First line meme

Because of this list about first lines and the emphasis put in class about opening lines making or breaking a book, I got curious (again), but thought to make a game out of it. So, I'm just going to list a bunch of first lines from books (for everyone's sake, I'm limiting myself to children's aka middlegrade/YA books) and everyone can make a guess of what's what. Granted, some of these are 'classic children's books', so bear with me with the 'but that's not a kid's book!' thing. Also, I seem to be at a loss of a bunch of first books in series, so bear with me there too..

1. When the doorbell rings at three in the morning, it's never good news.
2. Night hung black and heavy about the old barn.
3. The last thing I wanted to do on my summer break was blow up another school.
4. It was a dark and stormy night.
5. Wind howled through the night, carrying a scent that would change the world.
6. Unearthly humps of land curved into the darkening sky like the backs of browsing pigs, like the rumps of elephants.
7. George never spent any time wondering why he wanted to belong.
8. High up on the long hill they called the Saddle Back, behind the ranch and the country road, the boy sat his horse, facing east, his eyes dazzled by the rising sun.
9. The stretch of road that leads out of the city, past Hazy Harbor and into the town of Tedia, is perhaps the most unpleasant in the world.
10. The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone.
11. Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy.
12. Once there was a dark, stormy night in spring, when, deep down in their holes, the wombats knew not to come out, when the possums stayed quiet in their hollow limbs, when the great black flying phallangers that live in the mountain forests never stirred.
13. It was little more than three miles from the Wall into the Old Kingdom, but that was enough.
14. A wild, ringing neigh shrilled up from the hold of the Spanish galleon.
15. Twilight was gathering, and Orpheus still wasn't here.
16. Not for the first time, an argument had broken out over breakfast at number four, Privet Drive.
17. "Too many!" James shouted, and slammed the door behind him.
18. If someone had asked Jared Grace what jobs his brother and sister would have when they grew up, he would have had no trouble replying.
19. From his perch behind the clock, Hugo could see everything.
20. It is the first day of November and so, today, someone will die.

Illustration Friday - Stripes

It's a rather silly drawing for illustration Friday, but when I think of stripes I think of zebras which makes me think of this sketch I've had lying around waiting to be colored. I have a tendency to do My Little Pony versions of TV/cartoon/RPG characters when I get bored and I doodled Captain Jack Harkness and Ianto Jones ponies from Torchwood and then worked on a My Little Pony version of the tenth Doctor from Doctor Who. So, here it is, finally finished and colored.

November 'Accountability' post one

So, I'm attempting NaNoWriMo with a young adult novel idea that I had tried to write last year, but failed.

Along with this, I'm setting myself a personal art goal. The idea for Andrzej and Bastian's adventures has been around for 4 years. It started out as a picture book, but very quickly let us know when we started writing it that it wasn't a picture book. So, it's been upgraded to a chapter book/middle grade novel and a good amount is getting written thanks to the chapter book writing class we're doing at RISD. A lot of writing, but not a lot of artwork. Even though it's been bumped up in age, I still want a good amount of artwork in it. So, I set myself the goal of doing one picture, doesn't matter what it is, for Andrzej and Bastian every day in November.

The main piece of artwork for yesterday and today is the revamp of Andrzej.

He needed one. In his original design (seen on the left), he was older and also a generic Polish boy.

Picking Andrzej's hometown in the story meant that his original 'costume' didn't really fit the area. Not to mention the braid had to go.



Which all led to the new Andrzej:


He doesn't fully feel like Andrzej yet to me, but the costume is at least set, even if I know the pants are going to be interesting to draw later down the road. I also need to work on getting him as geometric as his older version as that's something I stylistically want to keep, but I know that the general shape of the Gorale costume also doesn't lend itself to it as well. At least in the legs.

And as silly artwork from yesterday, a very quick sketch in pen done in class of one of the scenes in the book:

Illustration Friday: Midsummer Night

So, my first Illustration Friday. I've been meaning to do these for awhile, but I had done a good deal of research for the Solstice already, so the idea for this just came easily.

The stones are the Callanish Stones on the Isle of Lewis and it's said that on Midsummer night, it never gets truly dark.

Medium: colored pencils and markers on colored paper