I plan to shoot some better photos & footage on my DSLR camera. But, for now, here's some further photos of this wand project. The May Pollen & June Humidity of New England is making it soft, because there's so many layer of medium on this thing.
It has real jade on it, also. And the Tassel has a White Jade Pixiu which is a kind of unicorn, but there's more to it.
It's supposed to be a hybrid of a Ruyi and a Wand from the Wizarding World. I blogged about it further in my 1st blog on this topic.
— 任思麒 Kandice Z. ☮️✌🏽🕊✊🏽 (@BlackUniGryphon) May 4, 2026
The General theme of this custom made DIY wand whcih I hand sculpted using armature wire & Supersculpy was to resemble my sketches of my wand I scripted in to my D.R. Shifting Script at my Hogwarts D.R. (Desired Reality) if you are familiar with "Reality Shifting".
The design blends concepts from Chinese Taoism and also some vague ideas from "Fantastic Beasts" which is a spinoff of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter franchise.
Whenever I get around to scanning my sketches, I will. I just didn't get to it yet since I started a M.A.P. W.I.P. (animation project).
This involved a lot of painting, patience for the layers of paint to set, and also the use of antiquing medium, metallics, and layering of pigments with glazing medium and even mother-of-pearl.
It's based on a fusion of a Rúyì如意, and NO THAT DOES NOT ACTUALLY TRANSLATE to "Scepter". It translates to "As You Wish" or "As You Will", and has a massive meaning. The Monkey King, Sun Wukong's Jing Gu Bang was ACTUALLY a Ruyi Jing Gu Bang which he could WILL to to become something else, and transform, just by willing it with his mind, thoughts, desires, and feelings.
A Ruyi usually resembles the shapes & swirls of the Lingzhi mushroom (reishi mushroom) which tends to have heavenly cloud swirls on it, naturally. This motif is also found in various other designs such as ancient Chinese locks, jade pendants, and various other design motifs.
Gifting someone a Ruyi speaks volumes o meaning which it DOES NOT express in Western Languages, so it's easier to just smile & nod at the ignorant foreigner and just say "it's a scepter" even tho' IT'S NOT! Why, because it would take a long time to explain it, the meanings, the words, the customs, the culture.
It Taoism it has a VERY CLEAR magical meaning, and the power of WILL over matter.
If you want to find other examples of Ruyi, you can run a search in Etsy and see what shows up, because it's a lot of interesting stuff at any given time. Highly creative artisans 7 collectors have various Ruyi, including Sun Wukong's Jing Gu Bang.
So, anyways, you COULD say that mine is #Fanfiction or #HarryPotterFanFiction of sorts but it's for my Reality Shifting D.R. Basically, it's when you move you consciousness to another reality, which you can script & design, and you just live their for as long as you want until you come back to your body here in the C.R. (Current reality). Also known as "Localle 3" in "Gateway Process" Tapes by Robert Monroe/Monroe Institute.
I'll blog some more on this later, when I have time.
Most of the characters r people from my C.R. including people I grew up with, went to middle school, high school, college with, or former coworkers & friends of mine, including my friend, David Biedny, who died in January 2024.
Also, "Reality Shifting" is quite different from "Lucid Dreaming" and/or "Lucid Dreams" but they're related, and so is OBEs (Out-of-Body Experiences) and "Astral Travel". You CAN actually use a Lucid Dream as a platform to SHIFT to your D.R. And it's somewhat similar to "Dream Incubation" but it's not a generic dream. In a Lucid Dream YOU CAN TEST to see if you're dreaming, and the checks will prove you're dreaming, and within the dream, and you can take over. But, when you SHIFT to another reality, you can run a reality check and they will all pass. BECAUSE IT'S REAL. You're MIND either made it, or it's an actual reality of molecules that you relocated your consciousness to. There's various views & beliefs as to which thing is happening, but I've found they're all valid. There's also waking methods & sleeping methods. These can also closely resemble "Hypnotic Induction". If you're "wooshing there", this to me suggests Hypnotic Induction, but if you have a SINKING and DEEP FEELING that's Shifting. But, other experiences are more similar to OBEs, Gateway Process, and Astral Travel because there's the vibratory state, tingles, etc. A Common place people shift to is a "Waiting Room" which you can design yourself, and they hang out there, eat delicious foods, watch TV, plan things, and so on.
