A Much Needed Update

My dog got bit by a snake last week.  That was interesting, for lack of a better description.  The vet said all the rain we've been having has flushed the sankes out; he already had three other dogs come in with snake bites.  She has cancer and she's blind, so I think we need to start adding "the indestructible" to her name.  She's been such a good girl though all of this, no complaining at all!

So, updates.  I'm trying out Glipho which is a social media site that's compatible with Blogger, Tumbler, and a bunch of other sites.  As of right now, it looks like I can't set a time and date for the post to be published, but I might be able to work with that . . . I'll let you know how it goes.

I entered Spectrum, found out that I didn't get in which was a let down, but I'm moving forward.  

Haven't gotten the new cards yet - they should be here by Thursday.

Justin Gerard, Cory Godbey and Chris Koelle's Lamp Post Guild is up and running, I am taking one of the classes with them.  About to start the first assignment later this week - again, I will let you know how all that goes.  

I have a commision (my first one! (Save the Dates for siblings don't count)) which is exciting.  Starting work on that this week.  

I also, in conjunction with the postcards I ordered last week, have been trying to figure out what I need to do for future promo pieces.  I've come to the conclusion that I need to do something that really exemplifies who I am as an artist, something that shows where my passions and interests lie.  

Defining my passions and interests was easy: story.  Working out how that can be developed into a tangible mail-out or email isn't as straightforward.  But I think I have decided on a place to start. Maybe.

I'm going to take some of my stories and some other people's stories (public domain) and create a small series of ilustrations and spots for each.  I'll create a summary of each of the stories and lay them out with the illustrations, print and bind it in a booklet to mail to publishers.  Hopefuly it will show that I have a concept of narrative illustration and layout, etc., etc.  

Now part of the problem is that a lot of art directors seem to want emails - but maybe that's not a problem at all.  

I'm going to start with my Steampunk Little Red Riding Hood, maybe Dragon Tamer (when I'm finished) and then probably something by Dickens - Tale of Two Cities or Christmas Carol, I think.  Eventually, I want to take a public domain book, fully illustrate it myself, hand-bind a few copies and self publish.  Tale of Two Cities is where I'm going to start, I think.  But that will be a project years in the making, so we'll see.  But that's potential-future-maybes . . . 

In the meantime I am also trying to get set up to teach some art classes from home . . . And then there's the gift I'm painting for my sister and future-brother-in-law . . . Yeah.

Right now, my goals for the week are . . . well, it's me, so there are a lot of them:

1. Dragon Tamer: new color comps and start on the final again.
2. Clean my room (this is an epic undertaking, I may not survive, so if you don't hear from me again, that's why).
3. Sketches for the New Commission - send them off for approval by the end of the week.
4. Help my mom set things up for the Garage Sale this weekend (Again, I might die . . . or get mauled by housewives.  Whichever comes first).
5. Review and edit my summary of the steampunk Little Red Ridding Hood story and lay it out in the format I am going to print the booklets in.
6. Outline my plans for teaching art classes from home.
7. Continue to revise, edit and research painting for sister and FBIL.
8. Not die cleaning my room or setting up the garage sale or participating in the garage sale.
9. Wash my dog . . .
10. Start assignment for LPG class.
11. Email sample images to art directors.

That's enough.  Right?

My Process

First let me say that there are some much better (and knowledgable) illustrators out there who have done post similar to this.  You should check them out, too.  A good place to start is the Muddy Colors blog.  Justin Gerard takes you through his entire process for a painting starting here.  Greg Manchess has a great series that he's been doing called 10 Things . . . This article on generating paintings is very useful, as is this one on planning pictures.  And Dan Dos Santos has a great article on sketching thumbnails here.

This is mostly a record for me - if someone out there is interested or finds this helpful, so much the better.  I find it beneficial to be held to some level of accountability with my art and as I have been struggling a little with some of my art and rushing (a big stumbling block for me) I thought it would be good to set my process down for all the eternal internet to see.

So first I start out with thumbnails.  Everyone starts out with thumbnails.  At least, I hope you do.  You should.  and if you don't and still come up with great art, do me a favor and don't tell me.  Please.  I don't need any more bad habits.

In all seriousness though.  Me, myself and I need to do thumbnails.  It helps to get all the ideas down on paper.  My professors at college encouraged us to do at least 50 thumbnails.  I really should do 50.  My goal is always to draw 50.  But reality usually looks more like 20.  Or 15.

