Well, here it is. Finished at last. *phew*!

Thank you to Candace Trew Camling for suggesting Snow White! And for March, The Golden Bird by the Grimm Brothers.

After inking the first Snow White drawing I did, I realized that the composition wasn't quite what I wanted it to be. But seeing as February is a short month and I was anxious to stay on track with the Fairytale project, I decided to push ahead and try to make it work. Mistake number one.

On Sunday I plunged into painting without really any planning at all. No color studies, not really even much thought into how I would approach the painting. Whoops. Mistake number two. Between the not so great composition and some impulsive painting decisions, I spent the better part of the day grinding my teeth and shaking my fist at my poor planning.

After a late lunch break, and after the fist shaking had stopped, I decided that I needed to figure out a new approach. And while I do want to keep up with this project I've assigned myself (especially since its only the second month!), I realized that the point of the project isn't just to finish 12 fairytale illustrations, but to finish them well, or at least to learn something along the way. And so I opted for a re-do.

So, here's the new drawing, partially inked. Hopefully I'll still have it painted before the 1st of March.

I guess sometimes you just need to start over. And that's ok. And by taking the time I need in the planning and preparation stage, I'll save time in the long run and won't have to start over. And that's even better.

The latest Facebook stats are in (and look pretty impressive according to this infographic. In the 20 minutes per day users spend on the site, they click 2.7 billion “likes” and upload 250 million photos. We were also surprised to learn... Read the rest of this post

fairytalemood:

art by Daniela Terrazzini

Nickelodeon is honoring pro-social teens with the help of a few celebs (during the third annual Teen Nick HALO [Helping and Leading Others] Awards. Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, David Beckham, and Jessica Biel will each celebrate a teen who is involved... Read the rest of this post

Since many of the “Glee” stars will graduate next season (a new crop of characters will soon be introduced. TVLine reports that there will be two new mean girls named Sugar and Sheila, a linebacker named Bubba who will play Mercedes’... Read the rest of this post

This isn’t your grandmother’s “Snow White”! (Kristin Stewart is armed to the teeth for an upcoming rendition of the fairy tale, “Snow White & The Huntsmen.” Compare that to Lily Collins’s overly twee... Read the rest of this post

Lil Hottie Red Cute Monster Art Pin

its 1 1/2″ in diameter. Clasp in the back
Wear it on your favorite bag, shirt or backpack.

It comes in a cute little organza bag.

Beginning in 2012, three different adaptations of Snow White will hit theaters: The Brothers Grimm: Snow White (2012), Snow White and the Huntsman (2012), and Snow and the Seven (2013).

According to The Film Stage, the first will have a “darkly comedic flare;” the second will focus on the Huntsman character, and the final film will feature martial arts action (The video embedded above shows a musical scene from the 1937 Disney version).

Casting rumors have emerged about two of the projects. Julia Roberts may appear in The Brothers Grimm: Snow White.
continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Review: The Shadow of the Bear: A fairy tale retold

 Doman, Regina.  (2008) The Shadow of the Bear: a fairy tale retold.  Front Royal, VA: Chesterton Press. ISBN #978-0-981-93180-7.  Author recommended age 14+. Litland.com recommends age 14+.  See author website for parent guide to aid you in deciding acceptability for younger readers.  http://www.fairytalenovels.com/docs/Picky%20Parent’s%20guide%20to%20Shadow.pdf

 Our thoughts:

 Modeled after the original Brothers Grimm fairy tale Snow White and Red Rose, this isn’t your Disney princess spoof. Anyone familiar with the real fairy tales of old know they spin morals and virtues contrasted with evil throughout the tapestry of the story. Doman’s book includes the best of this feature without some of the hideous and difficult storyline that traditional fairy tales are known for. 

It is a tale of two sisters named…you’ve got it, Blanche and Rose! The teenagers live with their widowed mother in New York City. Not a simple whodunit at all, the reader is led with suspense through the dark streets, halls and buildings; parties and conversations with the popular kids you know are setting them up for a fall; envy, jealousy, almost-despair, uncertainty. Fear. The description and self-dialogue realistically portray true inner emotions of the two sisters as they face ridicule, bathroom bullying, and school authorities. School-age readers can relate entirely; adult readers are glad to not be in high school anymore.

 Far from the typical one-dimensional view of teen angst given to us in entertainment today, this story is enriched by the affinities and intelligence of its characters. In addition to an occasional Chesterton or Tennyson quote, the description wrapped around their interactions is culturally-rich; thought-provoking wisdom is their normal discourse. Rose’s emotional melt-down in the park, playing her violin in the rushing wind with an impending storm at bay is dramatically told. We can feel her lift “her bow from the strings in the silence of the rushing winds…” after playing that “distant, bold note flying high as a bird to the clouds”.

 Not all is as it appears.

