Of Pictures and Princesses

One of my ambitions is to be able to draw beautiful pictures on the computer. I love drawing with a pencil and ink but there are times when you want to be able to do something a little bit different. I'm not really good at digital art yet but this is my best picture so far. 

Princess Rosalia

This is a portrait of a character from a novel Imogen and I are writing together. We each have a special character and this is Imogen's. I like my character but he isn't quite so fun to draw. Rosalia though is wonderful to draw because of her floaty skirts and cool hair. I believe that this is the best out of the three pictures I have drawn of Rosalia. She's a happy bubbly sort of person who is always twirling and laughing.

My next ambition is to draw my character on the computer as well. Rudy's a different sort of person to Rosalia, more of the strong silent type but he's quite funny on the inside. He'll be challenging but I'm looking forward to it.

Science of the Winter Olympics

In the evenings we have been watching the Winter Olympics and really enjoying them, though I don't really like the Ski-athlon very much or Curling. I prefer the Snowboarding and the Figure Skating. Mum found a site with videos on the Science of the Winter Olympics. I was interested to see how figure skating works. It's beautiful to watch and I think that the physics behind it are also interesting.

The Drovers Road Collection

Yesterday evening I finished reading The Drover’s Road Collection by Joyce West. It is a collection of three books in one, telling the adventures of Gay Allan and her cousins who live at Drover’s Road, a sheep station in New Zealand.

I really enjoyed The Drover’s Road Collection. The characters were hilarious, animals and humans alike. Amazingly all of the stories were equally good. Normally the first book is the best one in the series. But all three of the books were so good that I read them in two days. Even the proposal scenes were funny and readable, which is saying something as I usually hate proposals. I’ll definitely be reading these stories again. 

A New Use For My Blog

For this new term, I’m going to be using my blog as a record of what I’m learning instead of writing it down in a boring list. No matter how many pretty colours you use, a list is just a list. So I’m going to put pictures of what I’m learning about up and write a bit about them so that I’ve got a record of what I’ve done this term.

And I’m going to start this record with the book “Jamberoo Road” by Eleanor Spence. It is set in the days of convicts when people were just settling Australia. “Jamberoo Road” is the actually the sequel to “The Switherby Pilgrims” and continues the story of a group of orphans who travelled from Switherby in England to Australia with their teacher and guardian, Missabella, to start a new life in a new country.

I liked the story, though I didn’t think it was as good as “The Switherby Pilgrims”. It was not a very long book and seemed to end rather abruptly without much happening. I expected there to be far more conflict and more about each character. On the whole the problems were solved without there being much trouble. But it was still a very enjoyable book.