As you can see, they are very loose.  Actually, no one really sees them at this point.  They're basically just ideas jotted down - I'm the only one who can really interpret them.

Next step is to pick the three or five best - in college that meant picking the ten strongest thumbnails, working them up a bit so more people could tell what was going on, and whatever three or five your prof thought were the strongest were the ones you went onto the next step with.  Through that you were supposed to learn which compositions worked and which ones didn't.  After college that means you kinda skip this step, pick the handful you like and hope for the best.

Then comes the fun part - the part where I really start to get excited about a piece.  Doodles become real ideas, you can start to see and feel the potential of a piece.  These are done without reference - usually still in my sketchbook but sometimes on the computer - I've been practicing.  These are ALWAYS little 2" or 3" VALUE sketches.  Value is important for me especially here at this stage because it helps create and drive the composition.  I'm always thinking in terms of value with pieces - where and how light will interact with shadow.

This is also where I decide how big the piece is going to be.  If I have a specific size I have to work with then the thumbnails at this point need to be in proportion to the final size or I run into HUGE problems later with composition.  If the composition works small here, it will work big later on, but only if it's the same proportions.

Next is the reference stage.  This is also a fun stage; I bring in people to photograph - usually I see the person I'm going to use as a model in my head and then bribe them with empty promises of fame and fortune.  Or prints of the final painting.  They never seem to believe me about the fame and fortune bit . . .

Anyway, I used to hate this stage; I hated asking people to model for me.  And then there was the whole photographing piece and I always felt so awkward.  But then I came home and I knew (kinda) all the people around and most of them either have changed my diapers, or I've changed theirs.  Or they're married to my siblings and I might potentially change their kids' diapers.  So with the common bond of diaper changing under my belt, I found my whole perspective towards photo reference doing a 180, and now the collaborative piece just adds so much life to the piece.  I find myself drawing and smiling as I work, remembering the person and or the interactions that happened while shooting the reference.  And it also helps that there's at least one person waiting with some level of bated breath for me to finish.

There's also some level of silliness that happens - especially if one or more of my brothers is involved.

The value sketches come into play at the reference hunting/gathering stage.  I try and set up the model with lighting as close to the sketch as I can.  Sometimes I find out that I really didn't want that lighting set-up that I thought I did and have to change my reference and sketch accordingly.  The Dragon Tamer piece is a good example of that.  I didn't really know what I wanted as far as lighting for it, and I didn't put as much effort into that stage of it as I usually do.  Needless to say, it's come back to bite me and I'm spending almost double the amount of time in the planning stage than normal.

Then there's the maquette stage - this is an "as needed" stage that I only recently added to my process . . . Not a huge fan, but it is going to be a huge help. 

After I've pieced together my reference and background comes the drawing stage.  I'm usually most comfortable here.  No color, just value and composition.  Sometimes I'll draw a specific aspect of the piece separate - the character, or their hands and piece the whole thing together in Photoshop.  It helps to focus attention on the character and really define details.  Learned that one from Justin Gerard, who apparently learned it from animators.  Which is brilliant.  And it's a huge help.

So once I have the background and the characters sketched out exactly the way I want them with the value stuff all settled so it looks pretty close to the two toned Little Red Riding Hood Steampunk piece up there, it's time for the color comp.

I have no strategy here. Really, I don't.  Sometimes I get some info from the reference, but otherwise I just throw color on a sketch until it's unusable or it gives me an idea and I move to a new one until I know exactly what I want.  Or at least I know mostly what I want.

Then the drawing goes on the board or paper.  I use either a light table or tracing paper to sketch in the rough shapes, but after that I do everything by hand.  And this is a tight drawing.  All the shadows, all the lines, no information is left out.  Eric Fortune and Rebecca Guay taught me this and it's been such a . . . I don't even know how to describe it.  Laying in color is easier because some of the value is already established.  I don't loose as much of my drawing - which is again what I love most about the piece at this point.

Then comes the first layers of color.  Nothing real fancy here, just establishing some of the overall color of the piece.  The first two or three layers are watered-down acrylic that I use like watercolor (but not with my watercolor brushes).  The benefit of this is that 1. I seal some of my drawing and 2. that those first initial colors don't get lifted out by the subsequent layers of watercolor.  I can get real wild with the first layer of watercolor because I know that I won't be lifting anything up that I put down first.  And by using watercolor for the rest of the piece, I get all those awesome watercolor-ish things that happend when you let watercolor do what it does.

