note and illustration

Don't get too excited, it's a pretty poor illustration - but I wanted a sketch of the house on here, just to give you a better idea of the layout. Architecture is not exactly something I'm really knowledgeable about. I did about half a dozen sketches, and borrowed heavy inspiration from pictures here and here. I was so psyched to discover that my idea for an Italian-style villa built around the turn of the century was actually not that far-fetched, and some of these are really gorgeous. I wanted something a little smaller, though - it's not a cottage, but it is a private retreat, so while mine has a nice lovely ballroom for parties, that ballroom is basically half the whole house, it's a very small, cozy little mansion.



Obviously, I have not gotten the hang of a touchpad mouse yet, and am still pretty sketchy on Gimp. But all I wanted was to get the basic structure of the house - read the story for the details. ;) Scale in this is probably off, I'm not sure yet what the sizes of the different parts are, relative to each other. The wisteria trellis entryway is way the heck too big in that drawing. The windows are actually rounded at the top, with the little mini-arches over them that some of my references had, and the rooftops are the flat-style with the little support beams peeking from underneath them. I absolutely adore stucco walls, that was one of the things I fell most in love with when I visited Italy back in high school, I think they're so striking.

In doing the sketches, it really gave me a much better idea of the house's interior, which is good, since I'll be there soon and I was pretty vague on it.

In other news, I AM HALFWAY TO WINNING NANO!!! I'm so psyched. And terrified. I only have a vague idea of where the story's going now, I hardly have any details sorted out, I'm just going to have to keep writing and see what happens...