Moon Girl, Part 4

Even though the physician had told the others not to upset the village, the tailor couldn't help shouting at anyone who came in his door, and the fiddle maker wouldn't stop weeping. The tavern keeper kept spilling drinks, and even the physician was more stoic than was usually his habit.

In few weeks, everyone in the town was a reduced to nervous mess, and the mood has spread to the meadow and to the cliff. Sara was alone even more frequently. Most of the more sensible animals had moved on, and Sara wondered if she should as well. But before she could give it any more thought, everything changed.

Soldiers were marching into the village. And they were different than any soldiers the villagers had ever seen. The soldiers that had passed through before always were clean and fit, polite, and wore the colors of the King. These soldiers were dirty and mean, with patchwork armor and no colors.

But their leader was the worst. His name was Keam, and he was a mercenary, hired by the King to defend the kingdom. He led his men through the village and ordered them to camp in the meadow. Keam turned to the villagers and asked to speak with their governor.

The mayor came forward, and the two men stepped into the tavern. Many of the townsmen followed.

"Why have you come here?" asked the mayor. "And why are you making camp? Shouldn't you be on your way to a village with a port?"

"When your King asked us to fight for him, he asked what we wanted in payment," said Keam. "And we told him we had heard of a girl who lives in these parts, with hair stronger than any bowstring, that will make a sword sharper than any other. We have bought many of the wares of this fine village, and have disassembled fiddles and suits to test its merits, and found all the accounts to be true. 'Give us a skein of her hair, and we will fight for you,' we told your King. That is why we camp here: to collect our payment."

The men shuffled about anxiously. Some made to protest, but the thought of the mercenaries camping just outside of the village quieted them.

Keam noticed the fear in the air, and with a big nasty grin, he stood. He towered over every man in the room. "So, where is she?" he boomed.

Moon Girl, Part 3

Life when on for years like this. The villagers grew older, some were born and some died. The fiddler maker's fiddles became the most prized of all the instruments in the kingdom, the tailor's pinstripe suits had become the new fashion, and the village, though still small, was very well off. But Sara stayed the same.

Sara had long ago made friends with the village physician, to whom she would go to pull the occasion splinter from a toe or bring any hurt animals she would come across.

One day, when she was bringing a small white fox with a broken paw to the physician, he was not at home. Sarah began to walk through the streets of the town, asking for him occasionally. As she was passing by the tavern, she heard angry and frightened voices coming from inside, one of which was the physicians. She crept over to the window and knelt under it to hear what was happening.

"NO! That can't be right!," the tailor shouted.

"I'm only telling you what I heard," said the tavern keeper.

"We're doomed. What will happen to us!" said the fiddle maker.

"Calm down, everyone," said the physician. "Let's have the facts again."

"A messenger from the village down the coast stopped in on his way to the King. He only wanted some water for his horse, and some food for his trip. He said that his village had seen ships from The Land Across the Sea," said the tavern keeper.

"That doesn't seem so odd," said the physician. "That village is a port. They trade with The Land Across the Sea often."

"Yes. 'But these ships are different,' the messenger said. He said they were war ships, and that there were many of them. His village thinks they've come to attack the kingdom!" said the tavern keeper.

"YOU SEE!" shouted the tailor. "Get your swords, get your bows and knock your arrows, get your pitchforks! Anything and Everything. We must protect our village!"

The fiddle maker sobbed into his ale.

"Calm down everyone," said the physician. "There is no use getting worked up over this. We don't know that there wasn't a terrible disaster that destroyed their smaller boats and the only ones that survived were the warships. We don't know that there aren't pirates in the water. They could be coming here to warn us."

"AND WE DON'T KNOW THAT THEY AREN'T COMING HERE TO KILL US ALL!" bellowed the tailor.

"That's true. But the news is going to the King, and he will decide what to do. The best thing now is to not worry the entire village," said the physician, as he rose to leave. Then he paused, and added in a quiet voice, "Even so, there's no harm in inspecting whatever weapons you have, to make sure they are in good working order."

Sara was frozen in shock. It took a moment for her to realize that the physician had left the tavern and was walking down the street away from her. She stood and hurried to catch him. He took the fox with his usual gentle manner, and said he'd look after it. She thanked him, but she didn't mention the conversation she had heard.

That night, as she sat on the cliff, she asked the Moon, "What am I to do?"

The Moon, as usual, didn't reply.

Moon Girl, Part 2

Sara's hair wasn't only beautiful, it was strong.

Every few months, the fiddle maker in the village would ask her for a few hairs to string a particularly fine instrument he had made. And the tailor would send his assistant to beg permission to pick long pieces from her hairbrush, for he was planning an exquisite pinstripe suit to send to the King, who lived far away. Birds would collect fallen strands from the meadow and use them to build their nests, which were so strong that even the most wayward boys from the village couldn't knock them down.

Sara would grant these wishes if the asker was courteous, and didn't ask too frequently. But, on occasion, an archer would ask for a strand to string his arrow with, or a soldier would ask for a few strings to sharpen his sword, and she would gently decline.

Besides these short meetings and the rare occasion that a brave child of the village would speak with her, Sara spent most of her time alone, and she was generally happy. She spent her time walking in the meadow, or playing in the forest by herself. But, on clear nights she'd sit on the cliff and looking at the moon and it's solitary reflection in the ocean, (for in those days the moon's reflection on the ocean was the same as it is today on a still lake, with no trailing reflection in the water), and she would wonder if the moon was as lonely as she sometimes felt.

Moon Girl, Part 1

Moon Girl

Once, there was a girl named Sara, and she had the most beautiful hair that anyone had ever seen. It was long and silver, and sometimes it seemed to move when there wasn't any wind, or shimmer when there was no light.

