Day 6: Favorite Book Character

I said over a week before starting these drawings that I would definitely be cheating on Day 6. The challenge says that the book character cannot be a movie. In all honesty, pretty much every book I've read has a movie to go along with it; every book with a worthy character, I guess. It was never a question of who, but of how I would draw for this day. I chose to do the most obvious thing I could think of-Spectraspecs popped right out of a Quibbler. Until writing this post, I really thought that it was the most telling feature of that dirty blonde; now I realize some radish earrings and a butterbeer cork necklace would have been even better. But then I would have had to draw eyes, and that is never a good choice for me.

I love how different Luna is. She truly doesn't care what anyone thinks about her, and living in a college town and going to school where it seems everyone is in a Greek letter organization, I am astonished at this ability. I have to try very hard on a daily basis to make sure I'm doing the 'right' thing, not only in the eyes of others, but also for my own future and standards I set for myself. Truly not caring about the judgments of others is such an admirable trait-I think most people forget that, and shrug Loony Luna Lovegood off as simply being strange, and unworthy of interaction.

 Taylor Swift as Luna

Even though Luna doesn't come into the picture until book 5 (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix), she goes through a lot of character growth during the final installments of the series and plays a vital role in the defeat of Lord Voldemort. She may be a little strange and intimidating at first with her boldness in wardrobe as well as in what she says, but if you give her the chance, Luna is one of the best characters you could ever associate yourself with. Not to mention the awesome Evanna Lynch who portrays Luna in the movies. If I were at Hogwarts (20 years ago when the HP timeline says she was actually there) I hope that I would have been drawn to Luna and befriended her pre-Dumbledore's army so I could say "I was her friend first" like people do with bands who make it big. Haha.
Anyway, here it is:

I pretty much did everything I could to avoid drawing facial features. I think it worked out okay, but I wish there was a way I could have done my own take on the Spectraspecs (rather than copying the version from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince pictured above) without it getting to be rather mod-looking. What are you gonna do?

How many of you have a favorite character from Harry Potter? Who is it (even non-HP ones :])?

I'm hoping to have some Homecoming pictures up here sometime this week! Have a happy Halloween! I'll be studying, baking tie-dye cupcakes, and practicing some ASL for my demo tomorrow!
L

Day 5: Your Best Friend

I told Molly on Day 1 that she would be featured today. I am thrilled to share this with her! :]

Molly and I met in 3rd grade (right?). Maybe 5th. It was an odd-numbered grade in elementary school. We were fast friends in Sunday School and have been best friends ever since. We went through confirmation together, joined youth choir, sang in the praise band, and went on all sorts of summer trips with the church. We've had our hard times, but there has never been a day where I felt that she wouldn't be by my side helping me if I needed her. And I hope she knows that I will never hesitate to catch her if she falls.

For the 3rd time, I cannot draw living things. At all. So I'm sure after reading the first blog in which I let y'all know that fact, that Molly wondered how she would be depicted. In 7th grade Molly and I had Spanish together, and a guy in there thought it was hilarious that my best friend is named Molly Brown, like the lady from the Titanic. He incessantly called her "Titanic Lady" for the entire year. It was really annoying, but gave me inspiration for my Day 5 drawing. I know the "real" Molly Brown was called the Unsinkable after surviving the 1912 run-in with the iceberg, and I like to think that my Molly Brown is just as unsinkable. She doesn't let anything get her down, and crashing into a big problem (a metaphorical iceberg) is not going to stop her from getting where and what she wants in life. She definitely helps keep me grounded, and I have no idea how terrible high school (and junior high. And college. Life in general) would have been without her.

I hope you like it Best Friend. I'm sorry I still haven't sent that one letter to you. I'll get it to ya ASAP! I miss you so much! Enjoy cheering the Rangers on to being World Series Champions without me. I'll for sure be thinking of you. And I may look like this, pretending you're next to me. ;]

Who's your best friend? Has it changed a lot, or been pretty steady, like mine? As long as you know that someone will always be there for you, I think you're all set, no matter who that person is :]

Don't forget about the new Flickr group!
See you next week! I'm going to enjoy the Homecoming festivities with my family and boyfriend :]
L

P.S. YOU Craft

Just wanted to let you know, I made a Flickr group! Follow this link to add your own pictures you've been drawing for the 30 Day Challenge!

