Happy Halloween!

Ok, first news: The first chapters of MWT's next book has been recieved by the publishers. http://community.livejournal.com/sounis/199654.html?nc=29
It does not say, however, whether or not this will be an Attolia-realted book or not. It will be absolutely marvelous whether it is or isn't, but I'd really like to know what happened to Sophos and... well, yeah. Lets just hope its an Attolia book.

That said, today was, as you know, Halloween. I woke up, went to physical science, did a bit of homework, ate lunch, and then got out the costume I'd be wearing to the bookstore. And I was absolutely brilliant and only left myself about an hour to get it all ready and get there, including pinning it because it's Annilyn's and therefore like seven inches too long for me. So I was rushing out the door so I didn't get a picture. I wore it all during work and it was wonderful and when I got home all my roommates were getting their costumes ready, so I took it off so Annilyn could wear it so I... didn't get a picture of it. Well, not another picture. Its the red Renaissance dress I'm wearing in all those paintings, so its not as if you don't know what I look like in it.

I hadn't really decided what I'd wear to the ward party. I thought I might be Chicken Cordon Bleu... er, Chicken Chord On Blue, that is. But Jocelyn reminded me of my awesome colorful skirt, which I really wanted to wear. So I put it on, and was trying to think of some kind of costume it would work for.

I wore the colorful skirt, with green leggins, green capris, long sky blue flowered socks with a short fluffy blue sock and a long fluffy purple sock over. A striped green and pink shirt, a bright orange sweat shirt, four multi-colored bracelets on each wrist, three colorful necklaces, a green and blue scarf, a pink and blue and brown and green winter hat, and a blue coat over all (the coat only for outside, though). Then I painted my face, with Annilyn's help.

I was a rainbow.

I tried to take my own picture of myself. It didn't work so well.




Me as a rainbow, with our rainbow wall:



All of us (except Annie, who we love even though she left us):


Mom, go get Lynzee and everybody because, yes, she is dressed up as Zuko as the Blue Spirit. Have I mentioned that Zuko is made of awesome? Because he is. (They call the show Avatar to make you THINK its about Aang, but what it REALLY is about is Zuko and how awesome he is.)

Random Art Project! (Image-heavy post... even more than usual)

So today I got home from work (I accidentally said 'homework' at first... oops) and had no huge homework things in great need of doing right then. I was going to read Dragonhaven (which I think might be replacing The Blue Sword as my favorite McKinley, just by the way) but somehow I wasn't in a reading mood, I was in more of an art mood. And I really wanted to use my left over tissue paper, in something NOT meticulous and time consuming in the way that tissue paper stained glass windows are. (Tissue Paper stained glass windows are exactly the sort of detail-oriented labor-intensive media that Annilyn would name as one of her favorites.) I wasn't sure exactly what to do... so I sort of made it up as I went. And here it is.

Paintings

I finished one painting and promptly started another! Can't have too few paintings in progress, now can we? Especially since you can't always count on their cooperation and they end up becoming nice under-colors for a better future painting.

The finished painting:

and a bit closer, because I can:


Did I show this painting earlier? I dont know if I did, because I didn't like it. I still don't, for that matter. Well, here it is in any case:
first:

second:

third:


I keep changing alot because I don't like it. I'll find something that works eventually... I hope.

Didn't do a whole lot to this one:


And I changed the background color to green on this one. I think its going to stay green, but I'm going to glaze it witha blue-grey to push it back and make it look like a sort of patchwork landscape, like the angel is flying over it.


And this is the one I just started. This is a very rough underpainting, mind.


Closer:


And can I just say that canvas is Made Of Awesome? These last several paintings have all been on board, and I'd forgotten how wonderful canvas is.

Oh, and this is the reference photo for the last one. Yeah, the proportions in my painting are a little off. And this is me, not caring.

Random Update

Annilyn and I finished watching Avatar. Pretty sure Zuko is made of awesome. Not sure what I thought about the romance at the end, and the "And now Zuko will go find his mother! But you don't find out any more about that because there is only three minutes left of the whole show! Haha!" thing.

Nobody who reads this blog has any idea what I'm talking about, but I'm still going to ramble on about it for a bit.

