Musician

Here is another drawing that I'm happy with. The process of drawing is so engrossing but then you are done. Sigh. I find that I don't have such an emotional attatchment to my artwork after it's finished as I do while I'm working on it. The intensity of looking and the importance of concentrating while drawing is intense and I love that feeling, but when it's over, it's over. So, on to the next one!

NaNoWriMo Jumpstart

      Last night I took a class called the NaNoWriMo Jumpstart.
M. Molly Backes was the instructor and started us off with exercises intended to get us brainstorming about the time and place of our novel “to be”.
     Then she led us through an exercise where we wrote our main character’s #1 goal inside a circle, the #1  main opposition to that goal in another circle and the #1 fear of our main character in the final circle.
     Then we wrote multiple secondary goals around circle #1, secondary oppositions around #2 and secondary fears around the last circle.
     Lastly, we wrote possible scenes and situations around all the goals, oppositions and fears.    
     The final exercise was  based on a writing exercise where an author is supposed to write for ten minutes without stopping or censoring themselves. However, Molly had us do that exercise from our main character’s POV. I enjoyed this one. It helped to get a sense of the voice of the character and after a while I found the character started to tell me how the story should go.
     All in all, I thought it was a successful NaNoWriMo Jumpstart.
     I’m excited for NaNoWriMo to start, but is anyone else out there doing NaNoWriMo feel as nervous as I do? I feel like telling myself to fasten my seat belt because its gonna be a wild ride!

Query Contest on Kidlit.com

Well, I just found out about the query contest on Kidlit.com and as I have started on my querying journey, I figured I should enter. I've already sent out a number of queries for my MG novel and had a few rejections already. Query letters are frustrating since it's so difficult to make a query letter do everything it's supposed to do; the synopsis has to sound intriguing and the letter has to somehow convey a sense of the author's writing style. I've rewrtitten my query once already and I'll send it in to Kidlit.com. Hopefully it'll be chosen as a wonderful example of a query and the winner gets 30 pages of their manuscript read by an agent. Not bad. I've added a link to Kidlit.com in my blog sidebar for anyone else who'd like to submit to the contest.

1st drawing of a costumed model

           Well, here's my first drawing from Drawing the Costumed Figure. We've had three models so far, but we spend weeks on each pose, and not are all successful drawings so I am only showing this one. Doesn't he look sad? or maybe angry? I think it's it funny that he's actually a comedian.
           Models for drawing classes tend to have occupations from all over the board. One time I came to a Nude Drawing class to find my Aerobics Instructor from my gym up on the pedestal. Let me tell you, that was odd.