YoinkTober 2020 - Prompts & Grossling Challenge

[wavewright62]

More messy fun with the brushpen, this time bringing you Sleipnope:


In which our amalgamated critter considers where they can find a creature with badass claws to incorporate, because these nails are just not cutting it.

Awwww, sweetness imagined by Jitter.
And allll the cats accommodated by thegreyarea, the best way to wear cats, but it does leave me wondering just what material that strong hat brim is made out of!  (And yeah?  I drew those cat hats on a plane, and I drew Sleipnope on a bench on a coastal walkway.  I'm travelling at the moment.  So long as I don't worry about "little things" like proportions or realistic placements, I can whip these things out spontaneously even without pencils.  I'm loving the swoopy lines I get with the brushpen.)
Grade E Cat comes to the party as well, huzzah, with the ongoing saga of the girl Kitty!

[Jitter]

I assume the hat brim is made of steel and doubles as a ranged weapon!

And I kind of agree with Sleipnope, the human hands don’t perhaps exactly look like instruments of destruction. They do however look a lot more terrifying to me, than clawed paws would!

[thegreyarea]

Great things here! I'll have to comment later.

Meanwhile here goes something that I promised someone very dear to me. It's not perfect but I think is good enough (or I wouldn't post it ) and it already waited too much time.

So here goes our nice reporter Rakel Valgeirsdottir and two equally nice boys she met in Reykjavik, having a good time together as told in Jitter's "Meanwhile in Reykjavik" story ( https://archiveofourown.org/works/26989501 )



I hope you like it. Butter Good!

[Jitter]

Hahaa, thank you Grey! You posted a bit early, Lalli and / or Emil is the prompt for the day after tomorrow

I'm flattered that you wanted to make an illustration! It is great! And I'm very happy you liked the story! We here at Jiiri's Shipping Unlimited aim to please our customers 

The story was for the Fandom for Australia exchange, i.e. Grey has paid for it. And another one which still isn't done. And here I am writing vignettes or... vigns? (Isn't "vignette" = little vign? So a big vignette is a vign??) Sorry. I hope you are entertained by these as well

[thegreyarea]

Hahaa, thank you Grey! You posted a bit early, Lalli and / or Emil is the prompt for the day after tomorrow

I'm flattered that you wanted to make an illustration! It is great! And I'm very happy you liked the story! We here at Jiiri's Shipping Unlimited aim to please our customers 

The story was for the Fandom for Australia exchange, i.e. Grey has paid for it. And another one which still isn't done. And here I am writing vignettes or... vigns? (Isn't "vignette" = little vign? So a big vignette is a vign??) Sorry. I hope you are entertained by these as well

Well, I feel better to imagine that I'm posting two days in advance than several days in delay for the OC prompt (that was the initial target for this pic...), so thanks!

I'm very happy that you like my little illustration! And I'm very happy with JSU services too! Of course any of your stories, even the smallest vignette, is worth much much more than that small donation to help our friends in Australia after all those wildfires, but I'm happy that I had the opportunity to give some suggestions, and happier that you liked them.

So, speaking of vignettes, I went to check:

Vignette (from the Longman online dictionary)
vi‧gnette /vɪˈnjet/ noun [countable] formal   
1 a short description in a book or play showing the typical features of a person or situation
2 a small picture or design at the beginning or end of a book or chapter
Origin: vignette (1700-1800) French vigne ( → VINE); because drawings in books often included vines
BTW In French it means a small decorative element that shows up in the first page or at the end of chapters, but AFAIK (my French is weak, at best) vignette is not used to describe a small vine.
So how we should call a big vignette? I would say that it's either a short written story or a full page illustration.
Did I tell you that I always loved dictionaries and discovering the meaning and origin of words?

[Lallicat]

Jitter, I love your bridge. It's sad to imagine all that those people had to sacrifice to survive.

