Thursday, March 31, 2011

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.

5 comments:

  1. I LOVE this. You definitely picked my favorite one! I had seen the contest a few days ago (Heather Dixon is a Harper author), but wasn't going to enter it. I was going to color it and send to a friend (because that's what grown up best friends do). But I think you may have inspired me to enter as well...

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  2. Thanks, Laurel. :) Yes, more coloring in the world! What would you use?

    I'm making my housemates color too because it's just such a relaxing way to pass the time. I think without all different kinds of creativity, your brain shrivels up. Trying to keep mine pink and healthy!

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  3. I have an awesome box of 64 Crayola Crayons which I'm totally pulling out tonight. Yay for coloring! I love to do it while watching tv, which I don't do very often, but coloring at the same time makes me feel productive rather than lazy. :-)

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  4. I just *finally* finished coloring (I had family staying with me this weekend that interrupted my coloring schedule). It was so much fun but it was also hard not to copy your beautiful windows!

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  5. Post it! :) I'd love to see your coloring efforts, and I'm sure Heather Dixon would love the extra linkage.

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