Fable says argh

See?

I did a page of sketches from the Showdown, but only about half of them didn't suck. There's poor blinded Nath.

Found this in my mathbook from the beginning of the year. Nath looking nothing like himself.

And there he is again, from when I was frustrated with my history homework and felt the need to take it out on someone.

And I'd conveniently forgotten about this - drawn on the back of a handout in class, I think - because there are some horrendous problems with it, but anyway, it's the blacksmith from Erimon Hill, who wil hopefully show up more often in the rewrite. Cuz he's pretty dang cool, and stuff. I mean, lookit that scar!

And here is a nice portrait of Russel Evony and Thomas Derringer in their shiny new army gear with their hair all lopped off. Actually, Thomas was the only one who got his hair lopped off; Russel's was like that already. Hmm, what's that you say about historical accuracy? Oh, there isn't any here? Why that's right, there isn't. I absolutely did not bother to look up American army uniforms during the Vietnam War. (As an aside, Thomas looks weird. I need his hair to grow back immediately.)

Um, this is kind of random. It was a thumbnail sketch for that bee project I showed you back at Thanksgiving, and it got buried in a pile somewhere, and then I dug it up.

And I can't remember whether I showed you this or not. Eye practice.

Sometime during the school year, I went through a phase where everything I drew had an improbable ski-slope of a nose.

Also, I only draw profiles from one side.

Psh, I dunno.

Ohai, remember this? I sorta colored it a little. I could do more with it, but I prolly won't. Gah, I hate my color pencil work.

Speaking of, here's another I'm attempting to color. Guess I have a thing for crazy sunsets. Remember Tajadeo, you guys?

Look, there he is again, only he appears to be bleeding this time, and his legs are terribly deformed because Kipin wasn't trying very hard.

Here's a slightly older Hickory Fain, because he's crazy and I love him.

And we'll end with some kissing, because I say so. Despite that heinous mess of a hand. It's Proffessor Biddle, remember him? And his pretty young wife who doesn't have a name yet. And I drew it in PEN. Gawsp!

That's it for the time being - I have a few little things to scan. Just little ones.

BUT, I do have a few pictures from the City Museum in St. Lois, and it might be fun to do a post on that. I had pics from Chicago, and then I brilliantly deleted them all because I repel technology. *raaaage*

Oh, also, I'm watching Firefly right now. All the episodes. In order. AND IT IS SO SO EPIC I DON'T EVEN GAAAH. So epic. Also, I can kill you with my brain.

And I'm drawing some more Mistborn fanart, but whether I can actually finish it remains to be seen.

Later, y'all.

Commander Kip

"Now wait a minute, preacher, don't the Bible have some pretty specific things to say about killin'?" "Yes, very specific. It's quite a bit fuzzier on the subject of... kneecaps."

Normal is overrated!

here, drown in some fanart.

Firstly and foremostly! This is Wit, and he cracks me up so much. His job is to insult important people in the name of the King. Isn't that the best? He's from Brandon Sanderson's new book, The Way of Kings, which is an awesome book all told. I think I might have messed up his hair - darn book's so long, by the time I got to the end, I forgot what he looked like. The glowy marble things with the jewels in the centers are called spheres, and they're used as money and illumination in Sanderson's world. This is another guy from The Way of Kings, and I know for sure I messed him up. I didn't catch until near the end that Kaladin has curly hair! So in this pic, he doesn't. Maybe he just got rained on, or something. Those nasty brand-things on his forehead are supposed to mean "slave" and "dangerous", I think. But I didn't look up the actual symbols, so those are prolly wrong too. Um, Kaladin is my all-time favorite. He's so angsty and beastful. I love him.

I tried to draw a kandra from one of Sanderson's other books, but again, I couldn't remember what the kandra looked like, and couldn't be bothered to check. I don't even remember which generation the wood kandra are from. Oh well. Just forget about this, all right.

Ah, this is Kelsier. I think I finally nailed down my version of him. I've drawn several terrible doodles of him in the past, and this one is so much better. Although the mistcloak here is made of fail. Huh. Can't have everything, I guess.

