Another year over, a new one just begun

I've always been really excited by New Year. I know it’s just a day like any other and time is a human construct, but I love anything that signifies clear endings and the feeling of a fresh start. 2019 has been a weird one overall and I've had a bit of a love-hate relationship with it. I've had some truly life changing experiences, but I've been battling myself a lot and been in a bit of a weird funk for the latter half. But at the same time I've got a pretty good idea of what I need to do to help myself, so I guess that's a good place to be. I also think this time last year I was in such an optimistic place that it kind of skewed my expectations and made me look back on 2018 with rose colored glasses, so this year could never compare which is ridiculous. Especially as a lot of amazing things have happened this year. The biggest of which was always going to be the fact that I finally achieved my life long dream of going to New York and seeing not one, but three shows on Broadway. I was also able to meet my favorite actor Aaron Tveit and he was everything I could of ever hoped he'd be (they say 'never meet your idols' but thankfully all of my experiences have been great ones so far!).



I also visited Disneyland Paris for the first time in years and had the best time meeting all of the characters around the park. I attended London Comic Con and dipped my toes into the world of cosplay, styling my own wig from scratch with no prior experience. I really made the most of traveling around the UK and visited Whitby, Liverpool, Manchester, York, Eden Camp, as well as multiple trips to London. I was able to go to the theater 11 times in total, and saw Wicked x4, The Phantom of the Opera, Come From Away and High Fidelity in London, and Moulin Rouge x2, Wicked and Frozen on Broadway. I beat my anxiety and stage doored for the first time with the leaving cast of Wicked, a total on the whim moment as I only booked the ticket the day before.



I went to London with my mum for my birthday and we ate at the Hard Rock Cafe two days after it opened without even knowing. I actually stuck with language learning which has always been a lifetime goal of mine to learn another language, but I never thought I had a head for it until I was able to prove myself wrong. I added lots of amazing things to my personal collections, especially Frozen. I completed two sketchbooks, and finished Inktober for the first time in my life. I went to the cinema more times than I ever have before in my entire life, 17 times in total (8 of which were just seeing Joker over and over, but still!) I even went to the cinema in France and saw my favorite movie in French.



Last year I wrote that I wanted to "continue to throw myself into the things that I'm passionate about and stop feeling apologetic about it all and stay enthusiastic and true to myself and my heart", and although my usual insecurity ate into that a bit, it's something I'm striving for in 2020 too as I believe having passion for what you enjoy and what you do is what will get you far in all aspects of life. Whilst I do have my long term goals that'll take a few years to happen, I'm starting 2020 much less sure of where I'll go than when I started 2019, but maybe that's OK. I may have less of a plan but I have plenty of options to try too, and that's pretty exciting!

You only have to read the lines, they're scribbly black and everything shines

I wanted to share what I've been drawing lately! Which has mostly been portraits as I find it fun. I used to draw portraits quite a lot with pencils, but because I'm a perfectionist I hated them if they weren't super photo realistic and it really sucked the fun out of it. So last year I began drawing them with ballpoint pens, something that scared me stupid at the beginning as it's so permanent but it's actually really liberating and I feel I've learnt a lot from being forced to work with my mistakes. The top is Joaquin Phoenix in Joker, as it's turned out to be my favorite movie of the year and I'm lowkey obsessed. Second is Mika which is my favorite of the three (look at those pinstripes!!), and lastly is Aaron Tveit which whilst I like, I had issues with my pen blobbing while I was drawing it (why do they do this though??)



And here's two other illustrations I've been working on. Above is from the Broadway adaptation of Moulin Rouge, and it's how they end Act 1 with Elephant Love Medley. I'm not keen on how the song has been reworked honestly, but visually it's amazing and I had fun trying to translate specific people into my art style whilst still making it look like them as usually I draw fictional characters so likeness isn't so important. And below is from the finale scene of Wicked, and uh, spoiler alert? But Fiyero gets turned into the Scarecrow and I've always felt like he gets vastly overlooked within fan circles when this is a huge thing he goes through and a major sacrifice. I've always felt particularly attached to Fiyero though after reading the novel, his character is a lot more developed in that so I guess if you haven't read it it's easy not to care about what happens to him as he doesn't have a lot of stage time.

Popular, I know about popular

I traveled to London to see Wicked yesterday. It's my favorite musical, and I like to try and see it as often as I can but the last time was all the way back in August when I was in New York. I hadn't seen the current London cast at all as it changed back in July, and I really loved the previous cast so I was a little nervous but I really enjoyed it! Elphaba was especially amazing, possibly even my favorite?? Feels like a bold statement, but there were lots of little bits of her performance that she brought to Elphaba that really hit me emotionally that I've not seen other actresses do with the role. It was Nikki Bentley, I'll definitely be keeping an eye on other things she does too!




I didn't have any other plans for while I was in London other than a few specific stores I wanted to look in. I wanted to stock up on Leuchtturm sketchbooks as it's my go-to and they've changed the paper and binding method and I knew of a store with old stock, so I try and keep a collection going so I have back up. I also wanted to go to a HMV to see if they had anything Mika and if they had the Joker OST on vinyl (they didn't :( I've been waiting ages for it to be released and then I missed it!), and I wanted a new planner that I saw in Foyles when I was in London last time. It's based around goals and I love how this one has questions throughout it asking how you're on track, and each weekly spread has pre-printed habit trackers to fill in and stuff like that. I love organisation and keeping track and seeing my progress, so I think I'll really enjoy using this planner. I ended up walking 12 miles in all throughout the day, which is crazy!

