potterweek prompts

 So I wanted to find something to work on this summer before I had a bunch of portraits to do for Christmas, but I was having trouble getting excited about any ideas.  Then I came across this weeklong challenge on Instagram, where participants drew pictures from the Harry Potter stories, following a series of themes throughout the week.
The list was posted a month in advance so some people had extra time to work on them; as for myself, I saw it about a day into the challenge, but I thought it would be a fun thing to join!
It was inspiring to see all the different ideas from other artists, and it was fun trying to come up with unique ideas that someone else didn't already do, especially since I was doing most of them a day or two late!
Okay, the last one I completed a week late, because I just didn't have time. I did learn I have a hard time simplifying an idea, and working under a deadline, because I only did two of them in one day, with several taking at least three days. It was a great challenge though!
Elora said she wanted to do it too, and she has one picture started that looks great so far, if she ever finishes it, I will post that one too. So, here are the drawings I did, along with the prompt I was following for that day.

1.This first one was the most liked of all the drawings, and it took the least time! Probably because it was early on in the challenge, so lots of people were looking at the entries. The prompt was, "Best friends".  This is about how Lily may have felt when her new friends in Gryffindor were bullying her former friend,Severus. It was a fun quick drawing done over one afternoon, with marker and colored pencil.
 



















2.The prompt was "Must be a Weasley". The polaroid (procured by Arthur I assume) photo is of Ginny's first broom ride, orchestrated by her brothers. But really this is about Molly's life as a mother. I figured wizard kids bring their mom rocks and shells and weeds just like muggle kids. This drawing took two days, and I thought it was really successful. I meant it to be simple, but I kept adding to it. 
 
















3. The prompt was "house colors." Lots of people were drawing themselves in Hogwarts colors, which I was originally going to do too. But the Pottermore website said I was in a completely different house than I thought (I assumed Ravenclaw, or possibly Hufflepuff, but it said Gryffindor.) 
      So I changed my plan, using a photo of Elora. I thought, " I'll draw a simple pic of a Ravenclaw in their common room tower window so it will be fast." But then, " I'll make it 11x14 so it takes three days."  This drawing took the longest of them all, and the curtains were the most time intensive. And then most people didn't like it, I assume because it didn't have bright colors. There are some things I kinda want to fix on it, but we'll see if I ever go back to it. This is all prismacolor pencil.

 


 4. I was way behind at this point, so I combined two of the prompts for this one, "misunderstood", and "flora and fauna". Also, I kept changing my mind about what to draw for the first one, and I had no ideas that were unique for the second one, until I had the idea of recycling the background from an old drawing, and putting Hagrid, Fang, and his cottage into the picture! This background works better for this subject than for the original anyway. I printed the original marker drawing out, then made Hagrid and the cottage out of marker, and glued them into the picture. The only issue I have is that the printer ink of the background didn't photograph the same as the fresh marker on the new elements. In life, they meld together better.

 5.The prompt was  "parental figures". One of the most touching parts of the story for me was when Harry used the resurrection stone and saw these parental figures walking with him, even though they were gone. This is Harry's parents, Lupin, and Sirius Black.
I tried to draw this in a simple style that I would wear on a shirt (probably because I was looking at teefury earlier.)
 

















6. The prompt for this was "Yer a wizard,Harry."  This is the morning after Harry meets Hagrid and they're leaving the barren rock where the Dursleys have spent the night. The storm has broken and that morning was truly the dawn of a new life for Harry.
.At this point the challenge was actually over, but I wanted to finish it, so I took my time coming up with an idea I liked, then I had to wait until I had time to work on it. At first I was going to do Diagon Alley, but everyone did that, or some version of Hagrid talking to Harry when he met him. I decided I wanted to do a landscape, and it turned out pretty good. This took two days, and it's all marker.

Elora's wow words

In Elora's fifth grade class this last year, they had a fun, ongoing assignment that was perfect for her. Every few weeks, they would get a W.O.W. word, or "Word of the week". They were given a definition and then had to create a drawing to go with the word, which was then displayed in the hallway until the next one.
They were given about a week to work on each one; some kids got done in one day, and Elora's teacher was nice enough to let her take as long as she wanted to finish hers...which was often at least two weeks. But she came up with some awesome pictures!
I've said it before, Elora already draws better than I could by ninth grade, and she is very creative. So I thought I'd post her "wow words" here for you to check out. Remember you can click on them to make it bigger.

She looked at the movie cover for "Aladdin" for clothing ideas on this one.

The sheriff is holding a small star badge and saying it's immaculate. Everyone in her class loved the vulture poop. Haha.She looked up photo references for the bird and the tumbleweed, so she could draw them correctly.

 For this one, she had me find a picture of the palace guards in England, to see how tall their hats are. The funniest part is the portrait on the wall, where the frame is full of a hat and eyes, instead of the face, Hilarious.

For this one, Elora knew she wanted to draw a goat, but was looking for an idea that would work. I showed her a Youtube video of a goat in a palm tree, and that's what she drew! She cut out some brown paper for the tree, and again found photo references for the goat and tree to draw them right.

I think the name of this class is funny. She loosely based the chef on the Sweedish chef from the Muppets.

I like how she made the different kinds of light in this one. She was trying hard to show colors as well as how dark it was in the room, not an easy feat. The window and stars turned out great!

I hope Elora gets to do more projects like this next year!

How to go down the giant slide: by River.

Climb the steps carefully; you don't want to fall.

 Make sure you have a good grip before you sit down!

Put your legs out straight. This is going to be fun!

Um, maybe lay your whole body down. It's kind of high...

Oh no, you've let go. Now you have to go all the way down.

 Ride down in terror for two seconds.

Yay! Lets do it again!

Flower girl

This drawing is called, "Flower Girl".
After the drawing of Joshua, I was tired of pencils and wanted to work with a different medium. So it is drawn with markers on 11x14 size paper. The picture is based on a couple of photos I took of River last fall; I made her hair longer to better reflect how she looks now.
This took a long time, mostly because I kept delaying drawing the figure because I was afraid of messing it up! My favorite parts are in the flowers, which turned out pretty great. The big flower that draws all the attention does have some issues, but I think it's overshadowed by the fun shapes and designs around it.


On the figure of the girl, I have some issues I don't like. For instance, I wish I'd chosen a different color to do the darkest shadows on her face; it seemed good at first, but it doesn't' quite blend with the other face colors very well. I think I need a wider variety of skin tones, but that's beside the point.
 I also really don't like her right arm (on the left side of the drawing). In the photo reference it was completely cut off, and I wish I'd have found a good reference of an arm instead of just drawing it freehand. Part of the problem is that I decided to make the arm wider after I'd already started coloring it, so there's a weird line that I can't get rid of through the center. Oh well.

Here are some work in progress photos. It's always interesting to see how the different lighting or the camera changes the color of the picture. I really tried to make it look accurate in the final finished photo; not so  much on these ones.

Originaly, I wasn't going to have any black outlining, because I wanted it to look more like a painting. But in the end, some elements needed to be more defined, and the pen really helped with that, most particularly on the flowers that cross in front of the overalls.

All in all, I really think it turned out well. What do you think?