Nina's High School Sketchbook, Vol 6 - and Writing Contest Winners!

First things First...

Last week I finished up showing off my favourite pieces from 2003 and celebrated by hosting a small writing contest! Unfortunately I had only two entries, but what a great two entries they were. Thank you very much to @holothewise and @redwellies for taking the time to create a submission - it was REALLY hard for me to choose between the two stories, they were both full of backstory and character and were super entertaining!

You can read both entries here:

@Holothewise: https://steemit.com/writing/@holothewise/the-daemons-of-life-are-getting-old
The dark end of a dark lady, who willingly took on the title of Mistress of Succubi...

@redwellies: https://steemit.com/writing/@redwellies/my-entry-for-derosnec-s-writing-contest-the-daemons-of-life-are-getting-old
Reminiscing her lush social life from her youth, her demons clearly caught up with her...

Winner at the bottom of this post!

Sunday Artday!

And now back to our regularly scheduled program! This week I'm showcasing some of my favourites from 2004. I actually had quite a bit of art in 2004, but many of them were quite large and the quality of my current photos aren't great, so I'll have to dig up the originals and take proper photos at some point. But here's some to chew on until then:

Ameliaplat

Ink, Coloured Pencils
This was a birthday present for one of my friends, who loved platypuses (platypi?) and who's dad was a professional bowler - so of course she herself was an incredible bowler. Who says a platypus can't bowl?

Tablet Lizard

Photoshop
I wouldn't say this is exactly a great piece, but it's significant in that it was my first digital piece done with a tablet. I saved up for months to get that thing (a wacom graphire 3) and I used it like crazy. It lasted me a whole 8 years and honestly would've kept working if I hadn't accidentally upgraded my computer to High Sierra. Damn you, Apple, and your depreciating of perfectly good drivers!!

Real Siamese Death

Graphite Pencil
This was about the time where I started actually being aware of global politics/culture and started forming my own opinions. Having grown up on TV I started realizing just how fake and superficial the mainstream media was, and that sentiment started showing up a lot in my sketchbook.

Toulouse

Acrylic on Canvas Board
In high school, I also volunteered as a junior zoologist at the San Francisco Zoo - where I worked with animals and educated public for 8 years. In the downtime, I got a lot of animal sketching in, and since the majority of my time was spent happily with the raptors (birds of prey.. not dinosaurs) I ended up doing a lot of bird pieces in art class - I just had so much reference! Here is a portrait of Toulouse Lautrec, the Turkey Vulture who was the resident vulture when I was working there.

Othello

Ink, Coloured Pencil
When your mom is an opera singer, you end up seeing a lot of operas. One of her boyfriends and fellow San Francisco Opera chorus singers had a birthday and of course I made him a present because he was awesome. Othello was his favourite, so I put this together for him. I still need to work on my freehand text...

The Contest Winners!!

Again, this was tough, I loved reading both of them. But there can only be one winner, and the winner is....

@holothewise! Congrats, you win 2SBD!

Thank you both for entering, and hopefully we'll get a bit more competition going on the next one (though believe me, choosing between your two stories was REALLY hard)! I loved the prose and writing style of @redwellies' entry, and the detail of backstory that @holothewise came up with... Such a tough decision!

As for the rest of you, thanks again for checking out my posts - you're all awesome. I got a lot more on the way so stay tuned! :D