I've shifted several times to other realities, and was even stuck there, but I'd eventually will myself back. I just didn't know you could script this until recently, so it's an ongoing thing with me. I've mini-shifted to Hogwarts several times, in fact, I can't remember them all. Glad I wrote them down! I tend to get way to excited, and fuck it up! I've also done Lucid Dreaming several times as well, and I've screwed up 1 of those pretty bad, also. Shifting is EXHAUSTING when you do it, I just tend to go to THE WRONG LOCATIONS for some reason, and I get stuck there. I also have an issue with "Dreamwalkers" whom invade & hack into my dreams, like the film "Inception". Sometimes they're good, other times' they're bad, and then there's neutral or morally gray ones. They can also mess me up.
That's about it for now, but I'll update this project content when I get around to it. I need to shoot more footage & photos of the finished wand.
Wow! So much has occurred since I'd last blogged about Pokemon Go & Grinding to Hit Level 50!
Well, I did it, and then I did many OTHER THINGS! Now, there's 80 levels which started LAST YEAR!
Here you can see my Avatar in my Giovani Black Suit BECAUSE I beat him enough times to get his Blazer from the PLATINUM MEDAL BADGE!
Since Early December I had a major leg injury which hampered my progress, but SEVERAL OTHER MILESTONES WENT DOWN BETWEEN HITTING LEVEL 70, AND I'M CURRENTLY SITTING AT LEVEL 75. In fact, I'm close to hitting Level 76, but was set back since it requires walking 300km, but I had several medical issues, plus very bad erratic weather!
Here's my BLACK Level 50 Legacy Bomber Jacket from the ORIGINAL LEVEL 50 system! HARD CORE! I also have the army green version as well. Plus, I completed the Special Research Tasks and GOT THE POSE and my Mewtwo! And here she is when i hit Level 70 as I was an eleite level and was grandfathered into the NEW SYSTEM! So, I also have a nod to my Original legacy Level 40 System where you can see the Gyarados Hat & my 2020 glasses!:
What an ABSOLUTE GRIND!!!! Jeez!!!
I hit Level 50 in Spring of 2024, and at that point I was almost sure they'd never have more levels, because we kept hearing rumors of 60 levels. But, the bombshell came in 2025 (last year) when suddenly there were 80 levels! Leveling up now is NOT AS HARD.... unless ur injured, like I was. It SUCKED!
I have ALL the XP & ALL The Platinum Medals I could possibly need to hit Level 80 now, but they time gated this stuff! So, if all goes well, I could hit 80 this year.
But, You might ALSO wanna check out the OTHER good stuff that happened for me since I hit Level 50, then 70, and now 75, but almost at 76, probably in a few more weeks. I gotta pace myself, because I have pain management & healing to navigate, plus trying to loose weight.
I've been feeling my OC's (Original Character) a lot lately in the past 2-3 months. She's actually a dragon, but her humanoid form looks like this, and her eyes can change colors.
I usually depict Djehkäujaa in mid 1990s European Raver clothing, or in a variety of clothing typical of Mongolian tribes, usually with pants. However, I've recently found myself drawn to depicting her in a blend of tribal inspired clothing from the Asian Steppes, including everything from Russian to Mongolian, to Kazakh, but also Turkmen, Turkoman, Sakha, Yakutia, Siberian, and several others. These cultures always fill me with a strong, strange feeling of Déjà vu, but even further beyond that. So, I've meditated on it a lot since I was 18. In fact, that's exactly around the time when I came up with Djehkäujaa when I was a teenager.
I've also bee drawing a lot of inspiration various old novels lately, and Clip Studio Paint.
My newest work which features Djehkäujaa is inspired by the cover artwork by "Brom" on the novel "The Unicorn" from "Legend of The Five Rings".
I feel pretty happy with my growth & progress in implementing "design layout" which is so much better than 5 years ago, let alone 10. I'm glad I decided to stop being so narrow-minded about it, and I feel I've improved a lot.
I actually hadn't intended to start this one yet, even tho I prepped for it since December. I used a mixture of different Software for this project including: Adobe Photoshop, Clip Studio Paint, FlamePainter, and Rebelle 3.