 Good and evil subtly mirror one another throughout the tale. It can be a rough exterior compared to a gentle personality. The rumored drug dealer’s virtuous behaviour compared to the popular, good looking guy using and manipulating all around him. Self-discipline and self-denial vs. hedonism and selfishness. White martyrs and red martyr vs. evildoers.

 A 200-page book should be a quick read. I usually slide right through one. Some books, however, just have more to say. And this book is one of those. Without a word wasted, Doman has given sufficiently rich detail in both the physical and emotional settings that we can feel we are there. We see in our mind solitary Rose playing an ominous tune on her violin in the middle of the park with the same fervor as the wind. From the beginning, the girls imagine that the human exterior merely covers up for a magical interior, and we are then swept through a fast-paced story full of emotion and suspense. Litland.com highly recommends this story for teens and adults. While its content is “clean”, parents should decide if a story line with drug dealers, beer parties, and murder are acceptable for their younger gifted reader. Grade for these schoolgirls? A++!

 (Follow the movie at http://theshadowofthebear.blogspot.com/ ! )

One problem with fairy tales is that they make “happily ever after” seem like the rest of the story rather than the end of the beginning of the story. After spending hundreds of hours watching Disney movies frame-by-frame for graduate research, I know the message gets driven home that, once you sweep off to the castle, everything is hearts and flowers from that moment on. But as someone who’s been married (more than once) and had children (more than one), I know you wake up the day after the perfect wedding and the dishes don’t wash themselves--nor are there any woodland creatures around to do them. Bummer. Another facet to life after happily ever after is realizing that sometimes it’s easier to just do stuff yourself than wait for everybody else to figure it out. Especially kids. Or jewel-mining dwarfs. I felt a real kinship with the post-prince Snow White in Disney’s Snow White Makes A Change from the Kindness Counts series when she goes back to visit the little cottage in the woods and finds pandemonium once again reigns. The same thing happens to me every time I clean up after my kids. I should be better about making them clean it up themselves. I understand this, but haven’t been very good at it. Control freak meets no time meets wanting to run my house differently than the one I came from but not knowing how. The dwarfs do renew their housekeeping efforts, so maybe it’s not too late.

http://www.amazon.com/Kindness-Counts-Disney-Princess-Studio/dp/1590693647

http://disney.go.com/index

It was a very adult literary festival in Beijing where attendees listened to authors while sipping single-malt Scotch and cigarette smoking wasn’t prohibited. So it came as a distinct surprise when in a discussion of Orientalism versus reality in contemporary fiction, the subject shifted to children’s literature.

Born in 1965, author Liu Hong’s childhood took place during the Cultural Revolution. As a teenager, after the death of Mao, she began to study English. The first book she read in English was Snow White, which she thought was beautiful, with its colored pictures printed on heavy paper; it was, she said, voluptuous and it turned her into a passionate reader of English literature.

English became her other world, her secret language. She kept a diary in English because her family couldn’t read it, and this became the currency of her thoughts and feelings. She moved on from Snow White to Wuthering Heights and years later was disappointed that in Yorkshire she did not get lost in the moors. 

Liu Hong is now a best-selling author of four novels, all of which she wrote in English. 

Who can predict what the effect of a beautiful, well-written children’s book can be? Although she didn’t specify which edition of Snow White made her a reader–and eventually a writer, Liu Hong could well have been influenced by Randall Jarrell and Nancy Ekholm Burkert’s Caldecott Honor award winner, which was published in 1973. 

Who knows, when we donate to organizations– like Room to Read or Books for Laos– that make children’s books in English available overseas, what best-selling author of the future will be caught by the experience of reading in English and will go on to enrich other readers in years to come?

okay, i've already started working. at first i post some sketches for character sheet. i would like to find a new, owner Snow White who is so beautiful and becomes with my style - in the same time. so it's not too easy for me! because i usually don't draw beautiful people - only create funny and interesting aliens with big nose :) it will be good for seven little dwarfs but not for beauty...

now i'm here:



...and i've tried some colours in the final sketch:



i'm in a little trouble with shadows so i'm going to work on it. what do you think? could be Snow White like this? thank you all of comments and can't wait for your posts! :)

I know it should be my job to post an exact text for this monthly prompt, so thanks Lyon for her post! I"ve found the whole tale here: http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0709.html#snowwhite (better later than never...) . If you would like to put rich details of the tale to your works - here you are. Thank you for excusing and your patience, Linda must does it better than me :) Have a good job you all!

Those of you who have been following the saga of The Bees over at the birdchick blog (http://www.birdchick.com/labels/beekeeping.html) will know that of the two hives we started out with, which we called Olga and Kitty, Olga has thrived, while Kitty did so well that she swarmed in late summer and took off to see the world. We got a new queen, but the remaining bees in Kitty never got her population back up in time for winter.

Which meant that when it got really cold this year, Olga had enough bees to keep the hive warm and Kitty simply didn't. I went out in January and noticed that the snow had melted around Olga, she was removing her dead and, on warm days, bees were nipping out and pooping yellow in the snow, whereas Kitty was just a green box with nothing going on.

