Pai's art blog

Art dump and lettering/calligraphy attempts~ | Illustrations | Calligraphy | Instagram |

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"We all face the same end. Those above have long forgotten us. They do not judge us. In death I am alone, and my only judge... is me."

- quote from Netflix's Dark, an extremely quotable show as it turns out 😂

So my pen was inked with Iroshizuku Amairo and I was flushing that out, but while the cartridge was filled with bluish water I dipped it into Tsukiyo and wrote the blue gradient version. After flushing all the blue out, I refilled the cartridge with Daikokuten, dipped it in Tsukiyo, and wrote the blue-green-yellow version. Really pleased with how both turned out~ 😁

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Reblogged because I made a mistake with one of the images (ب_ب)

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"We all face the same end. Those above have long forgotten us. They do not judge us. In death I am alone, and my only judge... is me."

- quote from Netflix's Dark, an extremely quotable show as it turns out 😂

So my pen was inked with Iroshizuku Amairo and I was flushing that out, but while the cartridge was filled with bluish water I dipped it into Tsukiyo and wrote the blue gradient version. After flushing all the blue out, I refilled the cartridge with Daikokuten, dipped it in Tsukiyo, and wrote the blue-green-yellow version. Really pleased with how both turned out~ 😁

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"The end is the beginning, and the beginning is the end." - another one from Dark, the Netflix drama.

I lettered "beginning" in yellow at first and didn't like it very much, but eh I thought I'd just upload both versions.

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"Sic mundus creatus est" - Thus the world is created.

Bottom two shots are the same composition but with shorter/more squat letters =)

Quote originally from a 2nd century alchemical text called the Emerald Tablet, but really, I've just been watching Dark, the German Netflix drama 😛

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"All places shall be hell that is not heaven" - another quote from Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus.

Some experimentation with shading effects :)

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"Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris" - Misery loves company, quote from Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus

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Practice piece with colours. I had a video for this but it's been failing to upload on Tumblr so I gave up.

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"It’s easy to think that nobody could really arrange the world like clockwork. All sorts of things would get stuck in the mechanisms; history is full of queens and generals who’ve given it a damn good go but failed because of nothing more complicated than the weather. But clairvoyants have a knack for arranging time, and it was not without a sense of irony that Keita Mori was a watchmaker."

The third and latest work by Natasha Pulley, and direct sequel to the first book (The Watchmaker of Filigree Street). Set predominantly in Meiji Japan, this one left me floored and overwhelmed by the revelation made in the last few pages. And it's so damn sad that I still can't bring myself to reread it.

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"I had never really wanted to come to Peru, never been excited about it. There had been too much to worry about... I’d thought that something was gone in me and I would never be uncircumspectly pleased with anything again. But all at once it came back. The place where my father had stood and my grandfather, a place that was in my bones and stories and home but had been as lost to me as Byzantium for years – here it was."

This book's ending is lethally bittersweet; that final scene squeezes my insides each of the dozen or so times that I've reread it. It follows a different main character on his mission to Peru as an East India Company expeditionary, but set in the same verse as the first book, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street. Probably my favourite book and character of Pulley-verse (I love Merrick loads and have named my Kindle after him =P)

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"Thaniel listened for a while longer, because the silence was so deep and clear that he could hear ghosts of the thirty-six of thirty-seven possible worlds in which Grace had not won at the roulette, and not stepped backward into him. He wished then that he could go back and that the ball had landed on another number. He would be none the wiser and he would be staying at Filigree Street, probably for years, still happy, and he wouldn’t have stolen those years from a lonely man who was too decent to mention that they were missing."

I've been quite insufferable to my dear friends lately from my repeated expressions of love for Natasha Pulley's works. Set in Victorian London and Meiji Japan (but primarily the former), this first book charmed me completely with her writing and characters and world, and especially Katsu the impossibly adorable steampunk octopus. Will be doing one of these for each of the 3 books :)

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Spencerian practice with some Shakespeare and a Platinum 3776 Century, soft fine nib (the nib doesn't flex that far, lol. I colored in the big shadings). Ink was a mix of Iroshizuku Kujaku and Fukurokuju, though in all honesty it looks more like Kujaku.

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A forest/stone(??) dragon, with my empress OC, Lana.

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Old artwork of the fire wyvern that makes up my header image, with my OC Jai, a magician :)

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So I'll be sharing the rest of my old dragon paintings over the next few days to go with the recent lightning dragon post, beginning with this guy~

Character is my emperor OC, Xiah :)

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"Be Still."

Another excerpt from Spirits of the Dead, by Edgar Allan Poe.

*** MUSIC CREDIT ***

"Escape A Human" by Naoya Sakamata

| SoundCloud | YouTube |

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"Not one, of all the crowd, to pry into thine hour of secrecy."

Back to lettering Poe! Excerpt from Spirits of the Dead.

***MUSIC CREDIT***

"Time Graveyard" by Naoya Sakamata

| SoundCloud | YouTube |

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Some encouraging words for this stressful time:

"And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about."

- Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

Not quite the same context as intended in the book, but I like it and by itself I find it oddly encouraging in the current situation.

Stay home and stay safe, everyone 🙏❤️