Sara lived on a hillside, near the cliffs that looked out over the ocean. She slept in a small meadow, or, if it was rainy, she slept in a cleft in the cliff face. She ate fruits and nuts from the nearby forest, and drank from the clear stream running through it, and she was content.

Sara's meadow was very close to a small village. No one there knew when she had come. One day she just was. Some people said she was the daughter of the moon, some said she was a fallen star. Others said she had drifted there by the night wind. The more nasty and covetous ones would say that she was the daughter of a witch, sent to do horrible mischief, but no one really believed those stories, especially the ones who told them.

People would travel from far away to see her and her hair. Some wrote songs about it. Some wrote epic poems. Some would follow her around, trying to draw, paint or sculpt it. She was always polite, sitting still if they asked her to, but they would leave disappointed, unable to capture the mystery that glimmered about her. They would go home, and put away their paintings or their songs in a drawer to get rusty and lose their shine.

Tough chicks rule

Here she is, bigger and badder.

No hard drives are gonna mess with her now!

In the words of Neil Gaiman:

...I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you'll dream dangerously and outrageously, that you'll make something that didn't exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and to like in return. And, most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now), that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind.

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

Happy New Year.

Christmas

Christmas with my new flash turned out great! I got 61 great shots and another hundred of people blinking or making silly faces.

Here are a few of the best!

And here is the album of all the good ones!

Cute new haircut. Maybe you'll see it on Christmas. I'm going to have to figure out if i want to keep my purple layer though. Let me know your opinion. Of the cut and the purple!

Dr Seuss Event Photos

As promised - here are some photos of the Dr. Seuss event.

I wasn't able to go (that was the weekend Quinn lost her memory), so these photos were all taken by Event Central. The client was apparently thrilled.

Here's the Music Shop.

Here's the Toy Shop:

My favorite part is the lights.

And the Bakery:

I was pretty pleased with the way everything turned out, considering the short amount of time I had to paint it.

How many screens does your workstation have?

Cuz right now, mine has three - and one is way big.

You can see my little TV, my dear Quinn, and Laurence - the new big monitor. You can also see that I'm going to need to hang something mad colorful on that wall or I'm gonna go nuts!

Stoops & DB video

I was looking back at my posts and realized I never posted photos of the set from She Stoops to Conquer.

Here are the production photos, taken by T. Charles Erickson.

The first one has more ambiance...

But you can actually see the actual scenic painting in the second.

Yep - I touched almost every part of that set with a brush, including crawling around on the floor with a teeny tiny brush, painting in the cracks!

I've also completed the rough sketches for three more pages of the book. Hopefully, I'll be able to get to the actual watercolors this week.

Here's a short video of the first six pages, just for funsies:

Can you make a candy cane do this?

Note the lack of point on the ends - it's completely uniform. Boo-yeah!

Melvin the Vagabond Watercolor

Since I've started experimenting with watercolors more heavily in the recent past, I've taken to carrying around a watercolor notebook and watercolor pencil in my bag. It's much more constructive than my usual habit of making hamster piles out of shredded napkins or playing with whatever cutlery is on the table until Grant takes it away.

Watercolor pencils are great for on the go, because palettes are unnecessary and almost anywhere will give you water.

I did this one in an Uno's in Pittsburgh while hanging with Grant and his parents (poor Elyse was at work).

Saturday night Grant and I were at Starbucks with Katie and Jason, and I painted this creepy guy. His name is Melvin. I think I'm just majorly excited about the Tim Burton exhibit at MoMA. Which I will hopefully be seeing with Doug and Grant on Dec 21. You can come if you want, but it's a Monday.

Here's the next page of Dustbin Children. I posted the sketch a few weeks ago. Here's the watercolor. I'm not sure if I'm completely pleased with it yet, but I think it's best to press on. I can always add details or redo it later!

"At school she was never called on,

Even when her hand was the only one raised."

Poor Quinn

As you may or may not have heard, my dear dear Quinn's hard drive suddenly expired yesterday. This was very upsetting, and if I acted weird yesterday, I apologize.

Grant, being the wonderful, wonderful, wonderful person that he is, was very quick to fix my problem. This very morning he went out and bought me a shiny, new, naked hard drive, that I've named Newbie. He set up the operating system, and I had a working laptop in less than 24 hours from the initial problem.

Because I was a Very Bad Girl, and hadn't backed up practically anything for A Very Long Time, we are going to send it away and have the files recovered for Quite A Lot of Money. Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas Susan, because this is all you are getting.

Learn from my mistakes people. Back up your files. That way when your hard drive dies, you can say, "oh well, that sucks a bit," lose a few files, and spend one or two hundred dollars for a new one. Then you will not have to pay Quite A Lot of Money like Naughty Sue had to.

Anyways, in mourning of the passing of the Old Quinn, and to celebrate the newness of a Shiny New Quinn, I have peeled off the vinyl on her back and will be designing a new vinyl.

And I need to do it quick, because she is very naked and it's freaking me out:

Hint: if you have a plastic macbook, Goo Gone works very well on getting nasty adhesive off.

As part of the fun that is this faux Dr Seuss land, I had to make a Wow-Ville (not Whoville) subway map. There is a train station piece in it, and they needed some maps... Some popular locations are the Town Center, the Wow Hospital, the Grande Wow Hotel, and the Betsy Wow House. You wish you were there. The event starts load in tomorrow, and is only up for 3 hours. Yep - 3. I'm thinking of going, at least so i can get some pictures. I forgot to take some of the toy shop. Plus, everything will look better all put together and in its natural environment. So hopefully there are much more sexy pictures to come.