By this point, I've usually lost myself in the painting and it's time to draw again.  So out come the colored pencils.

After that I go back and forth between the watercolors and the pencils, pushing or pulling as needed.  My biggest help at this point is the piece of scrap board or paper that I keep next to the piece to test all my colors or the strength and amount of my paint before I put them down on the actual painting.  

And then there's the part where you take the tape off and scan or photograph the work, put it into the computer and start editing it there for printing.  Ugh.  I never understood until recently how frustrating it is to see your work on the computer screen and think that it's just not as good as the real thing.  

The Final Little Red

Just a drive-by today.  Look it's finished!

Here's what's next:

Steampunk Little Red Riding Hood - Part 8

I am having trouble with the scanning process.  Have I mentioned before how much I hate scanning?  My machine keeps picking up all the texture of the watercolor paper and it's driving me nuts.  If I can get home early enough from work I am going to try photographing it.  But since it starts getting dark around 4 here and I haven't been able to get home before 6 . . . well, you can see the problem.

Here you can see I am trying to figure out if I need to make her "dirtier".  I'm leaning towards the dirt on her shirt, but the general consensus has been that the smudges on her face make her look like she has a beard.

Sorry for the drive by post, but I have been really distracted and haven't gotten nearly as much done on the next piece as I need to.  Let me know what you think of Little Red - any suggestions as to a title?  I am considering Little Red, Little Red Cap . . . and a whole slew of others.

Steampunk Little Red - Part 7

I got sick this weekend - that's twice this year.  That's 1.5 times more than I usually get sick over the course of the year.  And it totally threw off my schedule.  I spent most of Saturday afternoon and Sunday in bed NOT sleeping because I couldn't breathe.  Gah!

I know I've said this before, but Little Red is almost done. Honestly it's the best thing I've produced to date as far as finished paintings go.  And as of writing this I have no idea of what to do for the next piece for Eric's class.  Though I am debating between just using the concepts for the girl in the woods or something Narnia related.  Or Robin Hood.  Or Chronicles of Prydain.  Or dragons.  Yeah . . .

I am also slowly, but surely, compiling my list of publishers/art directors to send out my first mailing to.  At Jen Betton's suggestion, I picked up a copy of Children's Writers and Illustrators Market as well as Artist and Graphic Designers Market.  I'm debating about getting an associates membership with the Graphic Artists Guild - does anyone out there have a membership?  Is it worth it?

Steampunk Little Red - Part 6

18 Hours

I just want you to know that I'm not trying to make this painting a bigger deal than it is.  First of all, I'm not all that creative when it comes to blog post titles.  So.  Second, I'm also not trying to be all "look at me, look at me!" even though I know it looks like it.  I am always so curious about how other artists work and the whole process and time and all that stuff.  There's a part of me that wants to show others who may be wondering how that painting came together.  Maybe you'll get some insight or avoid some of the traps that I tend to fall into. And it's good for me to be able to look at my own process and see how my decision making process works.  So I might be a little over-zealous in the sharing department.  But you know what?  This is my blog.  You can deal with it!

I'm sorry, it's late and my brain is fried.  So now that I've got my little disclaimer out there, here's some more updates, and an actual scan!  Aren't y'all proud of me?  I am.

Original Scan

So my new-ish scanner is 9x12 I think.  I've got it in my studio now and it helps to not have to walk all the way across the house to set up a scan, then back to my studio to preview and then back again, etc, etc.  I know.  My life is so hard.  This was scanned in in 4 part and stitched together in Photoshop.  I played with the levels a bit, but I think most of the color was captured pretty well.  It picked up a lot of the paper texture though and that wasn't as cool.  

Edited Scan

I was a little lost with the piece, so I went in with Photoshop and did a paint-over, to see if the changes I was wanting to make would work for the piece.  It did, so then I did that in real life.  My dad came in as I was working on it - he's one of the reasons I pursued art growing up.  That and my mom says she doesn't think I could do anything else.  Anything not creative, I mean.  She doesn't mean it as mean as that sounded, but I can't think of another way to put it right now.  Anyway, Dad came in and called me on my laziness in forgetting/ not wanting to go in and define some detail in her pants the way I was with the rest of her outfit.  So I got down and dirty with my reference and nailed down some details in the pants and WOW, how that helped.  It's so subtle, but it really brought the piece up a notch.

