Day 1: A Mob of Mollymawks

Following my adventures across the pirate infested high seas of New Zealand, the terrifying unknown of Norfolk Island and the mysterious, sea serpent haunted waters of the Solomons.

 Day 1 At Sea: Tuesday 26th March

The ship left Port Lyttleton at 6.05 am, behind schedule. It was meant to leave at midnight, or preferably 6pm the day before, but had been having an engine inspection and there had been problems putting the engine back together. Most reassuring!

I nearly missed breakfast, but the staff found me something. The meal times are quite strict, as they feed the staff and visitors on a rota, and clean up in between. It feels a bit like a school camp.

Land ho!

The ship was moored a few miles out from land, close enough to see where the houses are. The sea was very calm, with little wind, which was both a joy for the sake of personal comfort, and a pity, as few birds were moving much.

Afterwards, I wandered outside, to find a few people avidly watching the first birds of the trip. I promptly dashed back inside for my camera, and returned. Four brown and white petrels floated off the starboard bow, speckled and piebald. You can tell petrels from gulls because they're just cuter, with rounder faces and beaks, like adorable seagulls. They tend not to have the sharp divisions in the distinctive above and below colouring divide that most seabirds have. These ones were Cape Petrels, and all they seemed to care about was floating around on the surface, moving around leisurely. The guide referred to them as “pintardos”, which I thought was a bad joke, but apparently is one of their names. 

Cape Petrels!

 After a bit, there was an announcement that something was happening off the stern (a lady next to me thought they were fishing off it – on making our way down narrow steps and around the stack Zodiacs, we discovered they were in fact throwing fish off it!). Everyone lined the railings or milled around behind; only about eight people could actually see anything. It turned out that there was a single Buller's Mollymawk (albatross species) bobbing lazily around, grabbing at the scraps being thrown down. The petrels wandered in on the starboard side, making desperate dashes in to grab bits of fish, often duckdiving their full bodylength under. There was very little wind, and the seas were calm, so the mollymawk had a lot of trouble getting out of the water. It was reduced to lazily wandering over and ducking its head under, or making flapping runs whenever it thought a petrel might get there first. By the end of it, the petrels were actively dashing away from the thrown fish, flapping to get up speed.

The Buller's Mollymawk chasing off a Cape Petrel

Nevertheless, everyone was pretty excited, these being the first birds of the trip, and hung around the whole time. I had to actually climb up and perch uncomfortably in a nook at the edge, just to see anything.

During this time, some Hector's dolphins were spotted, making their way towards us from the direction of land. Actually, they were more like Hector's Dots, as all we'd see was the dorsal fins occasionally, as they came up for air. We'd keep looking for them, but they veered off while still too far away to admire properly, leaving us with the lazy mollymawk and the now disinterested petrels. A couple of the dolphns did show up in front of the boat, giving me a chance to take a photograph,and possibly to see if we were worth investigating further, but apparently not, as they immediately swam back to join the rest.

Eventually the mollymawk tired of taunting us with maybe doing something interesting, and paddled lazily off. The only other birds around were about five ordinary gulls, which floated several hundred metres away. Occasionally, someone would say something like “can we get the gulls over here?” and tauntingly, a gull would actually fly over and continue past. The guide actively tried to encourage them, in the hope that they'd attract more birds over, but they just weren't interested.

Take off! The Buller's Mollymawk actually exerts itself for food.

After a while, the staff decided to try to tempt the birds in with a magic mixgture of rice crispies soaked in bright orange fish oil. They stirred it up in a bucket, to general amusement, then tossed it over the side. We all watched the little dots and the swirls of shining oil, as it floated slowly away over the waves, towards the birds. As if summoned by our hopes, a Giant Petrel came soaring in like a great dark albatross, stirring up the gulls. It tracked across our wake a couple of times, as if drawn by the delicious fish oil, then left.