It's just like we dreamed it

I've always been a huge fan of Disney and have been lucky enough to go the Parks in Paris, Orlando, Anaheim, and Tokyo - I'd love to visit them in Hong Kong and Shanghai too some day just to say I've been to all of them, but I guess we'll see how that pans out! I wasn't lucky enough to grow up with them, and my first trip was to Walt Disney World in Orlando when I was 7 as my dad had died and so it was supposed to be a distraction, but I hardly remember it. My next visit was to Disneyland Paris on a school trip to France and mostly involved riding Space Mountain over and over, which I'm actually really grateful for as it was the only time I got to see it as Space Mountain: De la Terre à la Lune with it's incredible steampunk Jules Verne theming. My next trip wasn't until I was 17 when I managed to rope some friends into going, and it was my first real experience of the magic and I was hooked! It took me a few years to realize I could just go by myself which was completely liberating, and I now prefer going solo as I can take everything at my own pace and don't have to worry about whether other people are having a good time. I got an annual pass and began going regularly, and after inheriting some money went to Anaheim and Tokyo which actually only reinforced how much I love the often overlooked Disneyland Paris. Maybe I'm biased, but I think Disneyland Paris is by far the prettiest park and feels much less artificial, as lets face it most of the Disney Classics are set in Europe anyway so everything feels much more at home!



I'd been only twice over the past 5 years and I hadn't really enjoyed those trips as much due to my anxiety, but I realized that if I wanted to overcome it then I'd just have to force myself and as I knew I'd be leaving Europe in 2020 I decided to make one last trip. I was there Monday to Friday which is my favorite time as it's quietest (I literally waited no more than 15 minutes for all rides) and I'd hoped that by going in the first week of November I'd hit that sweet spot of it being between the Halloween and Christmas overlays so that I could experience it more as Disney and less as a holiday.




I didn’t really meet characters on my last trip, and I think it’s why I didn’t have the best time as I’d kind of taken what makes Disney holidays unique and instead treated it like it was just a theme park. My anxiety was really high though and it felt easier to stay in my own bubble. I really wanted to push myself out of that though, so when I made my booking I added a Photopass as I knew I'd feel guilty at the cost if I didn't use it and it made the absolute world of difference to my trip! I'm also completely sold on the Photopass concept as it makes it so easy when you’re at Disney on your own.

I think I enjoy meeting the fur characters the most as I love how they communicate and it adds to the fun. Donald ended up being the first character I met, and he was just so sweet and made a fuss of me. Alice and Hatter got hysterical over my Hans coat and were worried it meant I was friends with the Queen of Hearts! I was super excited to see Olaf near the castle but realized he was just doing some promotional video and not actually meetable which was a shame as I'd of liked to have given him a warm hug as I was fully decked out in my Frozen gear.



It was my first time seeing Stars on Parade which I really loved! It had lots of neat features to the parade floats, like on the Toy Story float there were dancers/acrobats dressed as the aliens and spinning around in cages, Peter Pan and a few of the Lost Boys were swinging back and forth in a giant ship, and there were rarer characters included like Mowgli who I don't think I've ever seen before at any park.






I really loved the Sleeping Beauty section the most! Usually the princess movies all get shoved together onto one single float, so I liked that at least one of them wasn't treated as purely existing within the monolithic Disney Princess franchise. And the fact that Prince Phillip was center stage as the main character was even better as the Princes are never more than props and I loved seeing him have his moment. He was sword fighting dancers dressed as Maleficent's minions, while the float was a fire breathing dragon Maleficent that was kind of steampunk-ish in design and being operated by the spinning wheel. I just loved absolutely everything about it!! I don't understand why the Princes aren't given more of a starring role in general, surely it's a missed marketing opportunity? They could be positive role models for little boys to identify with if they were seen more as characters in their own right. Even princes that are fleshed out in their respective movies such as Aladdin and Naveen are never not seen without their princess and it's a shame.









Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs was my favorite film as a little girl, and I used to dress up as Snow White regularly and so it's still really sentimental to me. Snow White and her Prince have always been my favorite canon Disney couple and it always makes me sad how much the prince's character was cut back as he was supposed to be awesome.






The only hint of Return to Oz throughout the whole park! I'll always be sad that Disney never did more with Oz while they had the rights, especially as the made the single best movie.



Phantom Manor has always been my favorite ride. It's been entirely refurbished and they've returned the original narration by Vincent Price and it sounds awesome! I have to say though, the refurb has kind of ruined the plot line the ride had and it doesn't make much sense anymore. The plot was what made it so much better than Haunted Mansion, and now I feel like I'm not really sure what's supposed to be going on. And seeing as the narration is now partly in English whereas before it was entirely in French and yet I still understood it better back then, that's some way they've gone to over complicate it.





The arcade down Main Street USA has a mini museum for the Stature of Liberty, which I normally barely glance at but as I'd looked over Manhattan from Lady Liberty's crown just 3 months earlier it brought back all the feels. Because France built the statue it's a nice link between the theming of Main Street and Paris.