Grade E Cat, I love your cat hat story; it's super sweet!

wave, your cat hats are adorable and your Sleipnope properly terrifying.

thegreyarea, your Sigrun cat hat is super cute, and I love the way you drew Rachel and the boys.

Unfortunately, I have had no inspiration for that last few prompts. I often have spurts of creativeness which then disappear overnight (almost like someone is opening and closing a faucet,) but I'll try to force myself to write something, though it will most likely not be great quality .

[Jitter]

Lallicat, I think that’s the original idea: to challenge yourself to create something even if you don’t feel like it. Maybe it won’t be your best piece, but it’s still practice!

Here’s some ice for you guys:




Hoia Halla hankiasi
Paukuttele* pakkasesi
Piä pahat pauloissasi
Lumen alla luonnottomat

See to your snow, Halla
Force your frost on forests
Take the trolls in your traps
Under snow the unnaturals

In Finnish, subzero temperature / weather is called “pakkanen” (as opposed to, say, frozen water, which is ice ”jää”). And when there’s lots of it, we say ”pakkanen paukkuu”, the frost crackles (or bangs). It’s probably half because of the alliteration but also very cold does cause trees and even houses to make noise that can be characterized as crackling or quiet bangs. So the Finnish literally says “let your frost crackle”.

Halla is the goddess or spirit of frost and freeze, the word means frost that comes too early or too late and may damage crops. So Halla was feared as she could easily drive the household to poverty or starvation. In the Known World she could however be considered an ally too as she binds the grosslings for winter. I am not sure whether she’s also keeper of snow or snowdrifts (hanki is snowdrifts or deep snow, snow in general is lumi) but she is now

Pictures are all taken last winter, clockwise from top left in Espoo; Levi (Kittilä, Lapland); Oulanka National Park in Kuusamo (at Kiutaköngäs rapids); Oulanka again; Fiskars village near-ish to here; somewhere in Eastern Finland (driving home to Espoo from Joensuu); Levi again; Koli in North Carelia, overlooking lake Pielinen; Ruka in Kuusamo. Photo in the middle is also Oulanka National Park in Kuusamo.

All other pictures by me, except Koli by my husband (I didn’t dare get any cameras out on the very top as it was a bit icy).

[Annuil]

Uah, there is so much new stuff here! I’m sorry that I haven’t show up here in a while, I still have problems with time 
Here is my boring “Useful”, even though it was supposed to be posted a few days ago...
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AsSnHPIBASO_tEH_lNKCC2iM3rXt
(Knives are really-really useful, aren’t they? In any kind of work)
Also, thanks for the kind comments!

[Jitter]

Breath

The baby is tiny, a lot smaller than her brother was. She's perfectly formed, with a tuft of baby hair, but limp and silent. Her face has a bluish tint. Juha holds his newborn daughter, starting to look panicked. Anne-Mari is spent, she sits back panting, and waits for the wail that doesn't come.  Hilja takes the child and checks the airway again. Anne-Mari starts praying, tears in her eyes.

Saavu saavu sielulintu
varovasti varpuseni
kuopsuttele kuikkaseni
jouvu jouvu joutseneni
apustele ankkaseni
tule tule tipuseni (1)

Hilja takes the child and pours the rest of the birthing waters on her. Then she chants

Kuutar kallis kulkevainen
Päivätär päivien pitäjä
Turvaattehan tyttäremme
Pelastatte pikkuisemme

Tytön teot on tekemättä
Lapsen laulut laulamatta
Ei jouva Manan majoille
tuonne Tuonen tupasille (2)

And slaps the baby’s back one final time.

And this time it works. The child makes a noise and ejects a bit of slime. Then she breathes in and lets out the long-awaited cry. The blue recedes from her face and she strongly lets everybody know she’s not pleased to be here, to be cold, to have been forced out of her soft existence. But she breathes, and she lives, and she will learn to love life.