Anyway.  I didn't scan it again.  You'll just have to make do with photos until it's really finished.  Cause aside from the general annoyance that scanning is, un-taping a stretched piece of watercolor paper to scan it and then trying to tape it back down was probably the blondest thing I've done all week.  Maybe all year.  So guess what?  It's staying on the board until Sara's done with it.

21 Hours

Steampunk Little Red - Part 5

Just a quick update this week.  18 hours in, longest I've ever spent on a painting and Eric and Rebecca are talking about spending at least 50.  I cannot even fathom that.

I'm having to be careful, cause I loose steam more quickly and I really don't want to rush here at the end.  Colored pencils have been awesome - not getting lost in the painting nearly as badly.  But one thing is clear about all of this: I need to build up my endurance.

And an idea I am working on for a Christmas card.

Steampunk Little Red - Part 4

At the 10 hour mark.

Steampunk Little Red - Part 3

Study in acrylic, watercolor and colored pencil.

Color comp 

We are now in the painting stages.  I'm having a blast, which is a welcome change to my usual emotionally constipated "I can't DO this" mantra.

A couple of weeks ago, Eric introduced us to Greg Swearingen, who's work I had seen before in Spectrum, but I'd never looked him up.  Turns out he's super cool and uses watered down acrylics, watercolors and colored pencils to achieve the amazingly beautiful illustrations:

While ogling his website, the thought struck me that this might be a technique I could incorporate into my work.  I always feel like I loose so much because I am trying not to noodle and I end up not being able to push those details that always seem to evade me or get muddied up by the end of my painting.

And honestly, it looked like a boatload of fun.

And guess what?  It was!  All those things that I feel like I don't have control over with paint I could go back in and refine very gently with the pencils.  I really enjoyed it.  And using the acrylics as a kind of under layer has been great, too.  I can establish colors and tones and not worry about all the watercolor layers getting mixed up and muddied by the time I'm getting to the end.

But just wait.  I'll run into a problem and swear it all off in a week.  I mean, I hope not, but that has been my modus operandi.

Here is a photo I took about 5 hours in:

Not great, but I'll scan it in at some point so you can see all the lovely details.

Steampunk Little Red - Part 2

So here's more of Little Red in progress.  A rough idea of the value.  All done in Photoshop.

And this is a color comp.  Notice the distinct lack of color variety.  I love it. 

And then Eric schooled me.

Needless to say, I'm leaning more toward's Eric's comp.  I especially love the glowing red eyes he gave the wolf.  Was going with glowing, but didn't think of red.  Awesomeness.

Have I given y'all a link for Eric's work yet?  Well, here it is.

Steampunk Little Red - Part 1

Original Sketch

Revised Sketch

A sample of the reference I took this weekend

This is a VERY rough outline.  I know that I am not nearly as clever or witty as I think I am.  There are lots of plot holes.  I know this.  You have been warned.  And it's mine, so, don't steal it.  Please.  

Little Red was always a headstrong, fearless child.  She grew up on a dirigible under the watchful eye of her mother, the pilot, and her father,  the captain.  But even their near constant vigilance never succeeded in keeping Little Red out of some kind of mischief.  She loved flying and being surrounded by the of crew, whom she always considered a motley assortment of aunts, uncles and older siblings.  The one thing she hated more than anything is being stuck on land for any length of time - or “grounded” as she called it.  


Her grandmother (her mother’s mother) was a famous inventor.  She was brilliant.  No one had ever seen her match as far as sheer ingenuity.  Sometimes her inventions seemed not of this world - they’d be years ahead of her time and she had volume upon volume of diagrams for inventions that couldn’t be built yet because the technology to build them didn't exist.  She’d developed a way to process spider silk to produce a lightweight fabric that is stronger than steel.  She’d also developed a kind of viewing device so small she could incorporate it into one of her mechanical bugs and it transmits those images over extreme distances.  She revolutionized the airship engine, making it more lightweight and nearly 4 times as powerful.  You name it and she’d probably built it or made it better.  She was a temperamental, bossy old woman, though, obsessed with a theory about inter-dimensional travel.  Not even her daughter completely understood the extent of her obsession.  Or the reason for it.  

For a long time, the grandmother worked in the open: she took on apprentices, drove hard bargains for her inventions, fixed things that sparked her interest.  Until one day, she told her daughter that she had started to make some real progress on her theory.  She became a tyrant in the workshop and slowly began to make progress on her machine.  It was a doorway, she said.  A door to other worlds.  A way home.  