You can find FlamePainter & Rebelle at Escape Motions' website.
I also HIGHLY recommend Clip Studio Paint! If you own a WACOM tablet or CINTIQ but you don't have Clip Studio Paint yet, if you login to the WACOM site in your account, they often give out a free 1 year license code that you can redeem. I personally bought a permanent during a Black Friday/Cyber Monday deal in 2020.Some thing with Escape Motion, I bought software bundles from them during those Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals.
Clip Studio Paint is not 100% perfect, and even with an expensive video card (like I have) it will frequently crash. However, the up-sides of this software keep me hooked! It's 1 of my FAVORITE software to actually hand paint with on my CINTIQ. I like the feeling of it.
If you like experimentation art, I also recommend Rebelle by Escape Motions, but I also recommend Krita, WHICH IS FREE. I like Krita for fine details and its also intuitive with your strokes on a tablet, even if the drivers are an outdated tablet with pressure sensitive functions don't work anymore.
This piece was a reworked version of a Clip Studio Paint "Asset" which you can get HERE.
Believe it, or not, the fur on the final versions in these uses brushes from FlamePainter, and Clip Studio Paint. I customized the settings to colors I wanted, painted them on layers, then exported them to Photoshop where I did my clean-up editing.
Also, if you haven't noticed, I have an obsession with Chinese Chengyun which is hard to explain in English and takes forever, ironically. It's sort of like a language arts/poetry style, sometimes its translated as an "idiom" which I disagree with as a translation. Chengyun is just 1 of this style of poetic language arts, and is probably THE MOST clever of all language arts in all of humanity, potentially even older than "ancient" but in fact prehistoric... maybe. The human beings whom came up with this were incredibly clever. There were even people whom could talk like this.
It's like jive in some ways, but metaphors often within metaphors. In just a few words you can communicate things that are massive ideas. Not that Ancient Greek or Latin couldn't do this, but the Chinese way of doing this uses the writing system, and it involves a complex usage of more parts of the human brain that Western languages lack, or is totally void. So, it's very difficult for me. But, I enjoy messing with it.
It's called Wen Yan, Gu Wen, or Wen Yan Wen. It's nearly impossible to effectively even translate what this is in English. The closest one could get to it is a lengthy explanation or lecture. From my perspective, I view it as a kind of advanced Poetry language Art. Making art with words, ideas, concepts, and feelings, but it relies heavily on structure, and numbers, or numerology. In a Chengyun, there's only 4 words, but this same style could also be applied to other numbers, including a persons name, or names. There are, however, other languages in the far East that have a functional understanding & appreciation of this even tho' they don't speak Chinese, but incorporate it into their own. But, its just something in the West that we will have no concept of.
So, I often enjoy messing with these ideas myself. It's meant to be light-hearted on my end, since I'm an outsider.... like a small monkey that broke into a garage, messing with tools, trying to build something.
If you notice a group of 4 Chinese characters in my work, those are Chengyun, or faux Chengyun (meaning I made them up based on either the structure, or I messed with a word play of a real one.) Chinese has a unique kind of grammar, so I can mess with it within a a certain margin even tho it's not my native tongue. I also can't help but incorporate so much Chinese substance into my work because my life is heavily Chinese even tho I am not Chinese. Even in my interests in Philosophy frequently return me to Chinese "thought" or "philosophers", especially Dao De Jing (Tao Te Ching).
Djehkäujaa, in her humanoid form is generally meat to be depicted in PURPLE, which is a major plot point in her story, and back story. Djehkäujaa is very UNLIKE my other OC, Lively.
I don't know why Djehkäujaa has shown up so frequently in my drawings in the past few months, but she has.
The LoFi Videos:
The Short Versions:
The Full Length Versions:
I do have another composition I will also be doing a VFX/Motion Graphics Edit/LoFi/Relaxation peice as well:
I'm hoping, eventually, to record some of my own Jaw Harp music. But, I'm still learning. I got this one from Siberia in Russia:
In the 1987 novel "The Black Unicorn" (remember the "The" so as to distinguish it from "Black Unicorn" [no "The"] by Tanith Lee in the 1990s, which is ALSO GOOD.) Brooks writes about "The Books of Magic" which were a crucial plot point in the narrative of this specific novel, which comes from his "Magical Kingdom" series of Fantasy Novels from the 1980s.
