Tag: teacher

Work continues

I may have mentioned that I will be releasing Gloriana in ten 16-page installments. Each will end on kind of a cliffhanger scene. I’m wrestling with this one. The bad guys (the wizards Cornelius & Valdes) have followed Elizabeth to Kat Ashley’s school. When they don’t find her there, the bad guys burn down the building.

I don’t like this kind of scene. It’s gratuitous violence. I feel uncomfortable watching all the wanton destruction in a Mission Impossible movie, for instance. The last one I saw Tom Cruise wrecked half of Venice by driving his car into everything. I had a hard time watching Mel Gibson’s Patriot when the Brits burned down a church. So, sure, I’m a sensitive plant.

On the other hand, I need to show you that my protagonist, Elizabeth, is in grave danger. If my villains don’t do awful things, they’ll be mere comic relief.

Here is the sketch of Cornelius & Valdes and their henchmen walking away from the burning school.

Consortium boardroom sketch

As I mentioned earlier, I added to GLORIANA’s story: an evil cabal of wealthy financiers who want to take over the kingdoms of 16th -century Europe. Most of the architecture in Elizabeth’s world is Tudor-style. To differentiate the world of these bad guys, their architecture will be mediaeval Gothic. This is a sketch I did to help me visualize their world. Gothic looks heavier and more imposing than other styles.

If, like me, you’d been a student of art teacher Rolly Ivers at Cicero High School back in the 1970s, you’d have been given an introduction to architectural history. It was one of his passions. We all had 3-ring binders full of the mimeographed handouts he painstakingly assembled. I’ll always be grateful Rolly shared that with us. Because I have that foundation, I can whip out a sketch like this even before doing a bunch of research. Of course, I’ll look up Gothic interiors to amplify and fine-tune what I started here. But having a well of images in my head helps me to work efficiently.