Project Cover the Walls

Hello blog world! To the left is an icon of John Green. I thought it was coincidentally appropriate that he'd be the next icon. This post is late, by like, a week. But eh, oh well. lol.





Yay! I rock! "noxy rocks" is something I've always said, so I giggled when I saw this slogan show up. lol. -- that's an old signature I used to use on a forum years ago. lol.

That's a picture of my front yard. Notice the lovely circular mowing pattern. This was the first time I've ever mowed the lawn. lol. I had no frickin CLUE what I was doing. I asked for advice from my dad and he said he usually starts at the circle. He failed to mention that he STOPS mowing in a circle and goes to a simple back and forth pattern. I think I'd prefer doing that next time. It sounds less complicated. lol. But it looked cool. Dad thought so too. lol.


That's my brother, holding up the phonebook he just ripped in half. It took him a while to understand HOW to do it, but once he caught on, it only took a couple seconds. He was so proud of himself, and immediately went looking for more phonebooks to try it on. lol.

And here's my brother watching NCIS. Teehee. Um... nope, no reason for me to show you this picture. Just felt like sharing. :)

So, I spent a couple of weeks on a project. I'm a bit tired of all the white space on my walls, so I figured I'd make my own mini posters. I might have mentioned this in a previous post. The thing is, I made a dozen or so, and it doesn't cover much. *sigh*


But hey, I thought I'd share them. Hehe. If you watch me on dA, you've seen most of them already. Sadly I didn't have a scanner available to me, so I had to take pictures with a camera. Which means the quality of the pictures won't look as nice as they do in real life.

This one is called Always. I love Harry Potter. I'm not a crazed, fanatic, rabid fangirl, but I am a fan. And I wanted to represent HP on my walls. If you have not read the book, I don't want to spoil it, so I'll try to be vague. Snape is a favorite character of mine. Always has been. Most HP fans would not feel the same way. The reason I do is simple. I did not read the first books when they first came out. I read the first 5 Harry Potter books shortly before its corresponding movie came out. I read the first book the day before the first movie, because I wanted to go and see it with two of my friends - who were big Harry Potter fans and were watching it opening night. Which means, I'd already seen commercials. I'd already seen who was playing the main characters, and of all of them, I recognized one actor first - Alan Rickman - Snape. I love Alan Rickman. He's awesome. So, naturally, I didn't want him to be the bad guy. lol. Even in book six, as I cried my eyes out, I was still telling myself "NO! He's a good guy dammit. He's a good guy!!" This scene is pulled out of book seven. And the title is a quote from later on in the same book. I actually based this pic on one I saw on deviantArt. Mine's crappier, but I still love it.


This one I named Anglerfish, because the name of the song is "A Song About Anglerfish." I love this song. The stars in the "night" and the little glowy ball on the anglerfish both glow in the dark. A lot of the posters I made are vlogbrother related.


Only two are Harry Potter related. I wasn't sure what kind of posters to make. I knew I wanted at least one more HP one though. And so I came up with an advertisement poster for Bertie Botts. I looked up the designs for the RL jellybeans online, and chose the one I liked best. I altered it slightly. I changed the jellybeans to look more like the ones in the actual package. I also learned something - don't use watercolor markers over acrylic paint if you plan on painting over the marker. Apparently, the marker bleeds in to the paint you put over it.... forever. FOREVER. I put dozens of layers over the marker, and if you look closely, you can still see parts of the red that are purple and parts of the yellow that are green. That's one good thing about the crappy quality of the photo - you can't tell it here. And I suppose you have to look closely to see it in RL. All the same, it annoys me.


This one is Dancing. It's not based on anything. I just wanted to draw a picture of a girl dancing in the dark. I had originally intended to paint this one, but decided to keep it a pencil drawing instead. I colored her dress red a little with a red colored pencil.


Dandelions Fly Through Blue Air. Another Hank Green song. DFTBA means Don't Forget to be Awesome. It's sorta the vlogbrothers' and their followers' (nerdfighters) motto. But often folks who've never encountered nerdfighters before have no idea what DFTBA means. So a few nerdfighters helped write lyrics - other possible meanings for "DFTBA". My favorite was this one. There are so many great ones though. Next round of "Project Cover the Walls" might include more. lol.



Doug. I love disney movies. And Disney Pixar movies can do no wrong. Up was probably the Disney movie I cried the most during, (we're talking disney movies here) because I'm over emotional and can cry at the drop of a hat, (if it's a really nice hat and the owner never sees it again) and there's a few sad parts in that one. But I still love it. And Doug is definitely my favorite character. I have Up playing on my tv right now. lol. :) I drew Doug and decided to just use colored pencils for him because I wanted to take a break from paint.


