Tuesday 18th February

Today's story for 14:14
Wombat Went A’ Walking

Text ©: Hachette Australia

Illustrated by: Lachlan Creagh

Publisher: Lothian Children’s books

Year of publications: 2011

Soft cover

Readership: Preschool 

Main characters: Wombat and other Australian Animals

 

 

Overview

 The Illustrations in this book are its saving grace. The illustrations are fabulous, capturing the Australian landscape and Australian animals beautifully. The variety in colour makes the pictures leap off the page. The artist captures the character's personalities and allows them to emerge through the vibrancy and movement of the art , as opposed to through the text.  

I tried to read this book out loud and stumbled over it. Even when my children played the piece of music (frog went a courting) it still did not flow in anything other than a clunky manner and I am very good at making lyrics fit odd tunes but not this one. Thank fully the illustrations make the book a cute frolic and if the adult reading the book dispenses with the text and makes up their own story then it could be fun.I would suggest a once only borrow from the library if only for the sake of the pictures. 

Apparently there are other books with Wombat as the main character.

http://www.wombatwentawalking.com.au/

So on to art. Starting tomorrow the 52 week challenge is focusing on crosshatching and I suggested to other participants new to crosshatching that they could take a photo of a loved one, turn it into a sketch in their paint program, make it very faint, print it out and practice cross hatching on the print. Someone asked if I could show them what I meant so here is my contribution. Thank fully there are hundreds of wonderful videos online from very skilled people who are willing to share their talents to teach us. :)

 

The first is the photo of my darling daughter in her cosplay costume and gloves. The second is the ink sketch effect from the paint program and the third is the cross hatch of the faint photo copy. Cross hatch is a fun way to produce light and shadow and I found this a quick and effective demonstration. 

I arrived on FB this evening to discover totally accidentally that I had been the second choice in a judged writing competition. Not exactly a competition but a weekly prompt with judges.

This a a cut off version of the winners badge and the link is at
 http://thetsuruokafiles.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/mid-week-blues-buster-week-48-winners/

This was for my flash fiction story 'Mellow' about the woman on holiday.

I keep promising myself I will finish the edit on my YA novel but I was asked to give an appraisal for someone else's novel (a paid gig) and also approached to illustrate a chapter book(also paid gig if I get it). I will get mine finished if I organise my time effectively.