Adult!Merida sketchbook fluff…  she would had never admitted to it but secretly she was glad her girls liked pretty pretty princess things and how happy it made Elinor.

I wonder why am I suddenly so suckered into this older Merida concept… probably because she was such a believable character I can see her having a real life after the movie.  Also I want to see her as a fierce queen.

I was stuck in the car for about eight hours over the weekend while going to visit the in-laws and my mind was just wandering around.  Part of me ships Merida with MacGuffin but part of me is like.. ehh.. it’s more likely she married some complete outsider or no-one at all.

So in one of the alternate versions I came up with Abderrahim.  The third son of an Iberian nobleman he chose the life of a scholar and was on his way back from drawing complete map of the Baltic Sea when the vessel he was traveling on capsized in an autumn storm and the few survivors floated to shore not far from Castle Dunbroch.  With her father’s health starting to fail Merida took to looking after the injured and before long the adventurous duo were inseparable and Abderrahim’s despair over his lost research forgotten as Merida showed him the Highlands.  Three years later at her coronation Merida announced that they were to marry.  Initially the clansmen disagreed but as Merida’s influence grew and Dunbroch and neighboring clans prospered beyond everyone’s expectations with the new trade routes to south the doubters were silenced.  This picture is Queen Merida and King Abderrahim on the tenth birthday of their firstborn twins, crown prince Fergus and crown princess Jamila. 

Oh there was a load of other stuff as well but another (story)time.

Recently I’ve come across some official Merida images for the Disney Princess lineup .  Currently looks like she’ll get the same sparkle treatment as the others with added off-the-shoulder dress and some mascara.  Another sexed-up Disney princess then.  Mhmm. 

They’re sort of a guilty pleasure though, as an adult I can’t help but enjoy and draw pictures of beautiful people since you know, there’s that whole psychological thing that seeing sexy people makes you feel sexy too (and it really doesn’t matter if they are imaginary princesses or tabloid celebrities because in a way they’re all on that same fantasy Hollywood plane, I’m as likely ever to meet Angelina Jolie as Merida) and on other hand the mum in me is screaming that there is no bloody way I will ever buy any of that merchandise to my kids because they don’t need any more appearance-obsessed pressures added to their future angsty teenage years.  /headdesk

Watercolour and brush pen sketch.

Toying around with ideas for a T-shirt for my daughter.  The official Disney princess shirts for little girls irk me slightly.  I can deal with how they’re fluorescent pink and sparkly but not with how the princesses on shirts are always either limited to 1-5 of them or they’re stuffed in so that some are hidden behind others.  Not to mention they are always depicted in their fancy ballgowns and their superficial beauty and wealth is glamorised (like the world’s not bombarding little girls enough with that crap already -although I have to give exception here to Merida and of course Pocahontas who doesn’t have a fancy dress as such but then she’s usually stuffed to the back line in group images or left out altogether so meh) while other more valuable princess traits like kindness, perseverance, courage, generosity, thirst for knowledge etc. are for the most part ignored. 

She’s like a little forest animal.

#firstworldproblems

This was supposed to be a speedpaint practice and I was supposed to spend 15mins but then my husband put some Big Bang Theory episodes on and it became something along the lines of “done over 1.5hrs of watching BBT”…