Pinned

I don't know how old, exactly, this collection is.

The insects inside are very dried up--to the point that half of them are missing legs (which are lying at the bottom of the frame.) I think that the small dragonfly's wings were probably colorful at one time. Now everything's fading away.

Tape dispensers

The Lenox School for Boys

Non Ministrari, Sed Ministrare!

          In Lenox, Massachusetts, on the grounds of Shakespeare & Company are multiple old buildings that were once a part of the Lenox School for Boys. This is my drawing of St. Martin's Hall, which I would do anything to go inside of. The front door is padlocked, but when you look in the front windows you can see an ancient leather trunk just lying on the floor. A leather trunk. It's like nobody even fully cleaned out the building when the school closed. When you look into some of the other windows, though it looks like Shakespeare & Co. uses this big room to store their props, even though they say the building is condemned and unsafe to go in. That drives me crazy, because there is an open side door to the building and I am DYING to go open the leather trunk. DYING. When I opened the door, though, someone told me it was condemned. And it seemed like she cared.

      This is a picture from a school graduation in 1966! They are picnicking right by the front door, the one in my drawing. See the flowers on the paneling?
      Even the little part of the building you can see looks really different from how it does now.

      AAAAH. I want to open the leather trunk SO BAD and explore the rest of St. Martin's hall. I'm pretty sure it's not going to fall down on me.

-Ava


P.S. They don't say anything about the closing on the little plaque near the St. Martin's hall, so I was hoping for wikipedia to say something like "The Lenox school closed under mysterious circumstances in 1972--"
It did not. The Lenox school closed because of financial problems. What a let down.

P.P.S. Oh, look! It's the 100th post on my blog!

Kim Il-Sung

Trying to get better at painting famous people from photos.

Fairly recently I watched National Geographic's Inside North Korea, which was intriguing and really really sad at the same time. This is why I picked Kim Il-Sung to paint.

I recommend the video, it's about 40 minutes and you can watch it on YouTube here.

I'm going to make some excuses. Yay.

Hi.
I'm sorry I haven't posted in....over two weeks.
I've have been like, really busy, and I'm really busy for this weekend too. So I probably won't be putting anything up today or tomorrow, but.........soon.

Okay. Bye.

Samurai

I did this drawing in the Samurai exhibit at the National Geographic museum in DC.

I saw a poster in the hotel for a special exhibit on Titanic for the anniversary, and right away wanted to go. I didn't find out more about this particular exhibit or anything...which was a mistake, because it actually was significantly less cooler that I was expecting it to be. It was pretty sad. I was psyched about it and thinking there would be actual artifacts from the wreck, awesome things like that....

and I was wrong. They had one moderately cool thing (I guess...) which was one of the lifeboats they used in the movie (and it was a lot larger than they make it seem). So overall it was Not So Great.

But our tickets included the exhibit on samurai, and that was better.

I got to sit and draw some of the oldest known photos of Japan! Which is cool.

So remember, if you're a Titanic fan and in DC, skip the 100 Year Obsession "special exhibit" thing. Ok?

Helloooooo!

Hi everyone! I happen to be in Washington D.C. right now, I'll be going back home tomorrow.
I'll be posting drawings as soon as I get back to MA, where there is a scanner.
Ok! Just thought I'd share that...just to make sure nobody thought I was abandoning the blog. Or something.
Cheers!

Åv@

Flea market

Don't you love flea markets?
I am someone who loves flea markets.
There are people's scratched up videocassettes of The Little Mermaid and extensive collections of nail polish and stained stuffed animals and the boxes of "new" packaged stuff. Flyswatters! Socks! Knockoff brands of Sharpie markers! (They write the brand name in the weird cursive Sharpie font so you don't notice until you've payed your dollar fifty for them--you've actually just bought some Skerples or Shoupies instead! Surprise!)
It's not actually any of that stuff I really love about flea markets. The best part is the old stuff. The actual old stuff. It's once you've walked past the possibly-pirated DVDs  and broken Tiffany lamps and the weird stuff like underwear in giant packs and deodorant displayed on tables. (Why...?)
But once you have you can find the true interesting things. Old skeleton keys. Ancient crates of Coca-Cola bottles with sticky brown soda still inside. Written-on postcards.
And I was able to find, among some other very old things including someone's report card from 1936 (I will definitely be sharing that later), a color-in paper doll book--$2 instead of $10 because I wasn't a collector! Yesss!!

What I love so much about this paper doll book is they have these handwritten descriptions of what the dresses looked like in real life so you can color it in accurately. How could you not get excited about getting to paint "a white chiffon dress with cranberry, blue green, and lavender splashes of color"????

Princess Caroline definitely did have some snazzy outfits. Although I admit sometimes I was dying to change up the color scheme, particularly for the "brown blazer, ecru blouse, and tan skirt" which I hoped looked better in real life than my rendition of it.

 Fun, right?!

I hope everyone goes to a flea market and finds themselves some nice paper dolls to color in. Sometimes it's nice to have some instructions to follow. 

Although it would be pretty funny to have given the Princess a new stupid modern shirt. Like 

I ♥ 1D

or something with Angrybirds.

Untitled

COMING SOON

Hi people.
Gosh I feel pathetic. Please try and believe me that I'll be posting something I'm working on soon. For real this time. This is so sad, I keep having to do apologetic posts with nothing but words! Patheticness!!!

Here is a drawing of Paul McCartney to help drive away some of the general patheticness....I hope....?

  AM I HELPING?
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