Giving up on the sluggard local birds, the ship started moving, powering quietly and steadily away from land, as if the captain was hoping to spot something and pretend he'd been aiming for it all along. Every ten minutes or so, we'd pass a bird, bobbing around, or a bird would pass us, and the remaining hopefuls lining the sides would rush to get their cameras out. We passed an albatross, probably the same one that had paddled away and left us before. After we had left it behind, it came soaring past to catch us up and overtake us, followed by a storm of camera clicks. It gave us a wide enough berth that I doubt many of the photos were any good, even the ones from cameras with lenses as long as your arm.

We're heading to Kaikoura next, were there may be whales. The ship stays about twelve miles out from land, which you can see misty and low in the background.

After lunch, the boat kept grumbling steadily onwards, the quiet rumbling coming up through my feet everywhere I went. I'm the only person going barefoot at the moment – my feet were instantly stained black with grime. The crew washed the decks while we were eating, but too late for my stained soles.

Most people are hanging out quietly outside. Down the back is quiet and warm, with a good view of the birds coming up in our wake and overtaking us. They tend to sneak up on you, dipping low among the waves and then soaring past. If you can see them coming, you get time to train your camera on them and hope they'll fly near enough for a good photo. Most don't. The closest so far was a petrel, I turned from following a distant mollymawk to find it wheeling almost directly overheard. It took great delight in soaring around in circles from boat to sky to water, always too fast to capture, before flying away.

There's not much talking; a few anecdotes about birds, murmurs identifying a species, and the odd cry of warning as a bird is spotted. Everyone's just enjoying the sun or waiting for more birds.

There are a suprising number of birds coming past. Most are too far off to accurately identify, but you can tell that they're mollymawks, shearwaters and petrels, of various species. Someone thinks they saw a Royal Albatross. I don't think they're deliberately coming past the boat, with the excetion of the Cape Petrels which enjoy swooping around in looping aerial displays while checking us out, as looking off into the distance, you can usually spot more birds. I imagine a sort of giant net of birds, each racing over the ocean, or flirting amongst the wabes, keeping its distance from the next bird. They aren't all loners; we have had a couple of pairs swirling around each other. I couldn't tell if they were mollymawks or giant petrels, as one was quite dark. Off in the distance, occasional clouds of shearwaters could be seen. Sometimes one or two would come in close, but most stayed on the edge of sight.

We kept going straight through the Kaikoura Trench, in order to get back on schedules (and because there weren't many birds around). Towards evening, we spotted larger numbers of birds winging past, and soon saw they were heading to a boat pulling up its nets. Our staff decided to try and compete, and lure away the mob to our boat. It took awhile, with only a couple of White-capped Albatross paying somewhat desultory attention, but we managed to attract four or five by continually throwing lumps of fish over. And then, suddenly, the sea behind us was full of birds! And that was the next half an hour, lumps of fish being thrown behind, to be swooped upon by Sooty Shearwaters and albatross, while a great tail of birds floated out in a white and grey and brown gaggle behind. This really was a mob of albatrosses, with six species showing up.

White-capped Albatrosses coming in for fish

They were dominated by the Whitecapped Albatross, with a handful of Salvin's, and a few lone representatives from other species (Buller's, Northern and Southern Royal and Wanderer). The little cape petrels were back again, zigzagging about and dodging the camera lens with buoyant glee. They looked exceptionally tiny among the giant albatrosses, and didn't attempt many grabs for fish. 

Grrr! My fish! A Cape Petrel lunges ahead of a White-capped Albatross.

Sooty Shearwaters were much in evidence at the chumming, charging up the front and doing their best to snatch away tidbits before the albatrosses caught up. They were quite delightful to watch, as they would often dive right under the water, leaving you wondering if they would come back. They were middling sized amongst the birds.

An albatross dives after fish.

A solitary giant petrel turned up in the evening, keeping back out of the way and staying in the company of the albatrosses. A couple of the Buller's Albatrosses' turned up for the chumming, and were extremely noisy, squawking in a most indecorous fashion, attempting to intimidate the White-capped albatross away from the fish.

