"What is the Use of a Book Without Pictures" in NYC!!!!

Today is my unbirthday! 

Well, it is almost my birthday (Again! How does this keep happening?), which means it is almost the anniversary of the first query letter I sent... which means I need to hurry and send out more queries before my birthday, so I don't feel bad that I sent out less queries in a whole year, than most writers sent out in an afternoon! 

I did enter every contest I could, but I guess I dilly-dallied a lot on the query front? Ah, well, as Lewis Carroll would say: "I can't go back to yesterday, because I was a different person then." I will just have to try and do better this coming year.  :-)

"Dilly-Dallying" pictured above.

Anywho! Enough with the "lack of query sending" guilt! On to what I wanted to talk about!

Okay, so I might have mentioned before that I have a slight obsession with "Alice in Wonderland"...and that might have been lie. Yes, it was definitely a lie.
I don't have a slight obsession, I have a huge obsession with "Alice in Wonderland"! (See "portfolio" for madness references.)

"Alice" is just such a great story, and I love it for many reasons (which I will not bore you with here). 

Anyway, so a few years ago, I was contacted about a super cool project called: "What is the Use of a Book without Pictures?" which, as you might have guessed, was/is an "Alice in Wonderland" project.

The premise of the project was to replace every single paragraph of "Alice" with a full page illustration, and to do so in as many styles as possible. As you might have guessed, I was immediately intrigued by the idea, and leapt right in! It's an international collaboration, and there are hundreds of participating artists! The photo below shows some of the artwork from the project.

All artwork (c) respective owners.

Anyway, I did five illustrations for the project, and after flipping through the digital albums a thousand times, I sort of forgot about it. Now, as it turns out, WITUOABWP is getting its own website, a possible print form, and it will be shown this April at the Lewis Carroll Society Spring Conference in New York City!

YES! YES! YES!
I'm not sure if any of my illustrations will be shown in the presentation, but I am still super excited! If you are in New York City late April, please consider stopping by the conference! Here is some of the event info from Facebook!

https://www.facebook.com/events/514897615286105/?ref_newsfeed_story_type=regular

If you click "Event Photos," one of my drawings is # 4! "Alice Crying.";-)

Luna Lovegood Egglet!

Luna Lovegood Egglet! Or, Luna Lovegglet! Luna is one of my all time favorite characters, so I was so excited that someone commissioned a Luna owl!

This was so much fun to make!
The owl came with: turnip earrings, a wand, Spectrespecs, a mini Quibbler I designed, and of course, Luna's Epic LION HAT!=D

Luna Lovegood, Quibbler, Spectrespecs all (c) my hero, J.K. Rowling!

ASIDE: Posting photos on here is ridiculously complicated.=-/

Breaking Bad Fanart WIP

Fanart time!!!
I'm still working on the faces, and I still have a TON of stuff to do on this, but I wanted to post it so far! I HAVE NEVER tried to draw real-ish people before, and I am surprised I did a decent enough job that Facebook wants to tag them!!!!!!!!! If you check out my portfolio, it is ALL cartoony illustration, so this is new territory. Haha, anyway, I have this artist pride/masochist thing, where I don't like to look at reference photos, so I drew the first draft of this without looking at any. Now that I am looking at ref photos, it's hard to find Jesse facing this particular way. I know I don't have his face right, but ah,  I will keep plugging away, and my awesome friend is helping me find photos of him, so I will keep working on it. I am really excited about finishing this! :-)

I just realized I FORGOT Heisenberg's mole! To the Photoshop!

This morning I was staring at my sister's hoodie, wondering if I should redraw this one. It totally freaked her out. The artist stare is freaky, I suppose.

When this is done I will write a post about my new obsession. Breaking Bad is seriously the most artistic show I have ever seen (especially the last seasons). It makes me want to drop everything, move to LA, and try and become a prop acquirer (how does one get a job like that anyway?), or a set dresser/designer/decorator or...I don't know! Anything in the art department! Or a grip! A coffee person! Anything! I'm not picky! Something!

