Tangled-Plus a NaNo and PiBoIdMo update

Oh hi there! My goodness, December already, where on earth has the time flown to?!  November was so crazy busy, but I feel that I got the most done out of all the other months past. Yippee!
I'll start with this drawing here.  I finished this actually close to the end of last month.  She's done with pencil and white ink again, as I'm running very low on my watercolour pencils and the like.

She's inspired by one of my favourite, and a little rare, Grimm fairy tale of  three women who are turned into flowers and only one can return to her good husband at night.  They form a plan and he rescues her from her enchantment.  It's such a sweet little story, and by little I mean very wee.  It's barely a paragraph long.  I wanted to illustrate something that might go along with it, so I hope I did it a fair enough composition.  Hmm, it might also make for some lovely writing paper.

I also participated in NaNoWriMo and PiBoIdMo this year as well.  It wasn't a challenge juggling the two as much as I thought it was going to be.  For NaNo, I managed to make it just past the 20,000 mark by the end.  Which I think is still quite good for my first try, since I didn't quite know what the heck I was doing in the first place. *Laughs*  But, I have a super awesome start (finally) to my first middle grade book.  It's all very exciting to see the characters, settings and plots come to life.  I'm still writing strong and have a goal to make it to almost 50,000 by this month's end.  (I'll try my best at least, so no biggie if I don't quite make it.)

And I totally completed PiBoIdMo! Woo to the Hoo!  I have about 40 ideas written down for a children's picture book and I've narrowed it down to five ideas now.  I've two really rough manuscripts started and I'm currently noodling around with some rough concepts for the illustrations.
It's a brave new world and experience starting for me and I'm very much looking forward to see where that sails me to.

I never knew at first that I would start to head in this direction of children's books and writing, until last year I took a serious look at just who I was reading out there in blogger land.  I was very surprised to see it was mostly mums who were writing, illustrating and crafting, but the largest majority was children's writers and illustrating.  That actually surprised me, as I've done comics for so long.  It's weird how you don't always know yourself, isn't it?  So a change was in definite order.  The thought of being able to one day inspire a little one (maybe one of own one day too), fills me with a joy I never got from doing comics. I just can't wait to get started!

Oh no! I'm rambling...I'll be quiet and leave you to your lovely tea! *laughs*

I've been doodling a lot lately.  More so than getting to finish pieces, really.  This one here, "Forest Elf"  is for my middle grade novel.  She's a lot nicer looking than she really is, so don't  be fooled too much by that elegant face. *wink*  I'm almost done with her, I just hope my colours will last long enough for me to finish.

And one more sketch to show you...

This again is for my middle grade book.  I'm calling her "Empress" for now.  She doesn't show up until the end of the series, but I wanted to draw her so I can flesh out her details in writing a bit better.  She a very nice young elf lady and has a twin.  I'm going to have to use pencil for this drawing, I wont have enough colours left after I finish with another drawing.

How was all of your Thanksgiving my dear American friends?  Did anyone dare to go Black Friday shopping?  Omgosh, I never do that kind of shopping, I'd like to keep all my limbs intact, thank you very much indeed. *laughs*  This is why I'm very grateful for having Hanukkah early this year.

Wishing you all a very merry and candy cane coloured week! Cheers!

Little Red Ridinghood

Happy November 1st everyone!  How was your Halloween? Did any of you dress up or take your kids out?

I stayed in, my street is a little scary to actually go out after dark on that night. So I stayed in and watched the Charlie Brown Halloween special on TV and also watched Paranorman. There was a ton of fireworks going off right outside my apartment! Just happy nothing caught fire. *phew*

 

So, as for this young lady you see here, this was done close to the end of last month. I wanted to post her up yesterday, but just plain forgot. I'm still feeling a little blue. Anyway, it's my own little take on the Grimm's fairytale, Little Red Riding hood.

I wanted the whole drawing to sort of tell the story and I purposely made the lines of the house a little off to make it seem like there was something not quite right about it. I'm still not too happy

about how the wolves look....but, I'm going to spend some time practicing drawing animals. This took so long to draw! A little too long, about three weeks and 1/2...I think. *laughs* 

 I did this with a mechanical pencil and white ink.

 

So, I've also joined a few challenges this month.  I'll be doing PiBoIdMo this year, and already have about ten ideas so far! Yay! I also signed up for NaNoWriMo. (wow...lots of acronyms! *laughs*) After my head nearly exploded from plotting my first book, I think I'm ready to start writing out the first rough copy of it. Don't know if I'll get to all 50,000 words, but I do my best!

 

I finally  started up my Face book page ! I'm doing this all in the hopes to get myself and my work out there. I desperately want to do this for a living...I want so much to be able to do children's book and write them too! I want someone to at least see that I can do good illustrations and I want to share that with so many people that I admire and hope I can be part of their ranks one day. I'm not good at marketing, but again, all I can do is try my best and see what happens.  Hope this doesn't sound like I'm complaining,  never would, not that kind of person....I just want this more than ever to be a dream come true. Thank you my lovely friends, for always being my sunshine and I hope I show as much support for your work like you always do for me. Much Love to you all!

 

Wishing you all a lovely, and creative weekend ahead! Cheers you awesome people!