And then there was a break in at the workshop.  A mess, the newspapers said, but no real harm done.  Except the intruders had taken what work there was on the door.  It hadn’t been functional, but it had been close.  The grandmother was devastated.  She was enraged.  Paranoid and convinced that it had been an inside job, she fired all her apprentices and moved her workshop to an undisclosed place.  No one’s heard from her in a while and she communicates with her daughter very infrequently.  

It wasn’t completely out of character for the grandmother to drop off the radar for weeks on end, but after three months, her daughter became a little concerned.  She knew where her mother’s secret workshop was and thought the basis of the paranoia was more old age than truth.  She played with the idea of visiting her, but their flight log was booked for weeks and there was no one she trusted to fly her beloved dirigible, The Red Rider.  Then she thought of sending Little Red, but she knew the fierce opposition that would come from her daughter at the suggestion of being “grounded” for an indeterminate amount of time and hesitated.  She understood her daughter’s dislike of being on land - she herself had run away from home when she was not much older than Little Red, longing for the skies herself.  Over the years she had earned her piloting papers and now there was nowhere she’d rather be than at the wheel of The Red Rider with her husband and child beside her.  

But Little Red could be a “right terror” and after one too many misadventures, both of Little Red’s parents agreed that drastic measures were necessary.  The younger brother of one of the crewmen had been visiting and was on his way back to his own apprenticeship with an engineering guild near the grandmother’s hidden workshop.  He would accompany Little Red as far as their roads went together and see her safely on her way to her grandmother’s.  End of discussion.  

Little Red was angry.  She railed, she pouted, she even tried her hand at crying, but nothing moved her parents.  So when the appointed day came, she was seen onto the train with the young engineer and sent on her way.  

Regardless of his innocence in the whole affair, the young engineer took the brunt of Little Red’s frustration.  He bore it as patiently as he could, but when a group of engineers took seats in their car, he entered into conversation with them and ignored Little Red.

Meanwhile, the men who had taken the grandmother's invention were rather annoyed that the machine they stole was not a working prototype.  And the fact that the grandmother had gone “underground” meant that she was paranoid enough to see them coming even if they did find her.  

Now, they know the police have someone called “the Wolf” in custody.  He’s a ruthless bounty hunter, tracker, assassin, and whatever else you’ll pay him for.  They pay off the guards and tell him that they will give him his freedom and lots of money if he’ll track down the grandmother and steal the (working) invention.  He agrees.  

He set out to learn everything he could about the grandmother.  No one knew where she came from, and up until she started making things, no one had ever heard of her.  But he did find out about the grandmother’s daughter and her family on The Red Rider.  He figured they were the best way of finding the grandmother, so he followed them for months.  He found out that they hadn’t heard from the grandmother in a while and figured it’s just a matter of time till they send someone to check on her.  When he overheard their plans to send Little Red, he was jubilant.  Following Little Red and the young engineer onto the train he waited and planed until Red is left alone.  

When the stranger sat down across from her, Little Red ignored him.  She was still angry and pouting about the whole “off to grandma’s” thing.  When he started making small talk she was downright rude, but he persists and she eventually finds herself venting all her frustration about being sent off to grandmother’s.  She didn’t tell him where the workshop is, but she told him the name of a nearby town.  He was very sympathetic to her plight: asked her questions about her grandmother and their relationship - all seemingly innocent questions, but in her self-pity and anger, Little Red had no idea how much she was really giving up to the stranger.  
Internally, the wolf was weighing his options - he could use Little Red as leverage, but how could he get her alone?  There were too many people on the train, and the young engineer traveling with her - he didn’t want to risk alerting the grandmother that he was coming by kidnapping her granddaughter.  

Manipulating Little Red’s disgruntled state, he talked about what a pity it was that she had to be hurried off to her grandmother’s so soon, couldn’t she at least take in the sites?  There were some fantastic shops in the town she was getting off at before continuing on to her grandmother’s - besides, wouldn’t her grandmother appreciate a little something?  But of course, there was nothing she could do if her parents had told her to go straight there.  Little Red denied that she has been told any such thing - and then the young engineer came back and told the Wolf to shove off.  

When they arrive at their station, the young engineer saw that Little Red was put on a vehicle to the town near her grandmother’s and told her to go straight there and make sure she contacted her parents when she got to her grandmother’s.  The Wolf watched them, observing Little Red’s increasingly belligerent state, and followed on behind her when she set off.  