My 15 Minutes of Sorta Fanart Fame!

Stare at the glory of my illustration skills! Do IT!

Ok, so a year or so ago I typed "Boy with the Bread" into Google because I am a HUGE "Hunger Games" fan, and Peeta is one amazing character ("Boy with the Bread" is his nickname). I was scrolling through the images...and WHAT THE HECK, I saw a fanart  I drew in 2011 on the bottom of the first page of Google Images. I counted and it was like 48th or something. Anywho, I thought that was super cool.

I forgot about it for a couple months, and when I typed it in again it was 23rd! I was so excited, I started checking more often. It was 14th for forever, and then BAM, number 6--JUST outside showing up in the top 5. It stayed there for months. I thought this was my proudest achievement EVER.

Then...I checked again a couple weeks ago. DeviantArt changed the way it was hosting the original image, so clicking it no longer went straight to the image. My picture moved down... and down... and down again...
.=-(
I was very sad.

What did I ever do to deserve this sadness?

I sighed and decided my little 15 minutes of "sorta fanart fame" were up (if I ever had any sorta fanart fame to begin with...I mean, only 1 person stole my image! The higher the volume of thieves, the more successful the artist, so yeah, I'm not famous yet. :-) ). I decided to move on with my life and just forget about it ever being in the top again.

Depths of despair pictured above.

But...

I have crazy OCD. I can't leave things alone. I used to do the whole light switch thing and everything. I even thought about taking all the clothes numbers off the doors in a dressing room to match them up with their appropriate numbers last week. HOW DARE you take 5 articles of clothes into the 3rd dressing room! What is wrong with you?! Anyway, yes, I am crazy, so I checked one last time and WHAT!?

Pictured: proudest moment of my life!

My illustration broke the top 5! It's number 3 right now, which means it shows up on Google results before you even click into images!!!!!!!!! I never thought anything of mine would make it anywhere near the top! I don't know how or why it got there, but I am so happy!

90% of gifs lazily obtained from same source.

WHO KNOWS! Maybe Suzanne Collins herself has seen my drawing! AHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

End gloat!

I hope someday my writing will make it, and people will draw fanart of my characters!:-)


------Process!

GifTASTIC!

If you want to see the WIP, click this post! http://writingrevelations.blogspot.com/2013/08/still-boy-with-bread.html
If you noticed that Peeta's sword disappears (kinda like his other leg...I shouldn't draw attention to that...), congratulations! You win a prize! I forgot about it, but its ghost remains!!=-P

-----PLEASE vote for me!

If you want to vote for me to be Hunger Games' Fan of the Week, click here and give my drawing a "spark"! http://www.thehungergamesexplorer.com/competitions/onsite/Fan-Of-The-Week/hge/2648/

----- OWL GIVEAWAY!

If you want to enter my shop's Egglet owl giveaway, there are still a couple of weeks left to enter (commissions are always available too)! Go here!
http://writingrevelations.blogspot.com/2013/10/custom-eggletowl-giveaway.html

Custom Egglet/Owl GIVEAWAY

The writing world is filled with amazing contest organizers, blog hosts, slush zombies, critique-rs, and participating agents. These wonderful people have given me the warm fuzzies for contests.

So... I thought I would do a contest of my own!

My shop Fairies&Finds is doing a giveaway.

Details:

This will be a random drawing, so no stress for entries! 
Enter via the Rafflecopter widget below. You will have until November 18th to enter.
All the Rafflecopter extras are optional. Liking my page/Twitter through it will give you extra entries!  
    

The Prize?
One (1) custom Egglet (owl) from my shop! Egglets are wooden, hand painted, egg-shaped owls around 3-4 inches tall. They are all designed, painted, and signed by me.
---Note:
The winner is going to have to pick the theme they want. Anything from "I want a purple owl," to: rainbow, cowboy, doctor, Frakenstein's monster, African animals.... Yes, basically anything you can think of, so get your creative pants on!