Now Anne-Mari and Juha are crying with relief and cuddling their daughter. “Little darling, you gave us a scare there!”
Hilja turns to them. “It was touch and go for a while! But we were lucky. She was lucky!  She dislodged the blockage just in time!”
“I think we’ll name her after her luck.”
“Good idea. I also recommend you leave some offerings for Kuutar and Päivätär tomorrow, and the others too when you are at it” the midwife mage suggests.


1)   in her song Anne-Mari calls for the sielulintu to come, the following lines are calls for different birds mostly based on alliteration, for example “varovasti varpuseni” “be careful my sparrow”. The birds she calls are sparrow, loon, swan, mallard and "tipu" is generally a small bird.

2)   
Kuutar kallis kulkevainen…………………… Kuutar, valued traveller
Päivätär päivien pitäjä…………………………Päivätär, keeper of days
Turvaattehan tyttäremme…………………..Sure you’ll keep our daughter safe
Pelastatte pikkuisemme………………………Sure you’ll save our little one

Tytön teot on tekemättä……………………..Deeds of daughter still undone
Lapsen laulut laulamatta……………………Songs of childhood still unsung
Ei jouva Manan majoille…………………….Not her time to go (to land of death)
tuonne Tuonen tupasille……………………Not to the houses of Tuoni (Tuonela)

The birthing waters is something I partially made up. I was trying to find an existing birthing spell or prayer that could be used here, but the ones I found weren't good. In the material however there were lots of descriptions of how spells are performed to help in childbirth and many of those included use of special water, most frequent mention was taking water from a "closed spring" (I assume a spring that doesn't have an inlet nor an outlet), or from a closed spring, a rapids and a lake (taking three different things is a repeating motif in the Finnish spells) so I decided Hilja the midwife mage makes "birthing water" to help the mother

[Mirasol]

Very belated thank you for the comments! School has been keeping me busy for the past few days, but I´m back for the moment!

Do you have a name for your “Character”? She looks adorable  And I like how you make her hair look as your own (at least length-wise)

Thanks! Not really, yet. :'D I´ve been thinking on naming her "Loá" too, as it´s apparently a common first name in Iceland according to google (and also a really nice one), but having the name of your Fylgia might be too big of a coincidence. So I´m still doing some thinking on that part.

Wow, this thread really has been blowing up over the past days! I´d love to comment on everything, but then I´d probably write an entire novel... But I´ve read and looked at all of them, and they are all amazing! Some sad, some sweet, some funny, some simply beautiful! I hope I´ll be able to stick around for the next few days!

So, onto dumping some more of mine: I´ve been terribly short in both time and inspiration over the last couple of days, so I mostly drew some small doodles largely unrelated to any Minnawork to get some distance. And it helped! Todays "Speedy McSplorp" is looking good, comming tomorrow once the daylight is back!
But I did manage two prompts, featuring the last hurrah of my dark-grey marker:

16.10. "Annoying" As promised, a quite unmotivated Onni in the by now much-referenced troll-costume. (The hood can be closed in the front, but I wanted to show Onni´s face.) I hope that´s sort of what you imagined, Lallicat. :'D


20.10. "Cat Hat" I simply couldn´t pass up on that one. So here, Reynir with a cat hat, and a cat with a hat (that is also a bird). So technically another type of cat hat. (bear with me, I had just written an exam before drawing this, my brain was mush and found that hilarious...)

[thegreyarea]

Jitter, I loved the ice pictures (and the explanation) but you really took my breath away with your portrait of Tuuri's birth! Amazing.
And I also like the depiction of Hilja the way she (one can suppose) was before those sad final events. Well done!

Annuil, one fine knife! Nice work!

Mirasol, the cat hat is a really nice idea, but annoyed Onni is fantastic and takes the prize of best costume! I'm wondering what would be its purpose... Did Onni let some annoying redhead convince him to play a role in theater?

I had one thing for today but couldn't finish in time... With some luck it will be ready tomorrow.

