Tuesday, July 31, 2012

More fairytale retelling....

Well, I've been busy as of late continuing to try to decide what I really want to work on for my NaNoWriMo novel this November. I'm rather torn between a strange mystery I've been plotting since early this year, or the fairy-tale/fantasy that's been stewing in the back of my brain for a few years already.

Anyways, since I've recently been leaning more towards the fantasy idea, I've been avidly doodling the characters I've planned for it. (I also doodled the characters from my other story, but they're buried somewhere and I can't find them. :P) Zee and Clem, the Little Red Riding Hood twins I posted the other day, are two of the characters, too.

And then there's Beauty and the Beast, a.k.a. Brianna and Constantine. They apparently share a taste in hair and sweaters. Actually, I'm very proud of those sweaters, the designs took me forever and I spent a long time trying to get the texture right. (Probably too long. XD)

And also Foster, a.k.a. Prince Charming. He's basically a parody of typical Charming from every fairy tale-- he has no hobbies except for fencing, he has remarkably good manners, and he wanders about forests and whatnot waiting for random good things to happen to him. And he wears a Perry the Platypus t-shirt because he's a goofball. And he's terribly pigeon toed.


Also, I've considered rewriting George MacDonald's fairytale, The Light Princess, into a younger children's book and illustrating it. I'm really interesting in the project-- I've got a few ideas I'd really like to try on the illustration and I can't wait to try them out, and see if they work out the way I'd like them to.

And that is all, at least temporarily.


[EDIT: Hey, I spoke too soon. I'm back already! After publishing this post, I noticed that it was my 300th post! Calls for celebration, don't you think?  Well-- maybe later. I think I've typed enough tonight. ;)]

Saturday, July 28, 2012

a short haiku concerning one of the difficulties of writing haikus

i can not think of
the right words for my haiku
hippopotamus
.

Friday, July 27, 2012

Red Riding Hoods

Clem's on the left, Zee's on the right. ;)

Ever since my return home, I've had no desire to do anything but draw and eat microwavable burritos. (And hang out with my family, of course, but I always want to do that. :D)

At any rate, here's a drawing of two of my characters from my fantasy novel in-the-making. They're Zee and Clem Pritchard, and they are the Little Red Riding Hoods, plural. I like drawing identical twins, but it is hard.

And now I am off to draw some more...

New cat?

Yes, I totally drew this masterpiece. ;)
Well, its official-- Sushi's friend hasn't missed a single meal for almost two months now. I think we have a new cat.

At any rate, he's a he (we think) and he's a stripey one. The kids have been calling him "Lioness", but that really doesn't work for him. I seem to have formed a habit of calling him "Louis" (I have no idea why), and so now some of the others are calling him that, too.

Anyways, Beowulf seems to loathe him.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Woah, look....

...I drew something else with a background! Two pictures with backgrounds in as many days-- I think this is a new record! :D

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Wow, look guys! I drew a picture that actually has a background!

Monday, July 23, 2012

I'm Home!

WHOO HOO! Already my whole body has relaxed-- I guess I wasn't aware of how much stuff I'd been doing on vacation. Now I'm ready to just sink back into my old routine.

We had quite a lovely welcome home. Our parents seemed delighted to see us (and I suspect they actually were ;D) and Anna Claire and Wilbo also seemed happy to see us, at least after we'd given them water balloons and cookies. The dog has been following me around since my return.

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Heading home!

Well, tomorrow bright and early (think at about 5:00 AM) we're leaving our grandparent's house and begining the long trek home. Hopefully there won't be so much no-gasoline, no-hotels drama like our trip up earlier this month, but we've decided to take the precaution of stopping and refilling our gas tank every hour or so.

I can't wait to be reunited with Mother and Poppy, and of course A.C. and William. I've even been missing the dog and the cat and my bike.

On the other hand, being on vacation has been really, really fun and I sort of wish I could continue with the whole do-nothing-but-eat-sleep-and-goof-off routine.

Venice in a day--


This is a really really cool video and since Venice, Italy is at the top at just about everybody's "most cool places" list, I figured I'd share it with you. :)

I also find it kind of funny, for reasons which are utterly beyond me. Perhaps it is just all the funny little people rushing about.

Friday, July 20, 2012

Yes, I am indeed on a Monsters' Inc. kick right now...




"At one point we asked, 'Should it be a spooky world?' But then we figured out that the monsters wouldn't want to scare themselves."

.

I'm gonna honk my own horn for a moment...