Secondary Prize?
People can pitch their owl "theme ideas" via Rafflecopter, FairiesAndFinds' FaceBook giveaway post, or in the comments below. A second winner might be chosen if enough themes are pitched!
(Comment example: YOUR NAME:___ Theme: BALLERINA)  Get creative! =-)

Note:
Egglets take a while to create, so winner(s) should expect a week or two for their Egglets to be made.

Please like my shop's FaceBook page for updates! https://www.facebook.com/FairiesAndFinds !


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Still the Boy with the Bread

I've always wanted to do one of these "illustration process"-things. This is one of the few drawings where I did save jpgs throughout my time working on it, so yay! Now I can! If you click to expand the first drawing, you can click through the slideshow and see the changes applied.=)

This is my TRIBUTE (pun heavily intended) to Suzanne Collins' wonderful "Hunger Games" series. It's one of my favorite series, and this is one of my favorite drawings too. If you type "boy with the bread" (Peeta's nickname) into Google images, this drawing actually shows up on the front page! How cool is that?

1: Sketch!
      Katniss is the "Girl on Fire," so I've always felt like Peeta was the water to Katniss' fire. <3
      Rue, Cinna, Prim, Gale, and Haymitch were originally going to be inserts on the left side, but I
      won't put up a jpg of that since they didn't make the final cut.

2: Lineart!
           Cleaned up the characters with ink, and extended/added detail to the background in pencil!

3: Colored characters!

4:Laying in colors!
              Never really painted trees, so I kinda didn't know what I was doing! These were the original                         colors, and yes, they are quite horrid!=)

5: Final Version!
         Blurred the background elements, added some plants, and darkened everything.

6: Space reserved for possible Future Final Edit!
            I do still occasionally  edit things that bother me.=-)

Licensing Expo 2013 (Favorite Photos)

Licensing Expo 2013!

Since writing is my thing,
I had to get a photo of the Penguin booth before opening!
I actually saw a nice editor I'd met at a SCBWI!

Ok, so I got asked to assist my friend (who is an incredible artist!) at Licensing Expo 2013 in Vegas, and, for once in my life, I didn't overthink things, bought my ticket, headed to Las Vegas... and had the greatest experience of my life! I learned trade secrets from artists whose work I have unknowingly encountered for years, and had my mind opened to new possibilities and new inspiration. The Expo was like everything good in this world, combined and wrapped in a tortilla with extra guacamole on top! The only way it could have been a better experience, would have been if I could have attended Licensing University, and the Expo, at the same time!

The Expo was chock-full of every major company/brand you could think of (Disney/Cartoon Network/ Nickelodeon /Mattel/Hello Kitty/Lamborghini/Penguin Publishing), each competing for attention with mind-blowing visual displays that often trailed down (or climbed up) to the 3-story tall ceiling in the Mandalay Bay convention hall. I saw everything from Macy's Day Parade-esque balloons, to giant sculptures of popular characters and massive banners. The "booths" showed off new merchandise and exclusive giveaways, while important looking people from all over the world discussed business.

One of my drawings! Yay!

The Expo also had a smaller area specifically for artists looking for (and finding) licensees.

 I loved working for an exhibitor, although I'm not sure how much I helped. It was hard not to wander off, lost in displays that more than rivaled the Vegas Strip. It was incredible to get this "behind the scenes" look at the global world of licensing (and to be surrounded by global brands, celebrities, and artists!). I'm still searching for an agent for my novel, but I'm hoping to find enough time to develop some of my art concepts, and to invest in a booth of my own next year. With a bit of luck, and a lot of work, it might actually be possible to have merchandise made from my drawings!!

Licensing Expo 2013 Photo Dump!

Licensing Expo 2013 Photo Dump!

Oh my goodness, where to begin! Ok, so I got asked to assist my friend at the Licensing Expo in Vegas this year, and, for once in my life, I didn't overthink things, bought my ticket, headed to Las Vegas... and had the greatest experience of my life!