Now on to the non-Sanderson stuff. Artemis Fowl and Holly Short, at the beginning of The Time Paradox, when they go back in time and Artemis gets older and Holly gets younger, and they (SPOILERZZZ) fall in lurve. Arty looks pretty scruffy here, and Holly's wearing her shiny silver wig. This is actually kind of an old sketch. Hence the general fail going on.

ARTHUR. From Inception. I love that guy. He is such a boss.

Hokay, so this kind of failed. Like, seriously. Fans of these books won't even recognize these dudes. It's supposed to be Caleb, Mordecai and Uncle Frank from the 100 Cupboards trilogy by N. D. Wilson. Yeah, fail. I know. Couldn't be bothered to check descriptions, once again (I'm such a terrible person) so they probably look nothing at all like themselves. And I just noticed that they all have very short legs. Bother.

Hunger Games! These guys, you should be able to recognize. Maybe. Haymitch at the top, a random mouth that has nothing to do with anyting, Primrose, Gale, Katniss scowling, Finnick with his trident, and Peeta looking girly at the bottom. Just kidding, I actually love how Peeta turned out. And by the way, I think Haymitch is literally my favorite character. He's such a complete jerk most of the time, but that's what makes it awesome whenever he's NOT. You know?

Hokay, done for now. At least, I think that's all the fanart I have for you. More doodles later!

Commander Kip

"Bet they told you again this morning, and you didn't listen again." "Shut up, Haymitch."

Normal is overrated!

ZZT-ZZZZZZT-BRAIN-IN-OVERLOAD-ZZZZZZZZZZZT

Um, I'm back from the OYAN workshop!

And it was SO. FRIGGEN. AWESOME.

Like, I can't even process the awesome.

There were costumes involved. (Yep, that's a violin peg around my neck there. More on that later.)
And Doctor Who. (I need to see more of this now, because two episodes is NOT ENOUGH.) And excessive Sharpie abuse. (Seriously, it was everywhere.)

And unusual/improbable death scenes. (... and just then, a tree branch fell on the villain and killed him dead! And there was much rejoicing, etc.)

And a christening of Coke. (Yes, Coke. She actually did pour it over his head. It was brilliant. And sticky. And by the way, look at the length of her hair!!)

Hokay, so obviously I took more pictures than this, but it would take about a million years to post them all. Other highlights included: Mrs. S being her lovely self every morning and giving away stuff; weapons and pointy things and Sonic Screwdrivers everywhere you looked; critiquing sessions with my fellow hobbit-childs (every critique group was named after a place in LotR... I was the group leader of The Shire); Greenleaf improv, epic as always, especially the Indian chiefs with their land dispute; sleepover with Liese one night and Sharpie the next two nights; massive games of Ninja which ran almost twenty minutes long on occasion; the bagpipe dude; stabbing/shooting/strangling the Brentalope repeatedly - he dies like a pro; seeing so many awesome people in costume (I wasn't the only one for a change!); quoting The Princess Bride and Monty Python and Men in Tights until blue in the face; Mr. S saying something to the effect of 'Okay, I need a few manly individuals to carry these chairs out to the foyer' and me marching right up there along with like four boys; Getting Ideas, muaahaha; scattering helter-skelter for the dorms about thirty seconds after curfew; dropping eyes and throwing up hands (thank you Bryan Davis); watching Snuffles's movie being filmed, hence poor Wooton with the tree branch hitting him on the head, random henchmen charging and screaming and waving murder weapons, epic fight scenes that included fireballs, KT stabbing people from behind, deadly ticklefights, etc.; and just generally being around other crazy writer types.

SO MUCH FUN!!!!!!!! I still haven't recovered fully.

