Children's Books

click to enlarge

I love the www.illustrationfriday.com theme this week.  I have a lot of fun illustrating for children.  The top self portrait is my own personal take on a favorite childhood book.  The Princess and the Pea.  I so relate to her delicate sensibilities!  Obviously, if I were a princess my world would include exotic leopards, Scarlet macaws and ruby red tiaras. The only flaw is the hurdle of getting up in the night to go to the bathroom.  And the neck cramps from sleeping on that stiff looking circular velvet pillow.  I guess every fairy tale is fractured.   

Here I am at princess training school.  A.K.A prom.

Here I am again.  Do you see the tiara through the fog?  Dreams really do come true.  At least in my head. 

Go to the Mattresses

 This is my favorite self portrait.  It's a take on my childhood favorite the Princess and the Pea.  And it couldn't be more appropriate for this sensitive artist.  Sigh.  I used my Wedding tiara for the crown.  If it wasn't so self indulgent I'd use this for my facebook profile shot.  We all should be allowed to be princess for a day at least, right?  Then I would have to take it down I suppose.  I've posted this for www.illustrationfriday.com before.  But it fits the heights theme.  You can't be afraid of heights to sleep in that bed!  In reality I wouldn't want to sleep up there because of midnight bathroom trips.  Especially in a dark and damp old castle.  And where's the bed space for my handsome prince? 

The LAYERS of a King and a Princess

I've been waiting for a reason to start posting some of this year's photos of the Mayan ruins in Belize. And today's http://www.illustrationfriday.com/ gave me a fun tie in. My self portrait illustration, Princess and the Me was a wildly fun and self indulgent portrait I did for the CBIG website. You can click to enlarge to see details. Besides the Princess part it couldn't be more fitting to portray my sensitive personality. Of course the layers of mattresses are what fit the theme!

Now for the journey to see the King's digs. That's our rental car taking the short ferry ride across the river to Xuantunich in Belize.

Belize is a country filled with large and small Mayan sites. Most are still unexcavated. Xuantunich was the first site we visited on our trip. And it also has the 2nd tallest pyramid in the country. When the sites are first discovered they are usually completely buried beneath the jungle. They basically look like a hill underneath the jungle growth.

Layers!

An interesting fact about this carved frieze is that what you see is a reproduction. The original was reburied underneath the ground to preserve it.

When we were sitting at the top of the temple we thought,"We're on vacation now!" There were armed guards flanking the top as well. And we discovered later that they were there because of this temple's close proximity to the border between Belize and Guatemala.

Sometime soon I'll post photos of an awe inspiring site we visited in Guatemala called Tikal.

I told you I was a Princess!

You'll probably think I'm 100 years old by how faded the top picture is. It's a mini me. I think I was given my first crown in a very, very offical ceremony. And I got so many roses I could barely hold them all. Then at a later ceremony I'm shown with my future husband. You can't imagine what I had to do to get out of my arranged marriage with him! We're carrying our crowns and it's all very serious. Of course I'm not being serious at all. As you may have guessed it looks suspiciously like prom. No wonder I'm painting myself as a princess. I never went on to become prom queen!

Princess and the Me

After seeing this self portrait, it probably comes as no surprise that Halloween is my favorite holiday. I used to make elaborate costumes and celebrate in style. But I never was a princess. So I finally got to live out that fantasy or at least paint it. I joked in an earlier blog post that I wasn't sure if my pet leopard was lovingly looking up at me. Or he just might be waiting for me to jump off the bed. (So he can have me as a snack.) But either way, no fantasy is complete without some exotic pets. I saw my first wild Scarlet Macaw in Costa Rica this year. So I had to include an exotic bird in the mix. But this princess would definately let the Macaw chart her own flight path around the castle. No cages for sure. I wouldn't have to clean up the mess! I did have another less indulgant reason for painting this portrait. You can check out Mermaid Me and many other artists on http://www.childrens-illustrators.com/