Just a few of the bestest quotes from the show:

(Annilyn and I decided that this one is pretty much the epitome of Avatar awesomeness/humor)
"My first girlfriend turned into the Moon."
"Thats rough, man."


Personally, I'm rather fond of,
"No, fire lord Ozai. YOU don't have pants."

from the same episode: "You, my friend, are just a few plums short of a fruit pie."

"Thats Right, I'm Sokka
Its pronounced with an Okka
Young ladies... I'll rock ya!"

"How am I going to find the Avatar? He's clearly a master of evasive maneuvering."
...
"You have no idea where you're going, do you?"



And finally, the one that started it all:
"What would Uncle say? Zuko... you must look within yourself, to save yourself... from your other self. Only then will your true self, reveal itself. Aagh, this is ridiculous. Even when I'm talking for him I don't know what he means! What about Azula? Listen, Avatar. Either you let me join your group, or I'll do something unspeakably horrible to you and your friends!"

EDIT: some more, because there are so many good ones.

"And heres one I made out of noodles!"

"The scar is NOT on the wrong side!"

"Hotman. Hotman. Hotman. Stay Flamin'!"

"You're just a child!"
"Well, you're just a teenager."

"What is that?"
"This is App, my flying Bison."
"Yeah, and this is Katara, my flying sister."

Anyway. I tried reading a few ARCs I picked up from work, but none of them really grabbed me, so last night I started re-reading Dragonhaven and... well, pretty sure I forgot how much I love that book. Seriously, it is made of awesome. I kept catching myself mouthing the words, because it lends itself so well to actual speech. Anyway.

I haven't worked on the paintings this week because this week was/is midterms. Speaking of which, I really should have been studying this whole time. Oops.

Guess what.

I have a computer.

Not new. Not fancy. Not fast. But mine to have and use nonetheless.

Somebody messed with the settings so everything is all in German (All these sites ask for my 'Passwort'.) But I'll figure out how to put it in English... somehow.

Now... Pictures!

I went home this weekend and did... stuff. I showed my younger siblings Avatar... Oops.



And I made a crepe cake. Don't know what a crepe cake is? Does 'leaning tower of crepes' mean anything to you?



...yeah, pretty sure I didn't thicken the cream stuff enough, so it was all slide-y. Tasted good though.



Took alot of pictures in the backyard for my photo class. Dunno if any of them will work for the assignment (hopefully they will...) but there are some pretty ones.



Played a bit with depth of field on this one.

Forgetfulness

I just realized at work today that I completely forgot to go to my photo class TWICE this week. I was able to forget so easily because my work schedule is supposed to be 1-4:30 M-F, but they've been letting me go to this photo class from 1-3 Tuesdays and Thursdays. Since the class and work start at the same time, my daily schedule was not much altered by accidentally just going to work instead, which is why I was able to do it twice before realizing what had happened.

What makes this even worse is that its a block class lasting only half of the semester. The last day of the class will be... next Tuesday.

I e-mailed my teacher as soon as I could to explain what happened and I asked to meet with him before turning in the final project. Hopefully he'll get back to me so I can meet with him tomorrow so I can do well on my project, which will have to be done this weekend.

The one good thing about this is, I made about thirty dollars more this week than I would have if I'd gone to class. Even so, I really should have been in class.


That said... Paintings:






Compare to:



This last one is probably my least favorite, but I had a realization the other day that I think will make it much better. We'll see.

Paintings, again

Started a new painting, even though I haven't really finished the others... but they're getting there! I wonder how may paintings it will take for me to get tired of this theme already...

Paintings Progress

Worked more on the paintings last night. I like them alot more now. Maybe you can guess why :)









This what happens to my arm nearly EVERY TIME I PAINT. I blame Mrs. McClure for telling us to arrange our palettes with Thalo Green on the near left corner. Supposedly this way it is easier to keep track of the stain colors. Well, I'm pretty sure that I can remember by now that Thalo Green is indeed a stain color, whether or not I keep it in the corner. I've certainly had to scrub it off my arm enough to scrub it into my brain as well. I think I might try to move it up between the blues and yellows... later.