Oh, about the violin peg: at the Piano Academy camp, the councilors put on a series of skits at the end and encourages campers to enter as well, to turn it into a funky awesome talent show. In one of the councilor skits, the head councilor, who plays the violin and also accompanied me in the chamber recital, broke a violin on the edge of the stage, and pieces of it went flying everywhere. We were all freaking out at first, because we thought it was his real violin, but it turns out it was a cheap, old machine-made one that he'd acquired solely for the purpose of breaking it. Anyway, one of the pegs shot out and hit me in the foot, so I picked it up and took it home and strung it on a piece of string to wear as a necklace. Except I made the string too short, so now I can't take it off without cutting it... so I guess I'll just leave it on for a while. Whatever.

In other news, we have a new scanner, and it's very nice, but I don't like it because the lid thingy doesn't detach, which means that anything I scan out of my sketchbook ends up with horrid shadows along one edge. Therefore, no new scannage until I figure out how to get around that little problem. I'm still drawing stuff, I swear.

Finished The Way of Kings! Everybody read it, it will blow your mind. One thousand pages of pure awesome, right there. I have some sketches of Wit that I wanna showya.

Commander Kip

"C'mon, use the Force!" "'Scuse me, I AM the Force."

Normal is overrated!

squeezing in a quickie

real fast before I leave - got most of the stuff packed, and this oughta be said before I forget.

Hokay, so we have to revise four pages from four different chapters of our novels for the OYAN workshop critique groups. My issue is this: I have almost one whole first (very rough) draft of my book, and when I go back and look at it, I see a lot of things I want to change. Like, fundamentally change, not just sentence structure and word choice. I'm trying not to think about most of that right now, but the one thing I felt like I absolutely had to do was make it so that Andra always knew who her real parents were. It works out so much better and is a lot less cliche; this way, she can be a bitter, angry adopted child the entire time, and have more of a reason to hate Mourn for what he did. I like this. However, that messes majorly with everything. So now, I've revised the first four pages of my novel, and implied that she already knows how she got her scar and why she has a black streak in her hair, rather than having her be all vague and clueless. I haven't done the rest of Chapter One because I'm behind and I need to just do each of the four sets of four pages, but I imagine that the rest of Chapter One will be quite different than it is now, as will be all of Chapter Two and most of Chapter Three. The next set of pages I'm gonna tackle is at the end of Chapter Three, so now I'm trying to fill in the blanks in my head and figure out what allegedly happened between the first four pages and these four pages, keeping in mind that Andra knows what's going on. It's hurting my brain a little. And then I'll have to do the same thing between this set of four and the next set of four and the next set of four. So at this point, most of the rewriting is going on hypothetically, and I'm working around it sorta. Does that make sense? Not really? Okay, nevermind.

In any case, I am behind, and I still haven't written Chapter 13. But that will have to wait until after.

Commander Kip
"You know why?" "Because you're Batma-" "BECAUSE I'M BATMAN!!"
Normal is overrated!

HORNS, and Batman

I has them. Although, they are a lot closer to done as of now than they were when I took this picture several weeks ago. But anyway, they're gonna be awesome. The actual point of this post is that I'm leaving tomorrow for Minnesota again, for the piano camp this time, and therefore no can has internets until next Monday. Woot. And then I have two days when I get back to finish preparations for the OYAN workshop (!!!!!freaking out) and then I'm off to that for the rest of June. Wow, June's almost gone already? How did that even happen?

I decided, rather suddenly, that it would be fun to dress up as Andra at the workshop. Problem being, I have two days to get a costume together, so it'll only be a rough approximation of the character. Need to see if I can borrow a dagger from Brenticus, perhaps. Also, horns, for a different costume, but you knew that. Can you tell I'm excited?!!!!!!!

Um, in other news, I got an awesome new Batman shirt. And also, Brenticus has cool friends who took pity on me and showed me this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seBpXt8_6xs

and it blew my mind into little tiny pieces. And also this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM-JQzUkWww

which made me love Robin even more. "Holy Catch-22, Batman!" And there was another one but now I can't find it... you know, the "with SCIENCE" one? They showed me that. And the whole reason I was over there was because my mom and Brenticus's mom wanted to start a teen book club thingy, and we voted and decided to read Mistborn as one of our summer books. HECK YEAH, SANDERSON FTW. Seriously.

