Thursday, January 26, 2012

Dovecote

Here is a small bit of a writing piece I've just started....

          Channary was a city made from towers.
          Copper, mostly—ancient metal blooming with pale green as it oxidized in the sea air.
It was a famous landscape, depicted in countless paintings that decorated the palaces of the capital. The shining domes and spires poking at Kir’s ever-blue sky was an image like no other. Unmistakable.
But it was only the true people of the city who knew the truth, which was that the paradise of Channary was only an illusion, a veil of beauty hiding a place, which was, in fact, filled with bird droppings and corruption.
         It was the real Channary that Nolie had been raised to know.
         Nolie’s life, from infancy to her current age, thirteen, had been a story of loss, poverty, and grey doves—a story she shared with the wider population of the city, for they all led the same lives. The very same hard, fight-for-your-place-in-the-world lives.
          But Magnolia Harper had one thing that not a single other person had, and that was a very small grain of something unknown to the city, inside her.
         That something was called hope, and she thought of it as the same thing as a cloud of doves billowing out of a tower window, in the morning. Or as a purple and orange streaked sky, glorious backdrop for Channary’s skyline.
         It was her hope and her appreciation of beauty that had kept her from falling completely into hard, colorless reality. That was what separated her from all the others, made her, in truth, a very interesting person.
        It was a sad thing, though, because nobody really thought of Nolie like that. The fact that she was different had placed her immediately in a certain category, the category where all the people who were eccentric, or just plain crazy, or simply didn’t have anything in common with the others went in the Oddball category.
      Magnolia Harper being in this group meant that she was not someone to associate with. And that was a pity.
       So, for most of her life, she was somewhat of an outcast. Someone who no one knew well and no one wanted to know at all. And it stayed like that. Just like that, right up to the morning of October first. And that was when things started to change.

Cheers, and happy almost-Friday!

-A

Monday, January 23, 2012

Jelly Tots


Jelly Tots are probably the yummiest gummy (ooh, accidental rhyming!) candy. Especially the blackcurrant ones. 


Don't they look so nice and inviting and eatable?

-Ava♫

P.S. Lisa, this is kind of for you. 
Don't know if you'll appreciate it or if it'll just make you mourn the lack of Jelly Tots in D.C.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Cupcakes and Stained Glass


































I'd like a plate of cupcakes like that. Right now. And maybe that hat to wear too.

Cheers!
Ava

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

NYC!

Last weekend, for two nights, I was in New York! I had a great time sketching there...lots of interesting people to draw and lots of interesting things to draw.

I have found that I can only successfully sketch people that I don't know. I'm not sure why that is, but it was great fun drawing the people around me on trains and at restaurants. (I think that it's okay to draw people in public as long as you do a good job not staring at them. Most of the time, for me, though, people were just to busy doing something on their iPads or reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.)




















While I was in the city I also got to see a fabulous performance of Wicked...


and see some pretty incredible views.


A very good weekend!

Cheers,

Ava

Monday, January 2, 2012

Character Sketches and Curly Writing ~OR~ A Graphic Novel!

I have just decided to start making one of my previously begun stories into a graphic novel! I'm still not sure of all the story--because I have only actually written a little--and very not sure of all the details (the length of it and all that) but I have started to do a little planning.
      I have made some sketches of the main character, Maeve...















and experimented with titles....










So yes. I don't know yet if I'm going to do a storyboard or just start sketching, but I think this is going to be fun!

Cheers,
Ava