The Secret Of Magic Addressed

Strange World spoilers out of context

(Extra spoilers under the cut)

Superfriends style Batman Painting! Done in acrylics.

(The skin tone looks better in different lighting)

“Ash let out a shriek of frustration. She felt so alone, more so than she had ever felt in her long life. She wanted so much. She wanted to be back in the jungle, bickering with Esteban over what passed for morals between them. She wanted to feel Victor’s strong arms around her as he taught her to dance. She wanted Zopilote to take her under his wing again, the only time she’d ever truly felt safe in her entire life. Most of all, she wanted to hold her baby girl, rocking her to sleep, and to get to know the woman her daughter had become.” - The Past Is Prologue by Nontacitare, Chapter 28: The One and Only.

This paragraph has stuck with me for months after I read it so of course I had to draw it. In Nontacitare’s post-Coronation Day, Elena of Avalor fanfiction, The Past Is Prologue, Ash gets a character arc that is just superb. Her emotions and motives and drive are explored, and it shows how she's done evil, horrible things in her life but despite everything, she's still human and can choose what she does next (and is still capable of doing good).

[Image description: A pencil sketch fanart drawing of a scene from the Elena of Avalor fanfiction The Past Is Prologue. In the center of the picture Ash is crying while holding one hand up to her face. Around her are five moments from her past she’s remembering. The five scenes are as follows, going clockwise from the bottom left corner: 1. Ash as a young girl looking up at Zopilote who is in vulture form and has his wing stretched out, sheltering her. 2. Ash is rolling her eyes at Esteban who is standing behind her, looking smug. 3. A woman whose face is not pictured holding a smiling baby in her arms. 4. Ash dances with Victor as they look into each other's eyes. 5. Ash gently holds Carla’s face with one hand as Carla smiles up at her. End description.]

🌌Gal pals from different galaxies🌌

A certain person asked me how I paint with watercolors so I guess I'm going to tell you all! Now I'm not professionally trained, I just learned what I know from experimenting, asking questions, and looking up tutorials. So this may not be what the experts do, but it's what works for me.

How I paint:

Materials: I have a watercolor palette, a little jar full of water, my paint brushes, some paper that is thick enough for watercolors, pencil, and some paper towel to help mop up excess water. I always put down some kind of rag cloth or newspapers down on the table first so I don't get any paint on the table. Watercolors don't stain as much as other kinds of paint but it's best to you be careful.

I always use a watercolor palette to make my paintings. This is a very different system from oil paint or acrylic paints or even liquid watercolors or watercolor pencils, so you need to keep that in mind with the rest of the things I tell you

Step 1 (Start): I decide what I'm going to paint and make a little pencil sketch of it on the paper, It doesn't need to be detailed it just needs to give me a rough idea on how big it will be and where various shapes will go. (I sketch it very light so that you don't see the pencil lines on the finished painting but you can make it dark if you still want to see the lines).

Step 2 (Layers 🧅): I decide which colours would be best to be put on the bottom layer and which colours should be put on the top layer and then begin painting accordingly. For example I painted Mirabel's skin before I painted her hair, so I could have bits of her hair going down on top of her skin. I mix the colours together on a scrap piece of paper first just to test how they look.

Step 3 (How to apply paint): I dip my paint brush in water and then swirl it around in the needed colour until I have my desired amount, then I begin to paint in the shape that I want. Whenever my brush needs more colour I put a very small amount of water on it and then rub it gently against the paint palette then brush it again on the paper. For dark colours I swirl it around longer in the paint to get more paint on it and then lay it on thick. For lighter colours I put more water on the brush and less paint on it and then use the water to spread the paint even further across the paper. Important tip: Never press your brush too hard against the paint palette or the paper when you're painting, otherwise the bristles could be bent out of shape or fall out. Use the same amount of pressure you'd use if you were petting a kitten with the paintbrush. (You shouldn't actually do that, it's just a metaphor.)

Important tip: If you ever have too much water on your paintbrush, use a paper towel to mop some of it up. You can also use a paper towel to help get unwanted paint off your brushes.

