Birth of a Legend and Kudos to Ms. Grace

His name is Rain, originally called "Rainie Dae" because I made him on a rainy day. The origins of his name are often attributed to the shampoo "White Rain" but it was in fact my brother Aaron's cleric that was named after shampoo, Aussie Mega.

Rain began as a 4'6 elf ranger, but he was destined to become my icon and hero. I think every role-player has at least one character that they consider a kind of avatar, and Rain was definitely that character. He's matured, too, over the years, and has become one of the lead characters in a story that currently consists of more than 500 pages. He's not an elf, though, and his name has infinitely more depth than his origins.

Rain was copied from Robin Wood's book The People of Pern.

This is Sharra, one of Ben's characters. She's supposed to be a gnome, but due to the fact that I copied this image, also, from The People of Pern, she ended up looking more like a tall, kind of thick human female.

I'm not sure I hated drawings like this as much then as I do now. It looks like a lot of love and care went into this one--down to the crooked exit sign. I don't tolerate ridiculous subjects very well, and this subject falls under ridiculous. Dragons = cool, school hallways = ridiculous.

Yeah, I drew this one out of my head...but I do think this was the first image I ever got in an art show. This art class in 6th grade was where I first painted, also. I wish I had a copy of the painting because it was quite good...there was a Prismacolor tiger, too, now that I think about it. Kudos to Ms. Grace, my teacher, because I actually have fond memories of this 6th grade class, and I think it would be my last fond memories of creating art in an educational setting until I came to Brigham Young University 12 years later.