The Northern Giant Petrel, just landing.

There may have been a little white-fronted tern or two, further back; we could see it bobbing, and then flying away, silhouetted by the setting sun.

Eventually the light got a bit too low to continue, and the birds got too tired (or too full!) to bother keeping up anymore. 

Lots of birds following the boat!

We ended just in time for the evening bird list to carry on almost on time! (in which everyone more or less agrees on what was seen and how many of them; the staff generally have a good idea, and a few of the more experienced birdwatchers chip in with the rarer contributions or to round up numbers. There's a rule that three people need to see it (or have a photograph as evidence) for it to count, to the slight frustration of the more experienced birders!

Another White-capped Albatross

Unfortunately, I've discovered that my new little laptop – or possibly the Linux Mint 13 I've installed on it – doesn't notice my SD Cards. It can tell I've done something, as the lights change, it just doesn't read them. I'm going to see if the Ship Laptop will let me transfer photos to my USB stick, so I can sort them out as I go. The Ship Laptop is here for the sole purpose of satellite email, which is very pricy! I doubt I'll be using it for that, especially as every byte will count. There should be internet access in either Norfolk Island or at Port Noumea, New Caledonia, at which point I will submit my final assignment (on information technology, ironically) and reassure my ardent admirers and family that I am still alive.

That night, everyone headed to be pretty quickly after the evening recap wrapped up. I hung around upstairs drinking peppermint tea and reading bird books, then stepped outside briefly. Without the sun to take the edge off, it was blustery and cold, but the lovely full moon cast everything into stark silver and black shadow.

Some Species Highlights

• Buller's Mollymawk – Thlassarche bulleri
  The first albatross of the day, with a nicely distinctive striped beak. I got some great photos of the very first bird, which was turned into three or four drawings. It's a smaller albatross, at 80cm and is endemic to New Zealand. It tends to follow boats around and suffers heavy losses due to trawl/longline fishing

• White-capped Albatross: By far the most common bird towards the end of the day, it was bold and lively during the chumming, charging straight up the front and crashing into the water, head down after the food and wings raised awkwardly in akimbo Vs. 

• Salvin's Albatross: nice and bold, with distinctive grey heads, these competed with the White-capped for thrown fish.

• Southern & Northern Royal Albatross: We only saw a few of these, with one of each showing up for the chumming. Sadly, both were rather shy, and insisted on staying well back. They would come soaring up the wake occasionally in order to keep up, but always landing about ten metres away, and then just hobnobbing with the other birds until they'd floated out of sight, and then repeating the process.

• Gibson's Wandering Albatross (Toroa) :The biggest flying bird in the world, this one got everyone excited, but, like the Royal Albatross, it stayed back, serenely swooping back and forth across the wake in imperious solitude as it inspected the disturbace in its realm.

Other Birds

• White-Fronted Terns are lovely elegant things, especially compared to the albatross!

• Misc brown shearwaters that I can't tell apart: Fluttering Shearwater, Buller's Shearwater and Hutton's Shearwater
• The Sooty Shearwater is nice and dark, though!

• Skuas: We saw two Skua species, which the birders with the really good binoculars and giant cameras where quite excited about; an Arctic and two Long-tailed. Both stayed too far away for me to see much.

• Northern Giant Petrel: A couple of these soared past, one joining the chumming and staying back out of the way. It's a dirty brown bird, that looks like a cross between an albatross and a dodo
   
•  Gulls – Black-backed (Kelp) gulls were sitting around on the water in the morning, but were too wary of the albatross (and too lazy in the lack of wind) to come over to the boat.

• The Cape Petrels/Cape Pigeon/Pintado/Titore are adorable little things. They fly in rounded loops, and seem to like landing in the lee of the ship.They are very distinctive, mottled brown and white, little birds, very like seagoing pigeons. 

Non-flying marine life:

A Hector's Dolphin

•  Other than the small pod of Hector's Dolphins, there was a distant humpback whale, a little blue penguin, occasional New Zealand fur seals and Dusky Dolphins.

