Carried Away with Coloring

The title of this post pretty much says it all. It’s a bad habit of mine. I get excited about something, and I throw myself in, totally and irrevocably in.

Let’s back up. I am a pretty active Twitizen (Twitter citizen, natch) because the place is a treasure trove of interesting people/links. Yesterday, I followed one such link to a blog post by first-time author and talented artist Heather Dixon. I immediately fell in coverlust with her YA novel Entwined, which is a retelling of (one of my favorite fairy tales) The Twelve Dancing Princesses. To celebrate the release of her book, Dixon created three adorable images of her characters and announced a coloring contest to win a copy. How could I say no to the chance to color and win a retold fairy tale?

I’m fairly artsy, so I had a lot of fun with this. As xkcd says, “We’re grownups now, and it’s our turn to decide what it means.” I say it means taking a few hours of your life to de-stress and make pretty pictures:

The Princess Bramble was my muse because 1) she looked so sassy 2) I loved the copy that accompanied her image 3) the windows were taunting me. The inspiration for my windows came from my favorite fairy-tale-turned-Disney-movie, more specifically the Beauty and the Beast stained glass at Epcot's France Pavilion. I also tackled a floral brocade on that little topskirt (image inspiration here), as I clearly like to torture myself by putting in teeny tiny details.

Since the contest winner is going to be announced on Easter, I colored the egg balusters in pastel Easter green, blue, yellow, and purple. (The colors are a little less vibrant onscreen than in real life. Bramble’s definitely a redhead on paper. Still, freckles!) I stuck to this same color family for Bramble’s dress. Speaking of Easter, I hid some Easter Eggs around that tied into the original tale: a pair of crowns, a Roman numeral 12, and some musical notes/keys.

Sure, there will probably be a ton of gorgeous digitally-colored submissions, but it’s neat to see what you can do with just the basic 12 Crayola box. All in a day’s work/play. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to find someone to take away my colored pencils before I do any more damage to my sleep schedule.