Step 4 (Waiting): After filling in one shape with a specific colour, I move on to the next colour. If I don't want the colours to mix together I wait a minute or two for the first part to dry before I continue on to the next part. But if I do want a gradient then I start adding the new colour and brush them together a bit with water.

Step 5 (Small details): Watercolours mix together really well but that means to get good looking light colours you have to apply them directly to the paper, where there isn't any paint, otherwise if they are mixed with a dark-colour they could become muddy looking. For things like Mirabelle's glasses I painted the skin around them first, leaving a white blank space and then once the paint had dried I very carefully added the light green, making sure not to get the brown paint wet again. (I also use this process for the butterfly on the accordion and the earring.)

Step 6 (Optional Final touches): Sometimes I used paint for the pupils of eyes but they never seem as detailed as I want. So instead what I do is I leave the eyes as blank white circles, and then once I'm finished painting everything else, and everything is completely dry, I use a small pen or marker to draw the black outline around the eyes as well as pupils and pencil crayons to colour the iris. I also use pencil crayons for the eyebrows, lips and dress butterflies.

Repeating these steps for a very long time eventually leads to a finished painting. If you have any questions let me know.

April 1st, 2021

Today, Data helped Geordi with a prank; they stuck googly eyes to Geordi's VISOR and whenever someone made a comment about it, Data and Geordi pretended like they had no idea what they were talking about.

Hi there! I read your post about Egypt and Cleopatra, and now I am really curious about the African Kingdoms you mentioned and was wondering if you could tell us more about them please, they sound really interesting.

Oh, there's SO much I could tell you, and there's so many African kingdoms that have been woefully understudied--and many more aside from the ones I mentioned. They all have their own rich histories, cultures, political intrigue, and it's an actual tragedy that they aren't discussed more. I'm still researching myself, so I'll just review some of my favorite things from each kingdom.

Aksumite/Axumite Empire: Located in modern-day Ethiopia, this empire existed from the 1st to 8th century CE, though its prime was from the 3rd to 6th centuries CE. The Axumites converted to Christianity of their own free will over 1,000 years before colonialism and as a result have ancient churches, some made of stone and carved from the earth itself. They also were the first African kingdom to mint their own coins, and their capital city of Axum had, at its peak, 20,000 people living in it. Also, I love the Dungur palace. Here's a reconstruction of what it looked like:

LOOK AT IT.

Source: x

Kongo: Located in central Africa around modern-day Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo from the fourteenth to the twentieth centuries. This kingdom had a rich social hierarchy, apparently had ambassadors to Europe, and some people practiced Catholicism, which led to their own branch of Christianity led by a woman named Beatriz Kimpa Vita in the 1600s who believed she had visions that informed her Jesus actually came from Kongo. Yeah.

Sources: x, x

Loango: A neighbor of Kongo, but one we know much less about due to Kongo having a long, well-documented history of interacting with Europe (see: the ambassadors), and Loango... does not. But we do know they also had a rich social hierarchy, and we have this map of their capital city.

Sources: x, x

Great Zimbabwe: From 1100- 1500, located in modern-day Zimbabwe, this was a city of the Zimbabwe empire that was either used for storing grain or as a royal residence. Either way, the ruins of said city look like this:

Here's a reconstruction:

Sources: x, x, x, x

Ghana/Mali/Songhai: These were three successive empires from West Africa, with Ghana being the first from the 7th to 13th centuries, Mali being the second from the 13th to 16th centuries, and Songhai being the last one from the 15th to 16th centuries. If you learn about a non-Egyptian African civilization at all in school, chances are it's the Ghana empire and its successive empires, and they're most famous for gold, Timbuktu (with its ancient mosques, library, and university), and Mansa Musa.

Sources: x, x, x, x, x

Ashanti/Asante Empire: Located in modern day Ghana, this kingdom lasted from the eighteenth century to the twentieth century. This kingdom is most well-known for its role in the slave trade. The Ashanti had well-built roads and architecture, and a little fun tidbit about them is that, after the introduction of guns, they actually had a minor firearms industry.

