Princess and the Pea

Still kind of a work in progress, but wanted to get in on the “Tell a Fairy Tale Day” fun!

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The Princess and the Pea

by Hans Christian Andersen

Once there was a Prince who wanted to marry a Princess. Only a real one would do. So he traveled through all the world to find her, and everywhere things went wrong. There were Princesses aplenty, but how was he to know whether they were real Princesses? There was something not quite right about them all. So he came home again and was unhappy, because he did so want to have a real Princess.

One evening a terrible storm blew up. There was thunder and lightening, and the rain poured down in torrents. It was really frightful! In the midst of it all came a knocking at the town gate. The old King went to open it.

Who should be standing outside but a Princess, and what a sight she was in all that rain and wind. Water streamed from her hair down her clothes into her shoes, and ran out at the heels. Yet she claimed to be a real Princess.

“We’ll soon find that out,” the old Queen thought to herself. Without saying a word about it she went to the bedchamber, stripped back the bedclothes, and put just one pea in the bottom of the bed. Then she took twenty mattresses and piled them on the pea. Then she took twenty eiderdown feather beds and piled them on the mattresses. Up on top of all these the Princess was to spend the night.

In the morning they asked her, “Did you sleep well?”

“Oh!” said the Princess. “No. I scarcely slept at all. Heaven knows what’s in that bed. I lay on something so hard that I’m black and blue all over. It was simply terrible.”

They could see she was a real Princess and no question about it, now that she had felt one pea all the way through twenty mattresses and twenty more feather beds. Nobody but a Princess could be so delicate. So the Prince made haste to marry her, because he knew he had found a real Princess.

As for the pea, they put it in the museum. There it’s still to be seen, unless somebody has taken it.

There, that’s a true story.

Princess and the Pea

Threw together a sketch for our upcoming celebration of “Tell A Fairy Tale Day” on Saturday, February 26th. I’m hoping to get this all finalized and colorized by then! Also looking forward to seeing what my fellow Doodle Diners come up with!

On the Seventh Day

My true love gave to me…

Meet the Synchronized Sisters of Sunnyvale.
These lovely ladies are known far and wide for their beauty, grace and of course their precision technique! Never a more friendly gaggle of gals could be found. That is, until Sylvia joined the group! She was a rare bird indeed!!

Then the feathers flew!!  “Why does she always get to stay above water?”

Sylvia just smiled and let it roll like water off a ducks back… or should I say swan!

on the Fourth Day of Christmas

Since neither ATT, T-Mobile nor Verizon will give cell phone plans to birds, our fine feathered friends must resort to the few pay-phones there are left.

Promo complete

A detail of the back of my promo postcard I just finished, (the front looks like this) sent it to the printer and should get it Tuesday. Just in time for the L.A. Illustrator’s Day on Nov. 13th.

Weeeee! Making progress.

More promo

So this is the image I decided to use for my postcard, a tightly cropped version of one of my portfolio pieces. I still have to figure out the design of the back. I was thinking of having a black and white spot of another scene involving the teacher and the little girl.

Hmmm, what could it be?

Click if you’d like to see the whole image from the portfolio.

magic or juggling act?

Although there’s a bit more to the office/studio I share with my hubby, this here would be the part I stare at most of the day… sometimes blankly, sometimes sobbing with tears of frustration and sometimes cranking away feverishly on a plum project.

I do most of my illustrations digitally. However, there are times when a little painting, a little pastel, or perhaps a bit of graphite is in order. This is when I retire to ye ole garage studio… unless, of course, it’s a triple digit summer day. On those days I stick with digital, to avoid sweating profusely and consequently causing unsightly smearing on the artwork.

I’ll tell ya, it’s nice having the choice and the space to do it in.