Pukeko Chicks

There's a small pond round the corner from my house, and the first baby birds of the year can be found there. Currently there are three little pukeko (Purple Swamp Hen) chicks, being looked after by eight other adults.

More Pukeko Cards

Mooooooooooom! by NZPhotography


Pukeko and Chick Splashing by NZPhotography
View more Pukeko Mousepads

You were all mean to me so I'm leaving for Fiji in the morning

A FISH

That's right, you heard me. Too late to change my mind. I'm going, going, gone.
Actually I lied (you knew that, right?), I'm not going to Fiji in the morning. I'm going the day after.

And there will be... no... internet. For a week. Oh gods.

I'd cancel, but I'm dying to try out my underwater camera and snorkel and maybe go diving. SO THAT IS WHAT I WILL DO. And if you're wondering why I'm not answering comments or emails, or ignoring you, or not stalking you in a forum or ANYTHING ELSE, it is because I shall be lolling in the warm tropical waters full of hundreds of pretty fishes.

This is mine now.
Mine.
FOREVER.

THERE WILL BE FISHES. FISHES, I TELL YOU.


edit: and thank goodness, hurray, my shiny special new Kindle arrived in time for me to charge it up and add books. I love it already.

Travel Photography: Seven Postcards From Egypt

A friend of mine visited Egypt recently, and was there during the riots. They came back with some fantastic photographs of the landscapes, buildings, people and desert, and I persuaded them to open a Zazzle store. Which they did, testing the waters (or the sands?) with a few amazing postcards. My favourites so far are the donkey and the sunrise, but there are some even more incredible ones that aren't even uploaded yet!

In Petra, Jordan (yes - the place Indiana Jones visited!), we have a donkey, standing in the pathway to the Higher Sacrificial Altar, amongst the ancient sandy rocks.


Petra Donkey Postcard by PetraPhotography




...and the dramatic broken-off pillars of the Great Temple.

Petra Postcard by PetraPhotography



Lastly, a couple of kids relax in the corner of one of the ancient ruins carved into the rocks of Petra.

Kids in Petra Postcard by PetraPhotography


From Egypt itself, we get to see the roofs of Abul Hole in Giza.

Building of Giza, Egypt by EgyptPhotography
Sell art online at Zazzle.


 And here are some amazing rock formations on Mt. Sinai on the way to Dahab from Sharm el Sheikh, with triangular strata like rows of camels along the base!

Sinai Strata by EgyptPhotography
Design Full color post cards at zazzle



And a breathtakingly beautiful sunrise in the very early morning from the top of Mt. Sinai.

Sunrise on Mt Sinai by EgyptPhotography
View more Sunrise Posters


Lastly, back in Abul Hole, some colourfully burdened, ungainly camels take a drink.

Camels Postcard by EgyptPhotography
Postcards by zazzle

A Year of the Cat - A new Blog Project

I've  been wanting to do one of those photoblogs, or 'photo of yourself for every day of the year' projects, but I don't want to take photographs of myself, and I do like taking photos of my cat. And cats are much more photogenic, after all.

So that is what I will do. Every day possible, I will take one new photo of my cat and post it. It won't be every single day, because we both have to be around at the same time, when I have a camera, but hopefully it will be regularly. I might even throw in pictures of other cats occasionally.

I think it might be interesting - both for photography practice, and just to see if she changes over the year. It will also be practice for actually keeping a blog that is only about one thing!

It's over here at A Year of the Cat

(Actually, my cat forced me to. She decides I'm becoming too internet-famous and it's her turn).

I Went To Auckland Zoo Yesterday - With My CAMERA

My lovely lovely parents bought me a year's membership for Auckland Zoo for Christmas. Admittedly, it was probably inspired by their recent jaunts (it was getting ridiculous! I'd get a text or phone call and mother would casually mention "Oh, we're at the zoo", but they knew I liked going). So, I went yesterday afternoon to try it out a bit.

