Neuschwanstein Candle Holder

You may have noticed I have a thing for Neuschwanstein, the Bavarian castle built by King Ludwig II. My German teacher asked if I could paint it on a little glass candle holder about three inches high for her. It features the castle on one side and a little red-roofed village on the other. It's acrylic on glass, but the fine detailing on the castle is gray pen.

True Magic Bookmark

So I made this bookmark for a contest and had it half done before I realized that digital art wasn't allowed but I finished it anyway. The hand-drawn one is below. The quote, "Books may well be the only true magic" is attributed to Alice Hoffman. Neuschwanstein castle from Germany is on the top. All photos used in the bookmark are either mine or from online free stock (credited below). All the quotes spiraling out of the book are from works in the public domain.

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The book quotes are from the following works (roughly left to right): Moby Dick by Herman Melville, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. 

I honestly didn't realize I'd chosen three books by Charles Dickens, sorry about that, I was trying not to repeat too many authors. You can tell I read a lot of classics. :-/

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Here's the hand-drawn one, again featuring Neuschwanstein castle and the same quotes, minus one or two. Made using colored pens and pencils. Behind the spiraling quotes there's a stack of books and two pairs of wings; they're really hard to see because the scanner lightened them so much.

Neuschwanstein Castle

In anticipation of my upcoming trip to Germany (!!!!!), here's a quick pen sketch of Neuschwanstein Castle. The castle was built by "crazy" King Ludwig II in 1862 in Bavaria, Germany. King Ludwig II came to power young, only to have his kingdom invaded by Prussia two years later. Now a king in name only, he became possessed by ideas of fantasy, and built for himself a series of fantastic castles in which he could feel a true king.