[wavewright62]

Jitter, between your Ice and your Breath, you have brought us such beauty!  So far as I'm concerned, this is now the definitive story of Tuuri's birth, so there.
I love your Useful knife, Annuil.  Both Emil and Sigrun seem to have one like this, beautiful and artful as well as , well, useful!
Cracking up ove Onni in the troll costume, Mirasol!  And of course we need a Reynir in a cat hat, but you've added that one layer extra.  Perfection.
Emil and Lalli palling it up with our intrepid reporter is cute as, grey!

I started going with the jokey concept of Surma feeling mortified because, wouldn't you if someone had said *you* had bad breath?  Somewhere along the way, the claws reminded me of the late-model Matisse-ish paper cutouts I used to use in artworks, and things proceeded from there.  The blue cast came from taking the photo in full sunlight, and I kept it bc I liked the effect:


Remember when I said I was working on my Bridge picture with grosslings?  It occurred to me that I could rejig one of the grosslings into a Bladderbarbie (today's prompt), and frankly I'm glad I did because then I could work another joke in there.  (I may colour it later to make the background not quite so lame.) 
They never did figure out why, after all these years, they never could beat the Andersen sisters at bridge. At least, they think they're sisters, but it's not polite to ask these things, you know.

Spoiler: in case it is too small to see detail • show

The bladderbarbie has a shelf rigged to hold the cards, but they are unaware that the cards are reflected across their forehead.  Their partner's eyesight is not good enough to see that, but their opponent's is!  I use the singular possessive for 'opponent' because they are indeed parts of the same giant, and pass cards back and forth under the table to assemble their best hands.  Our poor grosslings have never figured out that they're playing bridge with cheating card sharks.

[Jitter]

Thanks guys! On "Breath", I considered adding something on the lines of "just like last time", but decided it'd be too sad. In their circumstances, I'm convinced losing children (and mothers!) in birth isn't that uncommon. Onni and Tuuri for example have several years between them, and there may well be a reason for this. On the other hand I choose to believe they have birth control, which reduces the problem greatly.

Annuil, you useful knife is beautiful!

Mirasol, I love both your Onni in costume and Reynir with hats Is the "growl" Onni's complaint or his line in the play? He looks so very enthusiastic Grey, the troll costume is from Lallicat's wonderful Bargain, where making Onni dress up in the troll costume for the yearly play is Reynir's bargaining chip

Wave, I was thinking about several meanings for the word bridge, but I have to admit grosslings playing it didn't occur to me And yes, I would be mortified if someone not only said I have bad breath but made a display about it and told all the new peeps in town!

[thegreyarea]

Wave, those are great as usual, which means a lot! I must also admit that "bridge" as the game never crossed my mind before your drawing!

Jitter, thanks for reminding me! You know, I actually read Lallicat's story, but didn't remember! I must be very tired...

So here's my contribution, a small infopage about some relatives to our "Speedy McSplorp"! And I'm quite sure they also have a bad breath!
I had to redo it because the first version was terrible, so I ended up with a not-so-terrible one... Sorry for being a little late.

It was also a bit disturbing to draw, but I believe it's well into our usual gross tolerance... I was trying to draw something like "Speedy" and it occurred to me what could happen if one bubble was really big.



I hope you like it.
It also reminded me those videos on YouTube with round animals, so I added that final observation.

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[Mirasol]

Thank you all!
Yes, the costume in Lallicat´s story, thanks for explaining, Jitter! The "growl" is indeed Onni´s line. He delivers it with such passionate acting, doesn´t he?
In the original sketch I had Reynir sort of announce the most dangerous troll the other characters in the play had just woken up, but I couldn´t come up with a good phrasing, so I left it out. In hindsight it would have been clearer with that part... Oh well.

Wave, I´m loosing it over the bridge-playing trolls! :'D Poor Bladderbarbie, getting double-scammed! Your mortified Surma is hilarious as well!

Grey, that´s such a cool concept for a troll! And a very fitting name. I honestly don´t know what I would do if that thing came rolling at me round-animals-style...

And here, as promised: one Speedy McSplorp, before speeding.