The servals were gorgeous, and took turns to come out and pace around. I got my favourite photos of the day with them. So I made postcards (and being useless, that seems to be all I'm making out of my photos lately!)

I love the last one - he just looks so annoyed!

On the downside, it was hot, there were many small children, and people speaking in tongues everywhere being in the way and touristy to the point where I had to give up on photos at a couple of exhibits (funnily, one French woman kept ending up at the same exhibits as me!) and sadly, the penguin/shorebird area, the aquarium and aviary are all currently being rebuilt.

I skipped the Walkabout and Primate section entirely, because it was hot, I had a bus to catch in only a couple of hours (the zoo closes at 5.30) and my camera batteries were dying. I hate walking around with no camera! But I didn't mind skipping bits at all, because I fully intend to return at every opportunity (although realising later that the second otter pen was in that area - the one with the family of otters, cause two new ones were born last year - makes me a little sad).

A lot of the animals were hiding or dozing in the heat. The tigers are usually pretty boring as they lurk up the back a lot, but I always go look at them because they are magnificent when they do come out to play. I also always go into the nocturnal Kiwi house because it's right by the entrance - but having been in a dozen or so around the country, and the one at zoo many times, it's completely automatic now and I tend to just keep walking through and straight out again.

I did get really lucky with the otters though! There are two females in a pen next to the tigers and the cafe (with the giant snake slide) and I usually don't see them. But this time when I walked past, they were both playing out the front - one came right up and chirped at people, and the sun on the water made a really good backdrop. The other is one my dad likes (and asked after) - the clockwise otter. She spent about half an hour turning and swimming in clockwise circles! I got a few great photos, too. I noticed later (too busy focusing and playing 'guess where it will jump next' with the camera at the time) that they both have shaved sections on their throats - guess they were visiting the vet!

Asian Small-clawed Otter by Flynn_the_Cat
Browse more Otter Postcards

The two cheetah brothers were snuggled up together - one kept putting his head down and wriggling, or curling up in an 'I want to submit this to Lolcats' way, while the other just watched us, and occasionally they both waved the tips of their tails around like big fluffy fans, languidly, in front of their faces.

Ridiculous photo of the day goes to this flamingo. It's all angles and Escher bends!

It was quite interesting actually - all the flamingoes were dozing, and a couple were sitting like this. When they got up, they actually put their heads down and pushed off with their beaks.

Round the corner from the flamingoes (I went out via Pridelands) I ran into two families of tiny chicks, with their mother. They like that area, and seem to come under the fence from the wetlands and poultry section next door. And in the hedge along the lion's enclosure (which I also didn't see) were a couple of pink bottlebrush flowers, which I took the chance to exploit for my token macro images of the day. I was rather pleased with them, actually!

Anyway, this led to me trying to put up all my zoo photos into some kind of tour of Auckland Zoo - unfortunately, most of my photos got moved onto my new hard drive last week, which I didn't bring to my parents' house for Christmas! So it's only half done. It is the project that led to me finally reviewing my camera though! (A Pentax X70, if you wondered - ideal for zoo photography!).

A Review of the Pentax X70 Point-And-Shoot Camera

I just got bitten by the writing bug again, after getting a Zoo membership for Christmas, taking many photos and starting to create a lens around them about Auckland Zoo. From there, I started writing about my camera, discovered it's still going strong on Amazon, then realised it was time to review it properly (I've had it nearly two years, after all!)

If you've ever seen any photos on my lenses, blogs or galleries, it's a good chance that they came from this camera. The Pentax X70 is an ideal camera for the amateur photographer for wildlife (and zoo!), macro, portrait, landscape and architectural photography. It kinda sucks for low-light and parties though.

It's basically an upgraded point-and-shoot that has a lot of more advanced options and a really incredible zoom. I bought mine nearly two years ago, when they were first released and I was feeling quite frustrated with my current camera, as it was getting too limiting - but the big, fancy DSLRs were way too professional for my abilities and my wallet.

