here whatsoever. I could only think of one group that it could possibly be. And I didn’t like it. “Kaolin?” I held up a finger to signal Halo we needed to be quiet. We had come to a rather thick tangle in the brush. Still crouching, I carefully crawled through a small opening. Halo followed me closely. The opening led to a small nook in between a couple of trees on the edge of a large clearing. The small nook coupled with the thick surrounding brush and dim lighting of the forest offered adequate concealment.

Behind me I heard a muffled gasp from my friend when she looked over me to see through the nook. What we saw confirmed my suspicions from earlier. Huge hulking bipedal beasts were scattered around the clearing.
-
John stares at the blank word document in front of him. The blinking cursor is mocking him he swears. It is laughing at him. It thinks it’s so funny poking fun at him just because he can’t start a single sentence. And now it’s giving him a smug look like I bet I could write this essay better than you all by myself and-
John stops himself and rubs his eyes tiredly. It’s 3:34 in the morning and he has been sitting here for hours. Getting. Nothing. Done. And now he has morning classes in four hours, one of those has a test he still needs to study for and-

He really just needs to go to bed.

Sighing, John sits back in his chair tilting his head to stare morosely at the ceiling. A tiny black spider crawls across the stark white plaster. John tracks its progress idly as he lets his mind start to wander. He really wishes he had taken his sister’s advice against scheduling most of his classes for the morning. At the time, he had figured that he might as well just get the bulk of it done early so that he could spend the rest of the day working and studying. He did not realize how burnt out it was going to make him feel. Not until after he had been doing it for a few weeks. The spider stopped its trek before turning and moving to its left towards the wall with the window.
-
Fighting. Fighting, crying, running away from the sounds of violence. Panic and urgency at the forefront of your mind. I stumble and scrape my knees, my leg, my arms and I’m up again and fighting through the mud and the leaves. It hurts. Oh, it hurts so much- the pain, the sting of the brambles as they nick and dig into my skin. I think my ankle might be twisted. Keep running you can’t stop you can’t- If you stop then it’s the end. No. It can’t be the end you have to keep going. Your breathing is heavy and your throat feels raspy as you pant from exertion. Thud. They’re closer. Thud. Thud. Thud. They’re closer and closer and they’re almost on top of you.

Breathe.

You suck in the air, find a burst of speed you didn’t think you had. You spot the cave up ahead to the side on your left. You don’t think you just run over roots and rocks and dive in. You hunker down and press your back against the wall as you try to catch your breath

It’s a small opening of a cave. Maybe they won’t notice it.

There’s an explosion in the distance- shouting. Footsteps thunder past.

You take this chance to stand back up and run further into the cave. No time to think about where it leads as long it’s away, far far away. You can barely see and your lungs heave from the continued exertion, but you have to keep going you just can’t stop-

Your foot slips.

There’s nothing beneath you.

Darkness.

-

Stop thinking you’re overthinking this it’s so simple really the solution why didn’t you think about it before? So stupid. Estupido. Just pick the rock up. Throw it. Throw it hard like it’s going to burn you if you don’t. Throw it straight into their ugly laughing face. They deserve it. You feel light headed but not the bad kind .This is the kind where it feel s like you’re free and you’re looking down on all the tiny insects in the world. It’s addictive and you feel dangerously powerful. You lift your arm and pull back to throw.

“Ella, what are you doing?”

Ella blinks snapping out of it. Startled she looks at the rock in her hand and arm positioned to launch it. I don’t remember picking it up.
-

You pull the chair up and and climb on top of it. You hope no one passing by looks into the room to see you up on the window sill and standing on top of a chair.

-

Raise the broadsword above your head and bring it down swiftly. One quick stroke and they’re done for.

-

Take my hand and watch my life seep slowly out of my eyes like water going down the drain of the kitchen sink. Water is there in my blue eyes and then it’s gone down, down into the dark abyss. What was once a wellspring is now a waterfall running dry.

-

Pulling dirty tricks like that- It’s so… frustrating. I hate it. Am I really any better though? With that stunt I pulled at the museum?

-

Settling down beside the fire I draw my knees up under my chin. All is quiet in the night except for the distant chirping of the crickets. The fire is a delightful break from the harsh cold of the tundras.

