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28 Drawings Later – Days 17, 18, and 19

I tried to post this yesterday but our internet wasn’t having any of it so I gave up and watched Under Siege 2 instead. I had a fairly busy weekend so just did a few quick doodles focusing on things the young girl is given by three random old ladies to help with her quest to find the prince in the castle.

The gifts are slightly unusual – a bit like when your granny starts to lose it a bit and gives you things where you’re like ‘wow, what a lovely… what is that?’  One is a spinning wheel, which seems like it would be slightly unwieldy, or at least my one is as it’s a full size one with foot pedals.  Presumably there are more portable versions which I will discover as my research progresses further.

Day 17 - Spinning Wheel

Then we have some more carding combs.  You may remember the other day I did a golden hair comb, without actually referring back to the text of the story, only to discover that the gift wasn’t a hair comb at all but the kind used for getting icky bits out of sheep’s wool when you’re going to spin it into thread.  This makes sense in the context of the spinning wheel, but it’s not the most magical looking item… nowadays the things used for carding are a bit like giant hair brushes, but I managed to find a couple of more old fashioned looking ones to sketch.

Day 18 - Carding Combs

I think this is the style I’ll probably use in the event I develop any of these into something approximating promotional materials for the play. It’s not that dissimilar to the hair comb, but I think it’s a nice shape and probably easier to stick in the pocket of a raggedy dress than some of the others.

Day 19 - Carding Comb
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Editing, and a request for readers…

And lo, it was February, and the never-ending task of editing the 12 books I wrote across the 12 months of 2011 began in earnest.

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure where to start with this.  Some people might choose the beginning, but frankly I didn’t wanna.  I could lie and tell you this is because I’ve read so many articles saying starting at the beginning is narrative suicide, but (as I mentioned at the beginning of this sentence) that would be a lie.

It’s actually something of a practical issue.  I’ve lost around an hour a day to the 28 Drawings Later challenge this month, so in editorial terms I wanted something I could go back to and just edit.  However, the first book I wrote last year, Caligula’s Blog, deserves a lot more research than I managed to do at the time, which means I can’t just jump straight back in.  Well maybe I could, but as discussed, I don’t want to.  I want to be able to take a few hours at a time to get really immersed in the history of it so that I go back with as accurate a timeline as possible and much more in-depth knowledge of the period.

So, the beginning turns out not to be a great place for me to start. However, help is at hand in the form of a couple of competitions – The Dundee International Book Prize, which I mentioned in a post last month, and The Kelpies Prize.

Continue reading “Editing, and a request for readers…” →

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28 Drawings Later – days 11, 12 and 13

Three drawings today, as I was remiss in not posting them over the weekend.

Day 11 - West of the Moon

I have mainly been playing with text and watercolours.

Day 12 - East of the Sun

They came out quite well.

Day 13 - Night Sky
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12 Books Quads

A few weeks back I posted a link to 12 Novels in 12 Months, my writing twin from Canada who started her project last June… and now another 12 book writer has popped up in Utah!  Michelle started in January and you can find her at 12novels.com.  I think we might have to found some kind of club.

There is also a 12 books project going on in Wisconsin, although this one is a little different than ours.  Writer/game designer Matt Forbeck is writing four trilogies this year and he crowd sourced actual money to help him do it.  Why didn’t I think of that back in December 2010…

All of this goes to show that it was clearly an excellent idea, because great minds think alike.  Or, as my friend claims they would say in Germany, ‘two idiots, one thought’.  And it means you are spoiled for choice in terms of reading the ongoing adventures of people who haven’t finished their novelling yet. How many people across the world will do this in 2013?  Lots, probably.

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28 Drawings Later – Day 10

One of the main characters in East of the Sun and West of the Moon (a fairytale which is my chosen theme for this month’s 28 Drawings Later challenge, new people) is The White Bear.  So I thought I would draw him.  In doing this I came across lots of adorable pictures of baby polar bears and nearly died of a cuteness overload.  And then my friend posted a picture of her newborn baby on facebook and I literally did die of a cuteness overload.  If you take the word ‘literally’ to mean ‘not literally’, which I understand is the way the kidz use it these days.  Curse you, society. I’m now feeling quite broody, and plan to go out and obtain myself a baby human and a baby polar bear, not necessarily in that order.  Still, I figure they’ll look out for one another rather than fighting if we introduce them to each other early enough.

Anyway, here’s my drawing of a bear.

Day 10 - The White Bear
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28 Drawings Later – Days 8 and 9

After I requested help with drawing the wind t’other day, Bridget wrote: “You could pick color palettes based on the types of settings those winds would be found in — a gentle breeze might have a tropical, warm blue; harsh winter winds are silver and pale blue; the heavy winds that bring in the often-stagnant spring storms clouds are heavy and purple, charcoal or black, whereas the the sleepy winds that push around those brief summer torrents are heavy but perhaps dappled with the oranges and purples that trail behind them in the skies.”

I decided to muck about with this and had a vague notion of using pastelly watercolours and then inking some blowing stuff (leaves, brollies, general detritus) over the top.  Twas then I discovered my tin of watercolour crayons (you draw on the page as you would with a normal crayon then get a paintbrush and some water and turn it into paint) and it all got a bit more multimedia than that.

Day 8 - East of the Sun and West of the Moon

The background was done and the sun and the moon fingerknitted during Masterchef last night, and the white bear finger puppet (who is a bear, not a seal as some detractors would have you believe) was normal knitted during 10 o’clock live.  Just to give you a rough idea of how long this took, as some people are posting that sort of information on the Facebook page…

Day 9 - The Journey

This one is the pretty young daughter journeying east of the sun and west of the moon.  Although it looks more like the way you used to draw birds as a kid.  Anyone..?  Oh, never mind.  It’s mostly the watercolour crayons again, but the stars and cloud patches are expertly rendered in chalk pastel.  LAWL.

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