Commander Kip
"What, are you like, gargling marbles or something? I can barely understand you-"
"Ablughubehbaahghaa!" *stomps off*
Normal is overrated!

Did they send me daughters...

... when I asked for sons?

Oh, Shang, if you had just glanced DOWN when you had her by the collar there, wow, that would have been one heck of a short Disney movie.

LOVE MULAN. SO MUCH.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egQy0wKVRtM&feature=player_detailpage#t=147s


I love it cuz the main charater is a friggen beast instead of a princess with an abnormally high voice (coughSNOWWHITEcough) and the love interest is also a beasty ninja with an actual personality instead of a cardboard cutout that just happens to be extremely handsome. Also, shirtless. That might have something to do with it. Maybe.

You know what else I love SO MUCH? Anastasia. Which is weird, because I positively hated it when I was like six years old.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl9oFczH6Sg


Probably because of that creepy undead priest guy with his bug armies and detachable body parts and general necrosis/creepifaction. Whatever, I'm good with undead priests now. Season of the Witch took care of that little phobia, yay-hoo! Plus, y'know, Dimitri. He's such a jerk. I love him to death. And he gets knocked unconscious at the end, which makes me go squee.


As you can probably tell, the week I was kicked out of school was spent watching Disney and Don Bluth movies on Netflix/Youtube. Made it through Pocahontas, Mulan, Anastasia, The Adventures of Robin Hood (with the foxes, you know?) and the beginning of Rock-a-Doodle before they let me back in school. And I feel like I need to see Titans A.E. now, but there's very little chance of my parents ordering it from Netflix, so that might not happen anytime soon.


All those drawings were heavily referenced from screenshots, by the way. YAAY, HOTKEYS. YAY.


Guess what? I discovered that I have another arkload to worry about: my new English teacher for next year is giving us so much summer homework, I'm not even going to GET a summer this year. Yeah, you bet I'm excited. Howevah, next year's summer is looking pretty free, which at least makes me feel better.


Hey, guess what else? (You'd better sit down for this one, or risk serious cranial injury when you keel over in shock...)




I FINISHED CHAPTER FREAKING TWELVE.


TAKE THAT, FABLE.




SO THERE.




Got a few grammatical tweaks to make, then it's off to Mr. S and whoever else wants to read it, and then I gotta dig into the last chapter and get that outta the way so I can actually revise some things before the workshop. Speaking of the workshop: SO EXCITED GAAAH YOU DON'T EVEN. Working on costumbery for that, and weapons, and whatnot.


Commander Kip

I'll get that arrow. And I'll do it with my shirt ON.

Normal is overrated!

largely unscathed

and wading through a giant stack of pictures to show you guys from Lady Arin's house. Looky: She has a creek, and I am jealous. Oh look, and dark and blurry picture of me dabbling about in said creek. In my period clothing. Lol, Milady gets it.

This after I lent her my scarf, and I found a nice log to stand on:

Oh, the sidekick switched skirts with Her Ladyship while standing in the water so that we could take this picture. It was so boss, you don't even know. And look, the sidekick's shiny new camera adds these horrid red numbers to everything. Gaah.

Oh, we finally sawed that heinous stock-thing off my flintlock sidearm! And sanded down the jagged edges with the belt sander and everything, and we still have all our fingers. And look there, a feather in my ear. Whoa, whose camera was this, anyway?

And there I am, being deceased. The sidekick had a friend over that night as well, so we all went out and took extremely violent pictures in the middle of the night. It was fabulous.

Wait a minute, what's that there? (Besides more period clothing on teh Kippeh.)

Why, I do believe it's a path. Milady's most excellent father apparently mowed a path through the forest for no discernable reason. When I discovered this, I took off running down it immediately, not bothering with shoes or any of that nonsense. Milady made me run down it about twenty times again, trying to get a good picture. All of them are blurry.

This is the dreaded Witch's Villa. Just look at that bright red trim. Clearly unnatural and sinister. Psh, NOT. I love that freaking cabin.