Drowning. Another piece that's not based on anything. I just wanted to make a picture with a girl drowning. Actually, at first, she was just falling. But it evolved in to drowning. I've always been fascinated by water, and drowning in particular. Mainly because I had a near-drowned experience when I was younger. This one isn't on my dA account. It was... too personal for me to display I think. And I hate the quality of it. It's all wrinkly because I diluted all the paints I used with water before painting, and since I painted the entire page, the paper got wrinkly. *shrug*


Giselle. Heee. Enchanted is another favorite Disney movie of mine. The pose and scenery is based off of about 6 minutes in to the movie. In the movie Giselle is actually climbing a tree to escape an ogre, not stopping to pose and smile. But hey, I didn't want to paint the ogre. lol.
I'm not a fan of her face, I think I could have done better. But it's hard to erase mistakes in paint. You can still tell it's her if you've seen the movie though, so all is well.


Fail Whale. For those unfamilar with the fail whale, it shows up on Twitter when there's a problem with the site. I hate that whale. And I don't think those birds should be trying to... what, rescue him? Kidnap him? How is the whale failing exactly? Whatever. I depicted the whale falling to his death because the strings the birds were holding him with broke. Now, would the whale actually die after being dropped from not so high a height right back in to the water? I dunno, but hey, a girl can dream.


Keep on Dancin'. Another vlogbrothers reference. This was actually the last poster I made, and it was one I did without planning. Before I started the Project, I made a list of all the things I wanted to include. This one was not on the list, because this particular video came out after the Project started. The vlogbrothers gave each other rules to abide by when doing their videos. When they break a rule, they face a punishment. "Famous" past punishments include John having to wax his beard and eat a blenderized happy meal. This current video was a punishment. He needed to make a fitness for nerds video. In the video, he's wearing aqua leggings, argyle socks, purple women's gym shorts, and a cutoff girl's sweatshirt that says "Keep on Dancin'" on it. Hehe.

Just a Face. This... is just a face. I saw the face in a magazine and wanted to draw it. Then I colored in her lips and eyes a bit with colored pencil. I like the result.


Paris. I didn't do this one during the project. I did this one for the French the Llama project. I decided to put it up on my wall.


Another one that's not on the dA account. That's just because it's not really a painting of anything special. I mean, I love the Philip deFranco Show, but I couldn't find a logo or anything that I liked, except for this one. Someday I'll get that shirt. lol. I wrinkled it on purpose, because when I painted the paper gray, it was while I was waiting for another painting to dry. I sketched out the letters in pencil, and then I put it aside. When I finished the other painting, I went looking for the gray paper, and couldn't find it! I got frustrated. I sat down on my bed to think... and sat on the paper. It came out relatively unharmed, except for one corner that had folded over. I didn't like that it folded, but I didn't want to paint another sheet of paper gray, and I didn't want to have to draw on the letters... so I crinkled it. Yeah... yeah... I could have just trimmed the fold off, but it was too close to the letter. Meh.

You can also see some peeps in this picture. I made 8 peeps. That's another inside joke from the vlogbrothers. Earlier on, I think it may have been a punishment where it started, Hank had to eat as many peeps as he could in a certain amount of time. Or was it John? Either way, they both end up doing it, and both end up eating right around the same amount. lol. So yeah, I needed peeps. There's 2 pink, 2 yellow, 2 purple, and 2 blue. And they're all bird peeps, because I like them better than the others - visually speaking. Peeps are nasty. lol.


Quote. Not on my dA, just because it's only a quote. It was in a video where John Green is ranting about plastic surgery I think. lol.


Remy. Another colored pencil drawing. I should have painted this one, because you can barely see Remy in the pic in RL. I think Ratatouille is actually my second favorite movie. My favorite movie changes from time to time, because great movies come out all the time. My current favorite movie is the A-Team. It's possible the A-Team might fall back to number two eventually and Ratatouille or another movie might creep up to the top of the list, but eh, for now, that's the standing. lol.


Stitch. I LOVE Lilo and Stitch. I remembered that while I was painting Toothless, because Toothless looks SO much like Stitch sometimes. So I popped in the movie and watched it, trying to find a nice screenie in my head to paint. This one is from the end. When the movie finished, I rewound and paused for the reference. This was one of the last paintings I was doing - actually it's the one I was doing during the Philip deFranco one. I did NOT feel like painting the red background around Stitch. And I couldn't just paint the entire sheet red and then sketch Stitch, because I already sketched him. So I ended up painting Stitch, painting another sheet all red, Then I used an exacto knife to cut Stitch out and glue him to his red background. lol.