Anyway, lots of discussion about it's various points - from the point of view of someone who came up from the 'normal' point and shoot touristy/family cameras, as well as pictures and demo videos here on my Pentax X70 review lens.

Hanging Around... Quick Sketch

This popped up in the DeviantART daily deviations today and I decided to quickly sketch it - so I opened up ArtRage (2.5 - I prefer it to the new version just for the pencil work) and shrank the drawing area so that I could see the browser as well, and did a five minute sketch which actually kinda worked. Head's too big though :D




Back to user education in libraries now... I have a massive assignment and an exam both on Wednesday.

Auckland Armageddon Convention 2010: Day 2

Sunday was my best day for sales - it wasn't quite as busy as Saturday, but the wrestling announcements were slightly quieter. Slightly. Also, I guess people were coming back through after running around making sure they saw everything. It was also the day I really got into making tiny paper people. I ended up with a small army of faces and fan art poking out of signs and lined up in the (very limited) space around the front.  I drew two Buffys, using my painting as a reference (on left) - the first I was very proud of, and gave away to Asgard, and the second wasn't nearly as good. Sadly, I forgot to photograph Asgard's, so will stalk her site and see if a photo goes up >.>

Also finished off the leather-wrapped, winged girl I started at Doujin Overload (my report here) and stood her up. Interestingly, she was the only drawing from DO that I actually liked when I went through my book - all the ones I did to sort of 'do what was expected' and that I tried to ink neatly (she was just a messy sketch that I got into at the end) were really, truly awful. So, "giving up trying to do what other artists do even though it looks awesome when they do it, and accepting that I have to draw my own way" lesson learnt? Check :D

Photo image dump at the end of the post! (for now)

I also drew a fan art of Drake's awesome ninja cat, Ninjet. She's a white cat, in a black ninja bodysuit. It's actually a clever design - it's simple and easy to draw and very much 'cat'. I remembered him from last year - I told him to join DeviantART so that people could stalk him, as far as I know he hasn't yet - I don't think he remembered me (I'd have been very surprised if he had!), but he recognised my t-shirt (I was wearing the YinYang one) bcause he'd asked about it when I'd wandered off and missed him, while setting up. His site is down and has been for a while - apparently he's moving domains or something - which is annoying, because I wanted to add it to my Ninja Cats page. There's a listing for the comic here, for some kind of linkage. Bought a couple of small prints off him (actually, that was the first day - I used them as references for the fan art)... and he bought two cat stickers off me (both the Yinyang ones; colour and black and white; the other kitties weren't out and I picked them up from home later).

I bought candy floss for the second day in a row. It was fun, especially the way it vanishes as soon as you eat it, although the attack of sugar starts burning my mouth by the end.

I found one of the Star Wars collectors' booths, with a variety of R2D2's, Star Wars suits of armour, and a Han Solo in Carbonite, as well as a large collection of Slave Leias in a large bubble display. I took a couple of photos, for drawing references, but most of them looked pretty tacky (and it was a bad idea, at least for a few of them, as the proportions were way off and I ended up sulking about the drawing a lot. Somewhat loudly at my stall-mates :D Turned it into a stand-up.)

More R2's than I've ever seen in one place before, plus Darth Vader and Stormtrooper armour, Han Solo in carbonite and... a random droid (edit: apparently that's a droid bounty hunter called IG-88)

R2D2 from Jabba's barge, serving drinks that look suspiciously human-blood-coloured

The Slave Leias, trapped in their bubble/force field.

A close-up on the Slave Leia statues and dolls; the two largest in the front, half-sitting, you can look at on Amazon below, the two tall ones at the back are just customised dolls, there's a Lego Leia just to the below-right of the centre, hidden behind the right-hand Leia, and the one standing up, holding onto the rope/pole is the one I tried to draw from.