You can READ the excerpts from the novel which I posted HERE that describe The Unicorns in the Books of Magic.
I am SO IRKED that I misplaced my original vintage copy of the novel. I literally had the dang thing, highlights withe notes & ALL in my hands in early December, but our Condo had a new electrical system installed in December, which means the entire place was topsy-tervy, and everything moved around. So, even tho I found ALL of my other novels from my teenagehood that were always kept together I CANNOT FIND THAT ONE!
So, I had to find a digital copy online, and THANK YOU SO MUCH TO FANTASY NOVEL FANS ON THE INTERNET!!!!
I've actually made a number of art pieces since I was a teenager in the 1990s depicting a number scenes from this novel. This novel really showcased a lot of the sweetness of Brooks' heart, and sentimental side. His also uses interesting narrative devices which for its time (1980s) were refreshing, altho today might seem cliche. It reminds me of an Classical Ancient Greek style which involves the mind of the audience (or reader) like in Peter Pan, you need to BELIEVE IN FAIRIES & clap your hands otherwise Tinkerbell will die, or if you believe in Jesus you become Deliverance & Salvation so you can go to Heaven in the Gospels. These are things the audience that hears or reads the story does INSIDE THEIR MIND by thinking and also FEELING which works very effectively, especially in a play or fairy-tales.
In Brooks' story, he uses this concept of "The Books of Magic" in a similar manner. So without giving out too many spoilers, these Unicorns which appear to be inked drawing on white parchment paper are actually trapped unicorns. They need to be set free so that the people in other realms (like our own) can "believe in magic" which also gives Magic it's own power. This is a very ancient classical narrative style that was perfected in Ancient Greece.
I don't want to SPOIL the story, but its connected to The Black Unicorn, which turns out to be NOT WHAT YOU THINK.
Let's just say, The Black UnicornIS NOT EVIL, and IS NOT A DEMON.
YOU NEED TO LOOK PAST it's DARKER EXTERIOR AND SEE THE BEAUTY OF WHOM THEY TRULY ARE.
The Black Unicorn is INNOCENT.
Imagine being misjudge JUST BY HOW YOU LOOKED ON THE OUTSIDE!
But INSIDE there is SO MUCH MORE!
This is ALSO why THOSE 2 BOOKS OF MAGIC MATTER SO MUCH IN THE PLOT!
Actually, when I was a teenager in the 1990s I made my own makeshift, hand made, version of the 2nd Book of magic with the Inked Unicorn Drawings! But, after I graduated college in 2001, I was snobby at my old high school art work, AND I THREW IT AWAY!
OH, HOW I REGRET THAT I DID THIS!!!!! SO STUPID! Me & my STUPID EGO! WHAT WAS I THINKING???
I'd made a Painting that had depicted a scene from the book with the fairies Dancing over a Lake at night to summon the Black Unicorn, which I was in high school. I didn't think much of it, but my family found that painting and framed it. I was honestly shocked since they never seemed to give a care about my art, ever. Also, no matter which house they lived in, they ALWAYS took THAT painting with them and HUNG in a room that ALL PEOPLE COULD SEE IT usually when they entered the house.
The kinds of things people would say to me about that painting were so sweet. So many people would tell me just how much they LOVED that painting! So, I guess I must've tapped into whatever Brooks wrote, because I LOVED that scene in the novel SO MUCH that I went out of my way to make a painting depicting it. I thought I wasn't any good when I made the painting, and felt disappointed that it wasn't better. But, when so many people kept telling me how much they LOVED it, I guess I did it right after all. I guess that's the problem with ego, huh?
So, by the Pandemic Quarantine Lockdown of 2020, I actually found my novel. Then I thought about "The Books of Magic" with the Inked Unicorns.
Then I thought:
Hey that would be a good project! (Then I remembered, I DID do that project as a kid, BUT THREW IT AWAY! DOH!)
So, I'd been meaning to re-create it myself.
I wasn't sure if there was still a Fandom for Terry Brooks. So, I checked!
Oh! THERE IS!
Bored with this trashy novel I'm reading at the moment. Think it's time for a return to the #MagicKingdomofLandover, not read those for ages
