Category Archives: Books

Art and Drawing, Books, Mythology

Her life is her art.

2 Comments

Okay before I start, look at the image below.

 

 

Honestly I want everyone’s opinion on this because I, uhhh, I kinda, maybe, uh, drew…that. Yeah uh, so, umm what do you think? (Please leave a comment down below because I really want maybe some constructive criticism or another persons opinion you know?) This took me at least four hours to complete.

Including basic sketching, facial extents. positioning, undercoat/overcoat, base drafts, color testing, character dynamics, eye dynamics, figure shadowing, body shading, color dynamic process, creasing, shading, muscle development, blurring, smudging, positioning, hue saturation, brightness, recoloring, curving, color balance, sharpen extenuating, motion blur, opacity, and of course the Gaussian blur.

By the way, this drawing is of Percy Jackson one of my favorite book characters. He is a demigod of the Big Three, meaning his father is Poseidon, his three cousins are children of Hades or Zeus, two other very powerful Greek gods(I am currently working on a similar drawing of Annabeth Chase, another character from the book who is a Daughter of Athena and Percy’s best friend turned girlfriend.)  I decided to draw him because he and other characters from the book are very influential to me. Percy had a tough life even before finding out he was a demigod. He kept getting kicked out of schools, he had a abusive stepfather who *cough*drank*cough*alot*, he had terrible grades, his mother had a minimum wage and was working two part time jobs, he was constantly bullied, only had one friend, and was constantly wondering whether or not he would ever belonged somewhere where he could be accepted. Have I made you cry yet? Okay lets continue!

Ever since hitting Camp Half Blood(aka the only place safe for demigods and satyrs alike. As well as the place I want to live in besides Hogwarts.) He had discovered he inherited powers to control water(you know control tsunamis and cause them. bend water, breath underwater, you know the normal stuff)he meets his new best friend(and crush but she doesn’t know that yet)Annabeth Chase and goes on a quest with her so he can convince Hades and Zeus that he did not steal Zeus’s lightning and he shouldn’t suffer a a slow and painful death and watch everyone he ever loved die in front of him and disintegrate. May I remind a twelve year old kid had to deal with ALL OF THIS.

OH AND THERE’S MORE.

For the next four books(in the last one he is sixteen)he goes on a bunch of quests, saves a bunch of people, fights in a war, almost watches his best friend die on his account, sees that a bunch of other demigods have died in the war, declines immortality, holds the sky, fights a bunch of gods, gets ignored by his dad, almost dies a couple of times, totally normal. After the PJO books ended I discovered that there was a second series. AKA MY HAPPINESS. It is called Heroes of Olympus and basically Percy and Annabeth are dragged into another prophecy:

Seven half bloods shall answer the call

To storm or fire the world must fall

An oath to keep with a final breath

And foes bear arms to the doors of death.

Hera(THE GREEK GODDESS I WISH WOULD FALL INTO TARTARUS HERSELF)wipes Percy’s memory cleaner than a whiteboard, he stumbles upon a Roman demigod camp called SPQR where he is turned praetor and meets Frank and Hazel a son of Ares and a daughter of Hades. They go on this epic quest to find Leo Valdez, Piper McLean, Jason Grace, and Annabeth Chase. The other four demigods in the prophecy.  OH YEAH AND THERE’S SOMETHING ELSE. Percy, even with his memory being wiped out by THE MOST POWERFUL GODDESS IN OLYMPUS, he still remembers Annabeth. Every single bit about her. See this is how loyal and loving he is and he sacrifices so much. Oh my god every time I think of it I just want to just AAAAHHHHHHH THERE SO CUTE TOGETHER OH MY GODS WHY.

you know, there’s that tiny dark part of me thats just a full on Aphrodite girl who fangirls over every cute couple in sight.

Anyway. Percy and Annabeth FINALLY reunite in the Mark of Athena. Annabeth befriends Reyna, the other Roman Praetor. They both try working together to reunite both demigod camps to fight against Gaea. But Athena just had to pick Annabeth to go into a pit of death and darkness to retrieve the Athena Parthenos so the entire demigod population doesn’t die. No pressure right?

This fandom is making me insane.

The reason Athena picked Annabeth to follow the Mark of Athena is because Annabeth is the most powerful and wittiest Athenian demigod. Percy doesn’t want Annabeth to leave because they had just reunited and he did not want to risk losing his other half once more. But alas, against Percy and the rest of the Sevens wishes Annabeth goes onto her quest that is basically a suicide mission. After she recovers the sacred statue, gets interrogated by ghosts, breaks her ankle, survives falling at least seventy feet, and survives being eaten alive by spiders the size of fire trucks stacked on top of each other, she is safely in the arms of the other demigods of the prophecy. But she herself has her feet tangled into strong cobwebs and gets dragged into the pit of tartarus. Percy fortunately catches Annabeth but he is dangling on a ledge himself, he refuses to leave Annabeth so he falls into the landscape equivalent of a hellfire with Annabeth.