Day 4: Favorite Place

Hello, hello, hello!
I just watched a video about pomping starring President Burns Hargis and First Cowgirl Ann, so I'm super pumped for All Night Pomp tonight (even though I'm not exactly participating) and Walkaround tomorrow! The video can be seen here.
In other campus news, JFA (Justice For All), a pro-life group, has been on campus the past two days with their 15 foot tall structure that has pictures of aborted fetuses on it. I'm not going to say whether I'm pro-life or pro-choice on here, but either way, I feel this group has an unnecessarily in-your-face way to present their stance. I know for a fact that students here have had abortions and showing them blown up pictures of fetal tissue is not only rude, but it's demeaning to them because it was probably a hard decision to make. If a woman is pregnant with an unwanted child, none of the options she has are very good, and you just never know with the circumstances surrounding the pregnancy and the lives of all involved; so pro-life or not, it is not this group's place to judge or make these young women feel like murderers (which is what they tend to do). I do not enjoy having this group on campus, but it is always enjoyable to see the Planned Parenthood free condom booth nearby.

Let's move on to something more happy! I am so blessed to have such an amazing family and to still live in the house that I grew up in since I was four years old. I love that place so much! Houses are pretty intricate structures, though, and I knew I would not be able to draw it from memory-plus I would have definitely left out the landscaping and all you would have gotten to see is the white brick and blue trim. I had my awesome boyfriend text me a picture of the outside of the house and used that as a reference. I'm not really sure of the best way to put that picture up, so we'll do without.

I started out thinking that I would go ahead and attempt to draw the stuff outside the frame of his phone's camera, but concluded not to do so, hence the black around the outside of the drawing. Some of the proportions are a little off, and I'm not sure how well I did on some of the things that needed depth, but overall I'm proud of this drawing and it's my favorite up to this point :]
I also thought about doing my bedroom at home, just my bed, or somewhere else on the inside of my house, but chose this. When I think of home, the outside is the first thing to come to mind, followed closely by the living room, and my dog greeting me at the door.

Where is your favorite place? Have you found a different place to call home if you've moved out of your childhood house?

Be sure to wish warm weather this way for all the people who will pomping in the rain tonight, walking around tomorrow evening, and watching some Cowboy football against the Baylor Bears on Saturday!
L

Day 3: Favorite Food

Like I said yesterday, favorite food was a tough one. There is actually a page in my other Moleskine that has a list of the foods I could have chosen. I felt like my favorite food should be something that I could eat on a regular basis and not get tired of. The only food I know like that is pizza; and even pizza with its multitude of topping combinations may not be able to be eaten on a daily basis. So I stuck with my original choice. Some yummy corn!

It's still making me really sad that the scanner was so bright and you can't really see the work I did :[ Again, just tilt your screen back a bit and you should be able to see the colors how they actually look in my notebook. I've already copied days 1-7 with that scanner, but if anyone has an idea for how to fix it next week, just give me a shout!
Sorry that this is a shorter-than-normal post and nearly late. It's Homecoming week at OSU, and if you've ever looked up information about this awesome school, you'd find that not only do we pride ourselves on having the largest Student Union in the world, we also celebrate the biggest homecoming in the nation! Pomping (4x4 squares of differently colored tissue paper rolled on a pencil and stuck into small chicken wire) is going on at all hours of the night. I chose to wear orange every day. All sorts of busy-ness (how do you spell that so it doesn't become business?).

from live, laugh, love, play

I kid you not, that entire thing is made out of tissue paper and chicken wire fastened to large metal structures. There's one in front of every single fraternity house, plus everyone who participates in sweepstakes designs a float for the parade on Saturday which is usually also pomped (pomp is also a noun referring to the actual squares of tissue paper). It's a huge deal here, and Stillwater, OK will double in population for the weekend because of this.

If it's Homecoming week for you, have a happy week and good luck at your game! I promise I'll get these posts up sooner when I'm not so excited by all the festivities :] In the meantime, enjoy looking at all the house decs (as we call them) on Kelly Rae's website I linked to up there.

Looking forward to sharing my favorite place with you tomorrow!

L

Day 2: Favorite Animal

I never am really sure about my favorite anything. Favorite color? Most days I answer purple, but I really like green and blue also. And orange since it's a school color. Favorite food, like tomorrow? Chicken? Pizza? Brownies? Too many options. Likewise, I had a couple choices for which animal I should draw.

 giraffe lion

I've always been a big fan of giraffes. I think it's because when I was little I was a bit taller than most of the other girls in my grade, so I felt some sort of connection to this tallest of animals. On the other hand, lion starts with L like my name does, and that's always been something I liked. Not to mention the awesome Velcro shoes I had when I was in Kindergarten that had some Lion King images on the side. In the end I decided on the one that I felt possibly embodied me more:

Like I said yesterday, living things are not my strong suit when it comes to drawing. If you couldn't tell, that image up there ^ was my reference for my drawing. I got the proportions a little off, but other than that I think it's okay. Certainly not lifelike or anything, but we all can tell it's a giraffe (right?) and I had fun with it.