I just wanted to remind everyone out there to check out my haiku blog, too!

http://haikus100themes.blogspot.com/

Okay, that's all. Thank you for your time. Good night. :)

Have they returned?

Let us pray they have not.

And by "they", you should all know what I'm talking about. In case you aren't sure, let it suffice it to say that they are very small and leggy, like to bounce on and bite every living creature, and have a name that starts with "f" and ends with "a".

If you still can't guess what they are, I'm sorry but I never say their name aloud.


At any rate, they happen to especially love eating this little guy, a.k.a. Beowulf the Hero, a.k.a. my dog.

What's more, they're impossible to get out of his fur because Mr. Hero happens to be a Yorkie-Pom, and apparently Poms are descended from the Spitz breed of dogs, which unfortunately hail from really wet, cold places and have a lot of really waterproof hair, which Beowulf inheirited.

Hence, it takes almost an hour just to get my five-pound dog wet.

Can you see the family resemblance?

Anyways, let's just take a moment to cross our fingers and pray that they have not returned. (But remember not to say their name out loud.)

yeah I should probably begin to continue posting on here again...

In case you were wondering, I haven't been particularly busy or anything, I just stuffed my computer under my bed back in March and have been ignoring my blog ever since.

I'll do better now, I promise. (At least for a little while. ;D)

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Mrrp?

Well, after sitting in Barnes and Noble for several hours, I finally finished the latest 39 Clues: Cahills vs Vespers book. Since there happens to be no bookstores selling new books in my town, and since I'm too broke to buy anything on Kindle, I've been reading it off and on every time we've gone anywhere outside of our town. Hehe.

At any rate, the good news about this is that the book was amazing and super fun to finally finish. The bad news is that now I have to wait until September for the next one. (Which is actually not that far away-- yay!)

Anyways, here's my drawing of two of the main characters, Dan Cahill and Saladin the egyptian mau.

Because yup.

Monday, July 16, 2012

the monsters are back! :D

Whoo-hoo.
Thank you Pixar.

I think it's about time for a new header...

Summer has been here for months now, so I think it's about time to leave Switzerland for a while. Do you have any ideas for a new location I could explore and turn into my new header?
(Also, I'm totally doing my new header in the same style as this one-- I can't wait to redraw another scene.)

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Barbies?


Love them or hate them, you've gotta admit that Barbies are everywhere. And recently I've become sort of infatuated with them-- there are Twilight Barbies (rather frightful, if you ask me), Dancing with the Stars Barbies (cool, if only because my family is addictted to the show), and these really cool Barbies inspired by the artwork of Da Vinci, Van Gogh and Klimt.

I've also been interested to see how certain artists repaint and reroot the hair (are those the right terms?) of Barbies, in order to fix a terrible garage sale find or just make a doll that is very unique. I really like the dolls of artist Loanne Hizo Ostlie, who has some really neat dolls that she's redone as specific nationalities.



I think they're pretty nifty.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

vacation pictures (thus far)

For some reason they wouldn't buy me a drink...
All weird faces are photographed. The end.
Boats.
Uh... no that isn't me.
I was standing waiting to hit that thing with a stick. NO RABIES MAN.
DONT GET CLOSE ITS A KILLER I CAN TELL
Fireworks. Allie. Binoculars... not sure why.
When you see it....
Mick, with Grandpa in the background. Reading is really the it thing around here.
Le Ben and le me.
Woopdedo.

Monday, July 09, 2012

new coloring style-

I've taken to coloring things with my markers, but adding textures and patterns with pencils and crayons. (and occasionally paint or White-Out, too. XD)

What do you think?

Wednesday, July 04, 2012

Just a quick post to announce that I am still alive!

My grandfather came and picked three of my siblings and me up and so Saturday afternoon we were driving through West VA. In case you haven't heard-- aliens attacked the East coast last Friday and left the entire state of West VA and large portions of many other states without power. This had unpleasant ramifications for us weary travellers (although thankfully not so unpleasant as those stuck with no power) as there was no way to pump gas out of the ground. Meaning? We were almost stranded in the middle of nowhere, with no empty hotels for miles around. Luckily, Grandpa had the brilliant idea of assking a Ford dealership (who did have power) if they had gasoline, and they sold us a few gallons. So we managed to escape gasoline-less doom and eventually made it to our grandparents house.


At any rate, a lot of people were left without power and cars this weekend, so please pray for them! There were also many, many people with severe damage to their homes from fallen trees and stuff.