Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Holiday Watercolors

Hello everyone! Happy New Years, in case I forget, and hope you all had a wonderful Christmas.

This year I decided to make some watercolors for presents. It was more fun than I expected. I also printed out family photos and framed them for my mother, and she loved it. Doing this, I learned that making presents feels a heck of a lot more appropriate for Christmas than buying them.

This painting was for Kazu's mom, my mother-in-law (sweetest one out there!), who loves dance:

This one was for my brother, who's the first person to read Rema in its final draft version so far (I'm only up to chapter 10):

For dinner, we went to Tan Cang and had a delicious meal of crab, french style beef cubes, sauteed pea sprouts, and fried tofu. Man, it was so good! If you live in LA be sure to try Tan Cang, and get there early because the wait is pretty long.

After dinner we played Settlers of Catan (Tim won), and Halo (I played Phantom Hourglass on the DS). Things I got for Christmas: a coat, a scarf, some stockings, Final Fantasy 4 on DS, and the Sleeping Beauty dvd. My mom knit my brother and husband a sweater, and it reminded me of Mrs. Weasley giving Ron and Harry her home made sweaters. It was hilarious and wonderful, and they had their own special magic. Kazu and Tim proudly wore them, and will continue to do so.

I think this was my favorite Christmas in a long while, maybe because it felt so great to have a day off, and maybe because I didn't have to worry about my Mom and brother having to fly back to Hawaii a few days later. It was fantastic. :)

I feel refreshed and ready for more work, both on Rema and Amulet. There are two more watercolors, but I can't post them yet because I'm not sure if my friends recieved their packages yet. Once I know they did, I'll post them up.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Abandonned illustration

This used to be a scene in chapter 1, but it got cut. I was playing around with the idea of frames, but I think I went overboard with the eels. It was fun to draw, though.

Things are going well here. The next few weeks will be swamped, as we're coming down to the wire on Amulet 2 (not to mention the holi-daze). I've made significant progress on the Rema novel. I won't say too much because I don't want to jinx it... but it's lookin' good and I'm super amped!!

Hope everyone else is doing well too! I'll pop back in later with some scans of my sloppy, sloppy sketches.