Honestly I wanted to rip the authors head of and throw it into an open fire because I was just like WHY U NOT WANT MY TWO FAVORITE CHARACTERS TO STRIVE. But i am to lazy to tell the rest of the series so I will just spoil it.

OOHH CLIFFHANGER

(BTW They survive)

So yeah, every time I just think about this specific characters story and instantly get happier when I feel like a failure. I have been struggling for quite a while to find my own art style but I have been practicing constantly, trying and trying because, my art is my life. Without my life would be boring and I would be nothing. So yeah thats basically it and this is probably going to be a daily thing with me posting my drawings. But there is a big problem now

Art is so vast.

But the human mind is oh so narrow.

Books, Writing

She counts the stars and calls them by name.

Leave a comment

So just recently, my English teacher assigned us a book report for this semester that seemed quite different from our other past book reports. We were all supposed to choose a book that had NOT been developed into a movie. Of course I started geeking out(unlike my other classmates)and went straight home grabbed my iPad and scrolled my list of books that I read already and looked for the ones that hadn’t been interpreted into a blockbuster film.( I wrote to Steven Spielberg and if you don’t know who he is[i doubt that you do]he is like THE BEST DIRECTOR EVER AND IS ONE OF MY IDOLS: Heres a picture:

Image result for steven spielberg

 

So awesome oh my gods. Anyway back to the post)

Of course, if you know me well enough, THAT LIST OF BOOKS IS EXTREMELY LONG. And I started that what, a year ago probably. My eyes lingered on the title of one of my favorite trilogy ever- Across the Universe by Beth Revis. I instantly start my eight inch by eight inch poster and finish the pretend letter i had to write about why this movie should be produced. Remember its PRETEND. Anyway this is a very short letter in my opinion but I showed it too my teacher and my teacher liked it so it was all good.

Oh my god.

I just realized.

this report.

is due

in

two

months.

What the heck?!

Wellp that was disappointing, but anyway read on and yeah. Whatever. Dont judge me. Plz.

Dear Mr. Spielberg,

Recently I have started reading many sci-fi novels that seem to have a vibe and feel that truly encapsulated me into the story. Of course I myself(when I capture the spare time)enjoy reading many books but tend to have a bit of trouble picturing such convoluted situations in my mind do to the many details that seem to yet be the key to understanding either the story, the characters, and or the setting.

Recently(from a close friend’s eager suggestion, and from my own willingness)I bought the science fiction/drama series Across the Universe. This trilogy truly made me understand the importance of truth, sacrifice, and of course keeping a steady state of mind and composure when in a situation that may or may not affect the nearing future. The author Beth Revis wrote the emotions of the two astounding characters Amy and Elder, separating both their point of views in alternating chapters in the book.

Hundreds of years in the future, scientists and engineers built a massive ship by the name of Godspeed to go into deep space to a earth-like planet. On board are over 100 settlers from earth who were willing to be frozen into a capsule and put to sleep for three hundred years so they can awake to be greeted by the new planet they are to soon discover. The population of the cryogenically frozen span from doctors to scientists. Essential people needed when discovering the new planet(to study specimens, in case of finding other life and in the need to fight or if sudden death occurs and the cause of the death thus the need to investigate it, etc).

Amy Martin, seventeen year-old daughter of a military officer(her father) and a bio scientist(her mother)decides to leave her life behind on earth and go aboard the ship so she can stay with her parents though he parents let her decision hers and hers only. She is leaving behind her friends, her love, and any chance of every having a normal life(as well as other elements she starts to miss later in the story).But Amy wakes up early a few hundred years without knowing how or why. She finds herself amongst a  utopian like society, the people born on the ship over the generations. Soon she meets Elder. The ships future leader and the only other teenager on board. Amy resents being in a ship and yearns for a chance to be released, to feel normal again. She and Elder are in a race against time as they must solve a murder mystery and save the ship that they are aboard which is housing more than six hundred citizens, and prevent it from breaking down a third through the journey in space. But Elder is keeping a deadly secret from Amy that could threaten her future, as well as corrupt the close relationship Elder built with Amy. But there’s something both teenagers don’t know about the ship that they are currently aboard. A secret only the affiliation supporting this degenerating ship seems to know but for Amy and Elder to soon find out.

I think this would be a movie worth filming because it shows the true struggle when someone sacrifices so many things just for one chance. Almost everything hidden from the readers in the start of the book are revealed spontaneously close to the closing of the first book and the starting of the second one. It shows the growing relationship between two teenagers from completely different worlds-literally. Amy learns to finally accept the fact that this is what she needs to get used to, while in the meantime Elder already has though he is still realizing his emotional awareness of his newfound partner in both the mysteries they must uncover-and life.

I hope you take this story into consideration and work for the film because this is truly a story that should be portrayed in the form of a motion picture.

 

Sincerely,

 

Kanmani Harivenkatesh

So, um, yeah. That basically it so uhh. Bye.