Angry at everyone and telling herself that she isn’t a child to be babysat and told what to do, Little Red noticed they were passing by the shops the Wolf had told her about on the train and throwing caution to the wind, she jumped out of the moving transport and dashed into the crowd towards the shops.  She could find her own way to her grandmother’s and she would bring something with her from the shops.  

The Wolf meanwhile was beyond pleased that his little diversion had worked.  He contacts his own small dirigible that is not far off and using topographical maps quickly discovers the only place the grandmother could have hidden her workshop and sets out. 

Finding the workshop and bypassing the grandmother’s security, he takes the grandmother by surprise - she’d over-exhausted herself just as her daughter suspected and had been in bed for several days.  The Wolf locks her up in the belly of his ship and tried to make her tell him about her machine, but she won't.  

Back at the town, Little Red eventually finished her shopping spree and set out to find her own transportation to her grandmother’s.  Hitching a ride on the back of a farmer’s wagon, she made her slow way toward her grandmother’s.  Eventually parting ways with the farmer, she headed off into the woods on her own and finally arrived at her grandmother’s workshop.  She went inside, confused to find that none of the lights were working.  But there was some noise coming from the back of the workshop and Little Red felt her way carefully towards it calling out to her grandmother as she went.

Well, it wasn’t her grandmother in the workshop, of course, it was the Wolf trying to figure out the invention and what to take to his employers.  He froze when he heard Little Red’s voice, trying to figure out a way to get rid of her.  But then a thought came to him - Little Red might be important to the grandmother, maybe he could use her as leverage.  SO he called out to Little Red, very softly and almost indistinctly trying to disguise his voice,  directing her to where he was.  

It was still dark in the workshop, and Little Red could barely make out what she thought was her grandmother’s form bent over a piece of machinery.  She comments on how different her grandmother looks as she comes closer - realizing too late that it isn’t her grandmother.  

Soon, the Wolf had both Little Red and her grandmother locked up in the belly of his ship.  As soon as she realizes that the Wolf has her granddaughter as well, she gives up her invention.   She is furious with Little Red, though, and gives her granddaughter a scathing piece of her mind about her lack of responsibility, etc, etc.  In the shock and fear, something gets through to Little Red and she sees herself quite clearly for the first time and her self-confidence and pride is shaken.  

Meanwhile, Little Red’s parents haven’t heard from her.  They contact the young engineer in the early morning hours and he goes out to look for her.  He in turn dragged the guy hired to transport her to the grandmother’s town and found out about her little escapade in the shopping district.  He spent a long time tracking her down and eventually found someone who remembered her getting a ride with a farmer going home the day before.  Annoyed and grim, he sets out to the other town.  

Along the way he started to notice the sound of a dirigible coming from the woods and decided to investigate - who would be putting their ship down in the middle of the woods?  When he got there he recognized the Wolf from the day before loading up machinery onto his ship.  THe young engineer, not being a complete idiot, thought that it was too much of a coincidence that the same man who was talking to Little Red (now missing) on the train the day before was there in the woods loading mysterious machinery near where he suspected Little Red’s grandmother’s workshop should be.  So he followed the Wolf back to the workshop, snuck in after him and started to look for Little Red and her grandmother.  But of course, they weren’t there.  So he went back to the Wolf’s ship while the Wolf was busy packing the machine up and searched the dirigible.  

When he did find Little Red and her grandmother, deep in the belly of the Wolf’s ship,* and broke them out.  The grandmother and the young engineer quickly come up with a plan to catch the Wolf.  Little Red, wanting to make up for the trouble she’s caused, volunteers to make sure the Wolf can’t take off in his ship in the meanwhile.  

Her confidence in herself was shaken, but if there was anything Little Red knew like the back of her hand, it was dirigibles.  So she set off alone to find the controls of the ship.

The grandmother and the young engineer meanwhile had snuck off the ship and back into the workshop just before the Wolf set off with another load for his ship.  The two gather what they need and set out to catch the Wolf.  

On the ship, Little Red was finishing disabling the flight mechanisms when the Wolf stumbled upon her.  Enraged, he chases her through the ship and out into the woods, right into the grandmother and young engineer’s hastily contrived trap.  

They hand the Wolf over to the authorities, Little Red gets in trouble with her parents, again, and has to thank the young engineer for saving her.  She also has to stay with her grandmother to help her move to a new hidden workshop, since it’s probable that the Wolf will tell his employers where the shop is to get himself out of prison.  

*I know, I crack myself up

You can see some of my other stories and ideas for stories here.