I wish the scanner that I used didn't have such a bright light. For me to see this drawing with the colors that it actually looks like in person, I have to tilt my screen back a little bit. So if you're having trouble seeing it with good contrast, you should tilt the screen back some.

I mentioned earlier some foods that could be on my favorite food list. The one I picked is actually not up there. It's yellow, and (usually) sweet. And I like how I drew it :]

You should leave your guess for my favorite food and your own favorite animal in the comments!

Have a splendid Tuesday night and Wednesday!

L

Day 1: Yourself

I am so excited to start showing my drawings to you guys! If you look over on the right column of my blog with the about me and all, the first thing you'll read is that I am not an artist. I do not claim to be nor do I aspire to be. So, no laughing? Pretty please? I mean, you can laugh when I say something funny, because I hope that I could be called witty, at least on occasion, but don't laugh because of how inartistic these drawings may be. For the most part, they're a little cartoon-y, but it gets the point across.
So let's get started!

I was home from school last weekend for my fall break and I got to spend Friday afternoon with my beau at the Arboretum. He's made a hobby of taking pretty pictures with his fancy camera, and occasionally takes a little longer to get his 'perfect shot.' So while I was waiting, I took this picture.

I had been trying to come up with how I would draw myself for Day 1 of the 30 Day Drawing Challenge. I know I cannot draw people. Or living things for that matter. I had been thinking of doing a silhouette for a couple days to go off of and I hoped this was the perfect opportunity. It was pretty sunny outside, though, so I couldn't see my screen on the camera very well to know how the picture turned out. . . Who knew I was an elf with the pointiest nose ever? Or a witch since I apparently have a wart on my nose? Not how I wanted my first drawing to look. So I came back to school and thought about it some more and settled on taking a picture of my profile with my webcam on my laptop. I figured having someone else (or something else) hold the camera so I wouldn't have to worry about not having the camera in the picture was my best bet, no matter how awful the quality of the photo. I just needed an example to draw from, not something to hang in a museum.

I used these two pictures and came up with:

I like it! The bow on the L in my name is perfect since I know a couple people that have never seen me without a hair accessory and I like the warm color scheme I picked. I like cool colors too (they are my favorite colors, actually), but I went with the orange bow since I'm so school spirited and colored the rest from there. If this is the only way I can ever draw people, that's a-okay with me :]
If you were worried about my scanner issue, it's not solved yet. I scanned this at the library on campus. It'll work for now I suppose.

Borrowed from Renovate + Decorate

Stay tuned for tomorrow-favorite animal. 3 guesses what I drew! First one to get it right should reward themselves with a cookie even though this pin says not to.

Have a happy Monday!
L

Intimidated

So, I hadn't really looked too hard at the list of all the things I'd be drawing this month...until now. I think I may be in for a rough time-how do you draw inspiration for Day 16? My favorite character without a doubt comes from Harry Potter, but the challenge says it can't be a movie. That's going to be a broken rule for sure. On another note, Day 20 is going to be awesome!

I've been having trouble with my scanner, which I'm planning on using for showing y'all my drawings-did spellcheck just say I spelled "y'all" wrong? Seriously?-but here's a snippet of  Day 1 :]

Wonder what it could be to make it a drawing of myself... We'll see!

Beginnings

I am so excited! It is T-minus-6 days until I start posting for my 30 day drawing challenge.

Starting today, I am going to draw something specific every day for 30 days. And starting next Monday I will be posting the fruit of my labors right here 5 days a week for the next six weeks. At first, when I saw the above picture on Pinterest, I thought I'd do it just for fun. Then I got to thinking-I had been wanting to start a blog for a while, but didn't know what I would put on there-this would be the perfect thing to jump-start my blog! So I started drawing today. I was really happy that I finally sat down and drew, because it's been about three weeks since I originally saw the 30 Day Challenge pin. I really wanted to post right away after drawing, but I know how OCD-esque I am and knew I needed to start the actual posts on a Monday-so we wait.

Until next time,
L