Some of the more expensive statues looked nice, though, and it turns out that there are some impressive version out there! (I had to look. And now I have to show! Not my photos, just showing off from Amazon - I don't think any of these were the ones on display)



Funniest moment of the day: watching Bria & Vader's heads swivel as they watched a guy in a Stormtrooper outfit walk past as they tried to work out a) who he was, b) if he was one of their guys from the 501st stall, c) why he wasn't wearing it properly (the belt was loose, and ... well, that's all my uninitiated eye could spot ;D ). So Vader (not his real name. Oh, you guessed that?) follows him to the nerf gun stall, and it turns out it's the guy who organises Armageddon, who just bought his shiny new costume and wasn't too happy about having it corrected within five minutes of putting it on.

But they cheered him up with four people shooting him at once with nerf guns (which are awesome, if a rather lurid orange, and shoot a very loooong way... into the rafters in the ceiling *looks idly at very interesting object on far side of room to avoid meeting any eyes*. It wouldn't have happened if I'd been allowed to shoot AT someone!) and having all the foam pellets bounce off his armour spectacularly. It looked fun :D

Bria-Silivren in a fight to the death with one of the Nerf guns. Behind her is the Dr. Who stall (Weeping Angel on right, Dalek on left) and I believe she's cosplaying Marion from the Indiana Jones movie (re-using the Anna Valerious shirt, anyway ;D )

Apparently there were a lot of Dr. Who cosplayers, unsurprisingly, as the Dr. Who speaker had a panel and was signing stuff. There was a nice lady with a little stall tucked against a wall near us with Dr. Who -inspired jewellery - all cogs and wheels and things, in bronze and silver. The site's here - Whovian Jewellery. I haven't seen much of Dr. Who (no telly) so I didn't recognise any.

Day 3 had mimes, skeletal t-shirts, left over posters, fizzy tablets, less money, Buffy comic artist George Jeanty, live rick-rolling, cosplayers, and energy crashing. Also a final tally of my haul. Plus will mention the (awesome) Drawfest stall, posters, t-shirts and earnings, and any other things I forgot.  It's late, and I'm on a crappy computer at my parent's house, so not tonight.


But for now... PICTURES!

My Tui t-shirt, and the back of the stall. And the charming model, of course.

My tiny Willow drawing. I like this one! She stuck out the top of one of my displays for a day and a half.

The second Buffy-head. With the traditional 'what would Buffy do?' caption 

(there's even a book!

)

Complete view of the stand-up gladiator/bondage Angel. Someone (forget who) said she was Slave Leia inspired, to which I say she actually wasn't - the red was more of the memory of an old drawing I did, which had a girl all in red and white.

A first attempt at Dark Willow (failed, but helped me remember what she actually looked like), a headless Leia (because the head was terrible and nobody is looking there anyway), tiny Tara head to go with the nice Willow, and a teeny little 2cm tall tui bird that I gave to my mother.

Tall figure-referenced fail-Slave Leia standing up, with tiny-Slave Leia next to her for reference.

The paper army scouts! Seductive tiny-Slave Leia distracts and seduces; the all-seeing Eye (referenced from my Buffy painting again) sees all; and tiny-Dark Willow floats in a spooky way wherever she chooses.

My Ninjet fan art - copic to fill,

black brush pen lines and shiny silver pen for the sword.

And finally, the posters I bought on the Saturday; Unicorn from Kotorigaro and random-painting-chaos-guy from Murk (a.k.a. Cannibal-Cartoonist)

Also, two awesome guys turned up and came and said hello - actually knowing people at Armageddon makes it 5 times better, and having people attending actually come find you triples the awesomeness again. This guy who I pimped earlier dropped by and inflicted me on his friend who was very nice about it, and bought art (and I gave him a discount, of course ;D ), and the person I skipped out on at Saturday and left to cope with students on his own (I'm sorry! No, wait. I'm not. Here, have this as a token of my forgiveness.) dropped by with his friend (I didn't know I gave him permission to have friends...). Huh. I never did go to the Laserstrike tunnel.

....and the rest must come later.
Click for Day one update.