So I did what anyone would do. I sent a few thousand dead bees to Lisa Snellings, to make into art.

A couple of days ago I noticed that someone -- probably a raccoon -- had tried to get in to Kitty, and clean out the honey, which meant it was time to do something. I called Sharon, who was down with hellflu, and got the greenlight from her.

Lorraine and I moved the empty kitty hive into the garage.

And then I had to decide what to do with the honey in Kitty. I went onto the Internet to find out if there was anything I could do that didn't involve buying centrifugal honey extractors, and learned that if it was honey I wanted, a bucket and some cheesecloth would do just fine...



So I mashed up the leftover comb and honey into a bucket, tipped the resulting scary-looking gloop into the cheesecloth at the top of another bucket...



Then nipped out to the garage every three or four hours to add more gloop as the honey trickled through the cheescloth into the bottom bucket.



And this morning Lorraine came over and we took the cheesecloth off bucket #1 and poured the honey into jars. Astonishingly, the cheesecloth had done its job, and we had wax and crud on the outside of the bucket and clear honey on the inside.



There's probably the same amount again still in the garage right now trickling through the cheesecloth into buckets.

The honey is wonderful. It tastes like wildflowers and spring. I'd rather have Kitty out there filled with bees (although the Kitty hive that swarmed is undoubtedly fine, in a hollow tree somewhere), but the honey's good too.

...

The Graveyard Book is pretty much ready to be copy-edited now. I was scared that my editors in the UK and the US would point out somewhere I'd messed up that would need a whole new chapter (much as Sarah Odedina at Bloomsbury did when she read Coraline in manuscript and said, "It needs a chapter where she confronts the Other Father, who in what you've given me just goes offstage and stays off," and I said "oh Bugger it does, doesn't it?" and had to go and write it. I mean, I knew about the scene in the cellar. I just thought I could get away with not having written it.).

But nothing like that happened. Sarah's biggest concern was a scene where a fifteen-year old girl accepts a ride from a stranger (obviously, she shouldn't have, but Sarah wanted it to be convincing that she did) and Elise only had small points -- the biggest change was that she wanted a sentence removed that spelled out how ghouls got their names, which I'd put in slightly under protest because a few people had been confused as to whether the small, leathery corpse-eaters were the real Duke of Westminster, 35th President of the United States, Bishop of Bath and Wells, or not, and I was happy to see it go away again.

I got an email today from Diana Wynne Jones saying "It is FABULOUS, WONDERFUL, TRIFFIC. One of your best! I love it," which is better than gold and rubies (and if Diana doesn't like something, she tells me). Jon Levin at CAA, my long-suffering movie agent, is starting to fend off the phone calls as people call him wanting to see it, and we have to decide who we're showing it to, which is a good problem to have.

Everything's sort of accelerated right now. The book comes out in six months (30 Sept in the US, a month later in the UK), and there's not really much time for the normal routes of book promotion.

I'll see if we can get a countdown to publication date timer for the front page of the website. I don't think I've had one of those since American Gods.

I was meant to be on NPR's TALK OF THE NATION tomorrow. But their schedules have shifted and I'll be on the radio this afternoon -- Wednesday the 8th of August. I think that http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=5
is their website. I'll be on towards the end of the second hour (the hour that some stations don't get).

John Scalzi writes wisely, as usual, over at his blog about Stardust and how he thinks it'll do:
http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/2007/08/07/stardusts_chances.html
and I couldn't see anything there to disagree with.

I have no doubt at all that Stardust will do brilliantly around the world, rock out on DVD, and become one of those films that is beloved. But how it will do this weekend... ah, that's a mystery. I was fascinated by this article about success and failure -- and, more importantly, the perception of success and failure -- in movie box office:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-j-elisberg/hollywood-where-ignoran_b_59464.html
(link via.)

I remember the first time I went to Hollywood, with Terry Pratchett, in 1992 I learned that you could frame any conversation about something you wanted to do in a plot that Hollywood Execs didn't understand or had a problem with if you referred to another movie that they'd seen. ("So why don't they...?" "Because they forget about it, um -- just like at the end of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK." "Oh. Got it.") And it was useful for talking about the feel of things -- you simply positioned what you were talking about against or with other films.

By 1996, when I went back to Hollywood, something had changed. I remember naming a movie in one of those conversations -- talking about look and feel or about lighting or about something like that -- and having the Exec look at me as if I had something unpleasant on my shoe, and he said, simply, "But that film didn't make any money." He couldn't understand why I would even have brought it up.

...

Over on Charles Vess's blog you can see a photo of us at the end of the premiere, me in a tuxedo and him not, because he forgot his shirt studs.

The birdchick does a honey from our hives taste test over at http://www.birdchick.com/2007/08/go-see-stardust-and-little-about-our.html

Claire Louise Milne
web: www.clairelouisemilne.com