Here's their capital, Kumasi:

Source: x, x

Swahili Coastline: The coastline was made up of MANY city-states that saw their prime in the 11th to 15th centuries--including Mombasa, Zanzibar, and Kilwa--that participated in the Indian Ocean trade route, and pottery from as far away as China has been found in these cities. Many of these cities also practiced Islam and had their own mosques. Kilwa is my personal favorite:

These cities were built of stone, but Kilwa's palace, in particular, was built of coral. Its architecture led to the city being described by Ibn Battuta as one of the most beautiful in the world, which is part of why it's so fascinating to me.

Source: x, x

Of course, this barely scratches the surface. There are many more kingdoms all over the continent and a variety from ancient and pre-medieval times that deserve much more love.

And this image doesn't even cover them all!

So yes, ancient and medieval Africa deserve much more love, more research and more hype, and hopefully one day soon they'll get just that.

Hi A-Lilacsong. Can I tell you just how much I enjoyed “Encarcelado”? I have completely fallen in love with the Delgados and their animals. I also love how Victor had an honest talk with Carla about his relationship with Ash. Yet, even so, he and Carla have no idea just how dark things will get with Ash. And just how dark Ash is.

Thank you so much, I am so happy you liked it!!!! I had a lot of fun writing Albahaca & Nieve. Cute animals for the win! 🦎🐕💖

Yes! I always thought that was something that they needed to talk about. It's just so hard for each of them to talk about their problems with each other since they don't want to make each other feel bad. Plus, he was still holding back a little bit when telling her about it, but at least they covered the main bits.

Oh boy do they ever. Frankly the red flags are there, but Carla is very in denial/hopeful thing will become better. And Victor, despite everything, still cares about Ash enough not to make an effort to leave, and at this point still has a glimmer of hope that things could get better. (We even see how he reached out to give Ash a hug when she was put in the cell in The Magic Within, but she ignored him to just acknowledge Carla. He looks disappointed for a second before he starts talking to Elena and Esteban instead). Which makes her betrayal all the more heartbreaking.

i, for one, would enjoy if you talked more about your future!Avalor ideas *eyes emoji*

Then I will deliver! *magical carriage being pulled by velociraptors emoji*

I mentioned that political stuff in the last post but somehow I forgot to mention Naomi! Since she’s Chancellor, she's in the middle of the kingdom's politics, so she'd be at Elena's side for all those possible incidents, giving her advice and support. 

Naomi finally getting to travel around as Chancellor and visit the other kingdoms on political business would be nice. Because then she could live her dream of sailing around the world even more, but she'd be earning money while doing it. Plus, she has Elena by her side so it's a win-win-win!

Also, I want to see her hire a staff and establish more government positions in the Kingdom. I mean who's even maintaining Nuva Vista now that Cristobal is gone? So she sets up a more detailed federal and municipal government systems that are still ultimately ruled by Elena but now the people can be heard even better. Because the Queen just can't be everywhere at once, even if she has magic. (Now that I'm thinking about it, she would probably try an “everywhere at once” spell first before they did this). I would find it entertaining, but most people probably wouldn't so it would likely be done in the form of multiple upbeat musical montages, or off screen. 

For Mateo, I'd like to see him teaching his magic classes. Maybe him leading the guards in a training exercise on how to properly use magic against villains, monsters, or natural disasters. (More of Mateo fighting stuff with cool magic). Plus Mateo training Olivia, Carla, and Victor on how to help people using magic. Just a whole episode where they're just going around town and solving problems with magic, (and at one point they sing a cool theme song they've made up for themselves in an 80s style montage)!

 It would also be fascinating to watch Mateo learning more complex Master Level spells. Maybe even the most elusive one of all, a healing spell! Perhaps he could go through an arc where he finds more permanent solutions to some of their monster problems. Keeping the monsters in jars & books only means that eventually they might escape, and then you'll just have to hunt them down again. So why not find a way to safely reform them? Kizin could get to see his friends again!

We never get to see what most of the characters were doing for Halloween in season 3 of Sofia the First, so this may as well have happened! (She has no idea how ironic this will be by the time of season 4). You can see Miranda in costume here.