Papapapapapa WIP

(Real title, "Papapapapapa! WIP." )

PLEASE comment if you fave! I worked hard on this.

All right, I'm going to try to take part in the 100 Picture Challenge, or whatever it's called here. Basically, you draw one picture each for one of 100 themes. I just started learning how to draw human faces about two months ago. I was going to hold off on entering the challenge until I'd gotten bodily postures down better, but figured that if I waited that long I'd never get anywhere. So I know I still need a lot of work. Maybe doing this challenge will help me improve, maybe not. I like to hope that maybe someday I'll be able to redo this picture and it'll look a whole lot better. For now though, it's much better than what I could have done a couple of months ago.

This illustrates a scene from Part 13 of Escape From Manitou Island [link] and pictures the theme of "Family." There are lots of family themes throughout the series, including many featuring Manabozho, but I decided to do a picture of an atypical family--'Bozho and his urchiny, chatterbox little daughter, Turtle, who was abandoned by her mother with a human woman after her birth (Manabozho didn't know about her yet). It's obvious from the following scene that 'Bozho's not exactly father of the year material...but considering that he spends the rest of the series going to the ends of the Earth just to get Turtle back from her kidnapper, I think he'll do okay.

If he could only stop dropping her.

This scene picks up immediately after Turtle has thrown herself at a tree which then...apparently explodes.

This is just the inked sketch. I cropped off a bit of the background for now. I'm planning on filling it all in with colored pencil, as that's the only medium I have, that and a photo program which mangles my pictures when I resize and try to up the saturation a bit. Really need a better photo program...

Anyway...the next theme I believe is "Creation" and I already have it inked in.

This will be scrapped later on when I upload the finished version. Just wanted to put this in my gallery to brag a bit. You can see more characters from this story in my scraps, BTW.

Criticism not desired as I already know all the flaws this has, thank you very much.

*****

Charmian gasped and jumped back, Thomas doing the same, as soon as the little pine tree beside the trail seemed to explode, taking Turtle with it. A blinding glare hurt her eyes, and a booming noise filled her ears; after a second she lifted her head, her eyes stinging, and gawked at the plumes of smoke now rising from where the tree had previously stood. Her vision immediately blurred.

"TURTLE!" she and Thomas both yelled.

She felt her muscles tense, to run forward and start searching the ground, even though she suspected that she would find nothing more than fragments...what sort of awful manitou would do such a thing to a little girl?...when she noticed that, as the smoke cleared, there were no little fragments lying about on the ground after all. Instead, she found herself staring at a pair of moccasins, and she blinked. Her eyes roamed upward, until she saw that someone was standing there; then she gasped and jumped back again, running into Thomas.

The smoke drifted upward, and she at last saw Turtle, clutched in someone's arms; the girl was beaming from ear to ear, the happiest look imaginable on her face. A coughing noise commenced, and Charmian's stare drifted upward with the smoke, until she could just barely make out the face of the person holding her. He coughed in the receding smoke and then started blinking blearily, looking around himself as if lost, and then glancing down at Turtle and giving her a venomous glare. Charmian's eyes went wide and she took a step forward.

"Manabozho!"

Manabozho's head jerked up and his eyes fixed straight on hers. Then they went wide as well, and he immediately dropped Turtle so that she hit the ground with a thud. "Charmian--?!" he practically yelped, looking as if he wanted to vanish into nothing. He even hurriedly put out his leg to nudge Turtle behind him and took a step in front of her, but Charmian didn't even notice. She was too busy grinning and running at him, throwing her arms around his waist. He blinked a few more times before starting to sputter; she beamed up at him gleefully.

"I was HOPING I'd run into you!" she cried. "And you were pretending to be a TREE this whole time--?"

"That's our favorite game!" Turtle exclaimed, popping back into sight; she came out from behind Manabozho's leg and grinned, half of her teeth still missing. "The Pretend-To-Be-A-Tree game! Papa's REAL good at it! And I'm REAL good at finding him! I find him all the time--the only time he fooled me for long was when he appeared as a rock, and I couldn't find him, because I was looking for a tree, not a rock, so of course I was real confused and had to keep looking and then I--"

"She's yours?" Charmian exclaimed, glancing down at Turtle and then back up at Manabozho; his face went brilliant red but all that she did was grin again. "I didn't even RECOGNIZE her! She's gotten so BIG! No wonder she has wings--she's part Michinimakinong, isn't she!" She let go of Manabozho and he started rubbing at his neck as if it hurt, a scowl on his face.

"What're you doing here?" he grumbled.

Charmian gave an amused snort. "Well, hi to you, too! I came back just to see you guys!" She gave Turtle a mock glare. "How come you never TOLD me your dad is Manabozho--?"

"You KNOW each other?" Turtle cried, and started promptly hopping up and down. "Paaapaaaaa! You never told me you KNEW each other!"

Manabozho bristled. "We only just MET again! How was I supposed to--"

"I kind of thought you'd be a bit happier to see me," Charmian interrupted genially. "Though I guess I understand it, coming from you!" Her face screwed up. "Were you hiding from me--? Dressed up like a pine tree like that--?"

He bristled again. "No, I wasn't HIDING from you! I was hiding from--" He sputtered and grimaced, Turtle climbing diligently up his leg. He was forced to put his arm out and she happily perched upon it, digging under the collar of her dress. "I was--just watching," he amended himself with a scowl. "Since when is watching such an awful thing to do--?"

Charmian frowned a little, then shrugged and smiled. "I guess since never! So--how've you been doing lately? You two hang out together a lot?"

"Always," Manabozho said between his teeth, just as Turtle thrust something in his face. They all stared at the little clay container dangling from a leather thong as she waved it before his eyes, grinning cheerily. Manabozho frowned a little, just as Charmian had, and reached up to poke at it with one finger.

"I got you something, Papa!" Turtle stated, nodding proudly.

Manabozho's look shifted to one of mild unease mixed with curiosity. "Got me something...?"

"Uh-huh!" She pulled the tiny stopper out of the clay container and held it up before his eyes; he blinked into it. Immediately the expression of curiosity fled his face, and he looked as if he were ready to slip into a coma.

"It's dirt!" Turtle explained, and nodded again as if to prove her point. "I gathered it myself! From the Island! And put it in this little jar!" She capped it again and dangled it. "You wear it around your neck like THIS! So you can always have a little piece of the Island with you!"

"Dirt," Manabozho echoed, his voice flat, and took the necklace. "Lovely."

"Aw," Charmian said, smiling again. "I think it's sweet." Turtle grinned at her, cheeks dimpling, but the look that Manabozho gave her was indescribable; she started laughing. "You have to admit, it's pretty smart, for a--well--however old she is," she added, rubbing at the back of her neck with some confusion.

"I thought it up all by myself!" Turtle exclaimed, then turned to Manabozho and tugged on his feathers. "Papa! Papa! Papapapapapapapa--"

"WHAT?" Manabozho just about roared. He pulled her off of him and tried tucking her under his arm but she promptly crawled up his back and onto his shoulder.

"Papapapapapapapa," she said in his ear. "I wanted to ask you something! They're going to the Sky Tree, see, and I wanted to go back, but I forgot to ask you the last time, and I know you worry about me a lot, so I thought I'd ask, and then you wouldn't worry, and everything would--"

"Why would I worry." He tried pulling her off of him again and Charmian had to stifle a laugh at the awful look on his face.

Manabozho is from Ojibwa mythology. Charmian, Thomas Leeds, and Turtle are © Tehuti.