AEDM and NaNoWriMo Day 8 and Tic Tocc

Hello my friends. It's AEDM and NaNoWriMo day 8 and Tic Tocc #23

Just so you all know if I don't post it's because I'm so engrossed in whatever it is I'm working on.

Now I usually don't post pics. of my kids, but I just thought this one was kinda funny. Little dude here was trying to get to that bag of Halloween candy (see, he even got a little chair to use), but he kinda got stuck. He was scared to reach for the bag cuz he was afraid he'd fall if he let go to reach for it and he didn't realize the chair was so close, so he started screaming for help. I then quickly ran for my camera. I told him, "Don't move, so I can take your picture." and he was like, "But I'm going to fall." Don't worry, I helped him down, he wasn't even that far from the ground.

Now Kat's Tic Tocc was about focusing on what you really want to do and accomplish and doing it! Me: I'm going to finish the young adult novel I'm currently working on. These characters have been with me for years (like 8), so they want out. Then I'm actually going to pimp it out and try to get it published. Even though I have this fear that nobody will want to publish it cuz it seems all books for teens these days are some sort of paranormal/fantasy/romance type of deals and mine is not, but I don't care I'm going to send it out to agents/publishers anyways. I plan to finish my Crowley story, but I've hit a snag, I'm trying to work out why exactly some things happen, so they're still with me, but when my young adult novel is done I have an idea of this cutesy, quirky novella type of deal (I've already written a chunk), and the writing below that I did this morning is from that.

I walked outside and the sun shone on me like a spotlight. The trees and grass seemed greener and more vibrant than ever. The birds were chirping and tweeting. I paused to listen to their song and I swear it was an actual song they tweeting and I swear it was the song that was stuck in my head earlier. I adjusted my backpack and started down the sidewalk for school and as I passed the trees that lined the sidewalk the birds continued their song, where the birds in one tree stopped the birds in the next tree continued the song. This went on my whole walk down the sidewalk. When I got to the corner a slight breeze blew, a breeze that was perfect in temperature,not to hot nor cold, just enough to ruffle a few leaves and make me feel revived and ready for the day. It was that exact moment that I felt an urge to dance again. I tried to resist it, I planted my feet firmly into the ground, but the birds’ chirping became livelier and the sky seemed to brighten to a brighter blue and the sun lit up the sidewalk and then there was that gosh darn breeze again and I couldn’t, I just couldn’t resist anymore and so I threw out a little shuffle, then some toe to heel action and before I knew it I was tap dancing down the sidewalk.

AEDM 2011, NaNoWriMo, Sunday Sketches, an Illustration and a Video Made with Jellybeans!

Hello my friends! Happy AEDM, NaNoWriMo, Sunday Sketches and whatever else might be going on today. I wanted to start my post today with a video. I'm putting it here, so you will be more tempted to watch it. It is an adorable stop motion music video made with jellybeans. Kina Grannis (the musician signing) was even filmed stop motion style, no green screen. She laid on glass over the jellybeans and they filmed her and the jellybeans frame by frame. There's also a making of video (really cool) watch it HERE!

Careful, you might go into sugar shock from the sweetness of this song/video.

This is an illustration I did a while a go for the back to school
issue for Stories for Children Magazine.

So, it is day day six of AEDM amd NaNoWriMo. I didn't post for day five I cuz I was really into my writing.

 It is also Sunday Sketches! 

Here is the first ever hand inked and colored Pete and Doris. I usually sketch them out first by hand, but I always ink and color in Illustrator. I think since I was writing about an art store the other day I wanted to use good old regular art supplies.

Doris saw the little pink birds in the video and she said, "I'm a cute little pink bird too, I shall try to lift someone up and fly away with them." Well, that someone she chose was Pete. As you know, he's a unicorn, they're not very light in weight, so Doris wasn't very successful. 

Day Three and Four of AEDM and NaNoWriMo

Happy AEDM and NaNoWriMo day four (this is also counting for day three). Just a picture I took after my darling little one knocked my bucket o' goods off my desk while he was playing and I was writing. I have a sketchy doodle I did also, but it  needs to be scanned cuz it won't photograph well and right now I'm feeling too lazy to scan, so here's a picture instead (it's not even a good picture), and below the picture is just a tiny tad of what I've been writing.