Toothless. He was the first poster I did. I had sketched him out on a scratch piece of paper, but liked it so much I decided to paint him. I diluted the black paint to paint him. He was supposed to be a lot lighter. The whole painting was supposed to be lighter. But, like I said, it was a scratch piece of paper I drew him on to. On the back, I had scribbled crayon. And then, out of curiosity, I microwaved it, to see if it would have any effect on the wax crayon. It didn't look like it, but apparently it had an effect on the paper beneath the scribble. The color didn't bleed through, but the wax did. So when I painted Toothless, the area with the scribble on the other side showed up on THIS side as unpainted. An AWESOME thing to know, and I might apply it to a poster in the future, but I did NOT want that here. So I tried applying less water to the black paint and making him darker. Then again. In the end, I had to cut out a piece of paper big enough to cover the scribble and glue it over, then paint that to match. You can barely tell in the picture above, it's right under his chin and goes down almost to the middle of his neck. And you can't notice the patch in real life unless you're really close to it. The stars and his eyes glow in the dark. lol.


That's the last of the paintings. Funny that the last painting would be the first one I actually painted. I had them in somewhat alphabetical order though, so eh.

It's not the last of the things I made for the wall though....

I made this. You may recognize it from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Or if you read my blog from the beginning, here. I made the simple graphic on my puter a few years ago for my Gryffindor Student costume. Then I threw my friend's picture in the middle and printed it out on coffee-stained, 8 1/2" x 14" paper. I loved the graphic, and wanted to use it again. I also happened to STILL have some of the coffee stained paper, so yeah. I removed my friend from the picture, and made the "empty box" bigger.

Then I cut out a piece of poster board that was the same size as the paper, then cut out the middle, where I put a mirror in. Then I cut out the empty square on the paper and glued it to the poster board/mirror. I dunno if any of that made sense, but yeah. Basically, it's now a mirror. lol. I put the empty square back up, so I could take a picture of it and NOT have a picture with me holding the camera.


I made slight alterations though. I would be a witch, not a wizard. But when I tried to change the graphic on the puter BEFORE I printed it out, I decided I reeeally liked the way "wizard" looked better. So instead I printed it out as it was, and then printed out "WITCH", "WOMAN", and "wo" on another sheet of paper, and taped them up accordingly. Heee.


I also wrote out "DFTBA" and cut them out to stick on the wall.


I am NOT a tidy person. And I personally feel that if I come off clean when painting, it was an unsuccessful piece. lol. This was just one day's work.


And THEN, I decided to try making a conjoined stuffed animal. That's based on another inside joke for the vlogbrothers. John Green has mentioned many times that he has "more books about conjoined twins than there ARE conjoined twins in the world" or something like that.
Tada, my conjoined stuffed cow. I have a tendency to buy more than one of something, when I often don't even need the one. I think I have four of these cows. And the first one I got was a gift, meaning I went out (on three different occasions) and bought the other cows, AFTER I already had one. Why? I. Have. No. Flipping. Idea. So I took two of them and performed surgery. hehe haha.


This is part of my wall where some of the paintings sit. The light switch has a cow sticker, an ED sticker, and four temporary tattoos of the Simpsons on it, but that's been there since forever. (Except the ED sticker, that's fairly new) Right above the light switch is a "sticker" of the Sons of Admirals. "Sticker" meaning I didn't want to make a big graphic of them, so I painted a small one and laminated it. Same with the Wheezy Waiter, (to the right of the SoA sticker) and the ALL CAPS one. (To the right of the pink feathers at the bottom) In between Wheezy and ALL CAPS is the World Suck Index - another vlogbrothers nod. And then to the right of ALL CAPS is a quote form the book Will Grayson Will Grayson by David Levithan and John Green:

i am like
a dead begonia
hanging upside down
because
like a dead begonia
i don't give a fuck

ROFL. That poem is hilarious. The A-Team thinger is actually from the Murdock action figure packaging. I finally opened one. lol.


That's where my Dandelions poster is. And Colette and Jean Luc and Murdock. lol. Also a pink peep is on the puter monitor too. hehe.


This is where most of the other posters are. The paper along the Matrix poster says "Who the eff is Hank?" - another vlogbrothers joke. Apparently some folks were "joining in" to the vlogbrothers during John days, and so when he'd say "Good morning Hank!" They'd have no idea who he was talking to. So it became a question that John liked to answer in completely obscure ways.


And there's a zoomed out pic of the wall that got most of the posters.


And there we have it. Yay. I think eventually I'll have a Project to Cover the Walls 2. But not for a while. Now, it's past my bedtime. I must go to sleep. lol.