The maiden, like all clever maidens eventually do at some point in their lives, decides to spy upon the witch, in order to discern if there is any method by which the she-monster might be slain.

Wooden stake through the gut. Yep, that generally does the trick. Now for this blasted door...

Whoops, the maiden got a little distracted. Yay for multiple layers of skirts.

Um, yes. Winning much.

Oh yes, I remember, there was smiting to be done! Back to that now.

I love the fact that there's a doorway in the middle of the forest there for no particular reason whatsoever. Totally makes my day.

The sidekick invented these little guys. They're called squidges, and they are the best thing ever. You can throw them back and forth, and squeeze them and cuddle them and splatter them all over the ground. Multipurpose squidges.

Also, delightful cupcakes were had.

So there is my epic four-day weekend with Her Ladyship. As a side note, we watched The Princess Bride because neither Milady nor the sidekick had seen it previously, and the sidekick's associate and I were mortified. But they've seen it now, so it's okay. YAY TEAM WESTLEY because it's the pirate/ninja alliance in disguise! LOLWIN. We also watched Proof, which has Jake Gyllenhaal in it and is quite brilliant, although sort of depressing. Couple of great lines though. And by the way, I gave the Lady her REAL birthday present, not just the little temporary one, and I think she liked it, so yay. It was fun to make, in any case.

Which reminds me - Arin had a fabulous idea while I was there. She suggested we draw a completely random picture of whatever, and then write whatever comes to mind about it, curving the words around the actual drawing. We ended up with a biker fairy who's muttering grouchily about this girl who won't have him. It's pretty hilarious. Anyway, I was inspired to try something similar with this boring sketch of my new character Thomas, who sprouted right out of a video we watched in history class about the Vietnam War last month.

Oh, you know what sucks? My parents' scanner, that's freaking what. But in any case, the text reads thusly (don't be too frightened):

"Go back!" I screamed, waving an arm, but the thunder of mortars drowned me out. Thomas kept on coming, and I watched the others fall: first Wizard, then Beans and Trigger, then the world went swirling off to black.

(there ought to have been a paragraph break there, but no room)

When I woke up later, everybody was screaming at everybody else.

"I can't believe you, Private! We lost three great guys because of that stunt you pulled back there. Dangit, Thomas, what were you thinking, just running out onto the no man's land like that?" Sarge was beet red in the face, going on fuschia. "Never do anything like that again, you hear? Never again!"

"What was I supposed to do?" Thomas shouted back. "Leave Russel out there to bleed to death? I mean, hello! He's part of the team too, isn't he?"

"If by 'part of the team' you mean 'degenerate freak', then sure," snapped Bunny, crossing his arms.

Saigon elbowed him in the ribs. "Hey, man, Rachel saved your sorry butt at least a dozen times on that last patrol."

You probably think I'm going to explain what's going on here. Well. Too bad. I'm not. All I will say is that I had fun thinking of nicknames for the other army guys. And by the way, Rachel and Russel are the same guy, in case that was way too confusing. And there was very little good writing going on here, because word choice had a lot to do with what I could fit on the page. So yeah, never mind. Thomas is supposed to have dark hair, by the way, but I didn't want to chew through an entire stick of mechanical pencil lead just to color his hair in, so no.

You know what made me laugh? I showed this picture to one of my brother's friends (an eleven-year-old) and the first thing he said was, "So, is that a guy, or..." Haaaa, yes, dear. It is. Despite the eyelashes, I promise you, Thomas is very much a boy. And may I remind you all that my own darling brother wore just as many dresses as shorts up until about the age of six, and the rest of the time he went naked. So there.

Mmkay, madre gave me the day off in return for babysitting the bro and his cohorts all afternoon, so I'm gonna go sit down and write the rest of that freaking Showdown. I know exactly what needs to happen; now I just gotta make myself gak up some words.

Long enough post for you?

Commander Kip

*scary raspy voice* THE PIT OF DE - ack, choke - *regular voice* The Pit of Despair.

Normal is overrated!