-

Cold. Cold. Cold, cold, cold why is it so cold? Teeth chattering temperatures bite at my skin threatening to turn it blue. Water. Hah!

Well-

I guess ice is a form of water. It sucks though

-

“Oh, yes and we’re all just dying to meet you.”

“Well, obviously.”

“Does she understand sarcasm?”

-

You’re at your wits end. You can’t go on like this any longer you just- can’t. You’re exhausted and dirty, honestly you feel like you’ve just been run over by a herd of elephants and then dragged through their dung. And you smell like it too. Lying there in the dark you stare at the ceiling of the sewers you’ve taken shelter in. You’re too tired to move, yet also too tired to fall asleep if that makes any bit of sense. You don’t really think it does, but then when has what you think ever actually mattered in any of this. You’re just sick of it all. You want to go home.

-

1: Burgers are nasty

2: Are… are you okay?

1: There is nothing wrong with not liking burg-

3: No this is sacrilege there is no such thing as not liking burgers how could you even say that

4: That’s not normal bro

1: There is nothing wrong with not liking burgers!

4: *Shaking their head* That’s not normal

3: *Squinting at her* Are you sure you’re a teenager?

1: Yes! I just don’t like burgers

2: Okay, Stacy’s questionable food preferences aside-

1: *Throws her hands up*

-

“Is that a monopoly game?”

He grinned. “Yep!”

Rachel looks at him like he just suggested we go dumpster diving again “……we are not playing monopoly” she deadpans.

“Oh come on”. He plops the box in the center of the floor. “Not like it’d kill you to play one game.” Still grinning.

Lucy cheerily hops up from her spot by the window. “I’m game!” she declares.

-

And now everyone’s looking at him like he just lost the last of his loose screws.

-

I’m at my last straw now. The noise. It just keeps going over and over and over and it won’t stop. There it goes again. I resist the urge to grind my teeth.

Flowing Ink

Can’t trust my voice
It’s my defense
I shouldn’t cry
It means admitting
That I’m not alright
Can’t fight the tears
Try to hold my head up
In spite of this
This is why I will not speak
I am not weak
Now let me keep my silence
All I want is to hide my head
Hide these weak willed tears

I am strong

I write this on my arm
For I fear what it would be
If it were not to write

I tremble
My teeth chatter
But I am not cold
I wish I were
I wish that I was
So my heart would be numb
But instead I will cry
And try
To hold my head high
And wish to not cry
Or wish that I could hide
But I am in Denial
And I cannot be weak

I am strong

Confusion

My disjointed thoughts
Swim
Swirl
Come together
Break apart
Disjointed
No pattern
My disjointed thoughts
Parts
Drift
Now they wander
So confused
Find rhythm
None was found
My disjointed thoughts
Float
Stop
Now tumble on
Crumble down
Rebuilding
Disjointed
My disjointed thoughts

Saffron

Made with watercolor pencil, colored pencil, and black pilot pen

You can buy a print of this artwork here: DA and Redbubble

Violet

Made with watercolor pencil, colored pencil, and black pilot pen

You can buy a print of this artwork here: DA and Redbubble

Window to a Winter Wonderland

Made in Corel Painter Essentials

You can buy a print of this artwork here: DA and Redbubble

Girl and the Breeze

Made with watercolor

You can buy a print of this artwork here: DA and Redbubble

Flowers

Made in Sai

You can buy a print of this artwork here: DA and Redbubble

Stormy Cityscape

Made in Sai

You can buy a print of this artwork here: DA

Butterfly

Made with watercolor, acryllic, and black line pen

You can buy a print of this artwork here: DA and Redbubble

White Night

Made in Sai

You can buy a print of this artwork here: DA

Background PurpleBlue

Made in Corel Painter Essentials

You can buy a print of this artwork here: DA

A Winter Scene

Made in Corel Painter Essentials

You can buy a print of this artwork here: DA and Redbubble

Hello

Hello, and welcome to my blog!

I'm astroshadow and I've created this blog as a place to post and talk about my artwork and writing projects.

I welcome any feedback you might have and am happy to answer questions about my art and writing and talk about whatever projects you might be working on as well.