Jump to hours later and we are all at the corner of Belmont and Clark and Nicki is dancing in the middle of the Bunkin Donuts parking lot. A couple people from the donut establishment stared out the large glass windows at her as they consumed unhealthy levels of sugary goodness. Curious passer-bys’ glanced her way, but nobody really thought that much of it cuz there’s a lot of crazies in the city, so seeing a girl doing the running man in a parking lot really wasn’t that odd. She wasn’t carrying around a life sized crucifix like this one guy I always saw, and she wasn’t standing on a plastic crate screaming about the end of the world, she was just a girl doing an outdated dance move.
“We need some music,” she shouted at us; us being Kate, Roberto, Brian, Reynaldo, Dean, me, and Anna. We all leaned against the wrought iron fence that ran around the parking lot.
An idea popped into my head. I ran to the corner, waited for the light to change and ran down to Elias’ work. I bounded in the door, whipped around the front counter to find Elias in the same exact position as when I first visited him at the store. He was even wearing the same hoodie.

Day Two of AEDM and NaNoWriMo

Woot, woot, day two of AEDM and NaNoWriMo. Just got a quick little sketchy doodle for my drawing today, just drew on the back of some random paper sitting on my desk.

Here's a tiny tad of some of my writing. I picked this section cuz it's about going into an art store, so I'm sure many of you can relate.

It was colder downtown and the wind was at full blast. I held onto the strings that ended the ears flaps on my hat and pulled my hat down and close to my head and walked against the wind and business folks and college students, so I could get to the art store.

I found the store which was the first floor of some like eight-hundred year old high rise and entered with the door making a jingling sound as I walked in. It was warm and fuzzy in there. I was greeted nicely by the shelves of art supplies and then by some dude behind the counter who was hidden under a mass of wild hair who mumbled, “Hey.” Let me tell you, art supplies is one of my most favorite things in the world. I started wandering through the aisles admiring the tubes of acrylics, oils and water colors and checked out all the colored pencils and the graphite pencils and sniffed some erasers; a pink one, a kneaded one and a gum one. Yes, I like the way erasers smell.

I continued on and browsed through the markers where I actually picked up one to buy, it was one of those jumbo huge ones. No, I wasn’t going tagging, it was for what I was planning on working on that evening. I then looked at pens and ink and picked up a couple of the ink pens I use for my comic. Next I went to the paper aisle and perused through the sketchbooks and pads of paper. I found a huge newsprint one, but wanted larger. I wandered down the aisle to the back of the store where they sold things on rolls and I found the most perfect roll of newsprint to buy. 

AEDM 2011 and NaNoWriMo: Day One

Hello my friends and any folks who wander on over! I am taking on two challenges for the month of November. Art Every Day Month over at Leah's Creative Every Day blog and National Novel Writing Month challenge. I did the AEDM last year and made some wonderful blog friends and I wasn't going to do it again cuz I have a project I'm really focusing on, but then I rememebered all the lovely folks I met last year, so it's on. I'm also attempting NaNoWriMo. If per chance you say huh, what it is NaNoWriMo, it's National Novel writing Month and you are supposed to write 50,000 words in the span of 30 days, yeah, kinda crazy. Last year I think I made it a day cuz I didn't plan, but this year I have something very specific I'm working on. I'll try to post every day here, but we'll see cuz there' s a birthday thrown in there,some  traveling, Nov. is busy. So I will either have some sorta illustrations, drawing, or writing, or a combo. Here's a little hello I drew today.

Here's a snippet of part of my writing I've done so far for the day:

We packed up our gear and went to hit a few more spots before retiring for the evening. On the El back we sat side by side. Elias kept glancing over at me as the train rattled along. His cheeks were flushed pink from the cold night air. The only other people on the El besides us were a couple on their way to catch a flight. From the looks of it, they were staying a long time wherever they were going cuz they had a lot leather designer luggage piled around them crowding up the aisle and surrounding seats. The train smelled like a combination of sweaty feet and pickles, it was pretty gross. I studied all the rectangular advertisements that were lined up at the top of the train car. One was for a photo studio that claimed it had serviced the region for over 100 years. There was one for some sorta nutrition place and then one for some online school with a sticker slapped over it. The sticker was one of those hello my name is ones and had somebody’s tag on it in black marker. Elias kept bouncing his knee, so I put my hand on top of it so he’d stop cuz it was driving me crazy. I left my hand there prolly longer than one needed to, to stop someone’s knee from bouncing and Elias once again glanced at me, then at his knee. He took a deep breath and put his hand on top of mine. I interlaced our fingers and we sat hand and hand until we got to our stop.

This is my NaNaWriMo page HERE.