Paper Weaving Art

Here is a piece of Paper Weaving I created in an hour or two this morning. It was really fun to do. I used an exact-o-knife to cut the slits and the stripes.

I just did it because I saw an example in a paper-crafts book and got inspired by the pictures of other weavings. Weaving is really a great activity that requires focus, but at the same time it's relaxing. And it stays creative while also being a repetitive task. How convenient! I might use this technique for a birthday card someday.

Recently I slapped together a couple birthday cards on short notice; one of them I witnessed being read by the birthday person, the other one was sent the old-fashioned way, so I'll have to wait until they come over to visit to get their reaction. Unfortunately I didn't take pictures of either of them, so as time will pass I will forget what my creations looked like, unless somehow they get saved instead of getting thrown out. I don't throw out my birthday cards.

I'm very proud of my creative abilities, yet I still get pleasantly surprised whenever I create something pleasing to my eye. I hope to continue to get better and better at creating art and learning new things and performing experiments just like I did today. Thanks for checking out my blog. Comment if you have something to share.

Mountains in Burnt Umber

Since my Uncle Danny left I've kept learning about watercolor painting. I've taken out instructional DVDs hosted by one Frank Clarke (check out his website, simplypainting.com), and I've adopted his method, "H", "S", "M", "F". These letters stand for the 4 elements in a painting, the Horizon, Sky, Middle-ground, and Foreground, but they can also stand for the words in the sentence "Have Some More Fun", which is what painting as a hobby is all about. I really like the usage of an easy-to-remember mnemonic device. Anyway, I copied this from one of his lessons, but I still think it's great, and all my family loves it. Instead of keeping it in my notebook like my other paintings, I ripped it out and fashioned a homemade frame out of a regular black office folder. It stands upright!

My grandparents are coming over this Friday, I can't wait for them to see my painting!

Watercolor painting with Danny

Here is the picture I painted with my uncle Danny. Not that he painted it with me, he did his own painting and I did mine. Here's mine. He-he.

Burning Questions

Here is a very interesting piece of writing I found from 3 months ago, June 3rd. I forgot all about writing this, but now I thought I'd like to share it with you out there in the blogosphere. Tell me what you think. How does this make you feel? Do you know any of the answers to these questions? If you do, comment me, unless of course you don't feel like it, in which case I'll have to go on my own journey to find myself then. Shucks. Enjoy!

Who am I?

What am I supposed to be doing, if anything?

How much time do I have?

What do I love to do?

Where am I supposed to be?

Am I afraid of showing fear?

What is the worst thing that can happen if I take a chance?

Am I ready?

How will I know when I am ready?

Why am I here?

Is there someone watching me?

What do I believe in?

Am I important?

Must I feel important to be important?

Where does laughter come from?

Why do people waste so much time hating?

How can I have it all?

Is there anything better than perfection?

Who do I trust?

Am I strong enough to do what I must?

Where does strength come from?

What does happiness mean?

Why is it that the easy way is not always the right way?

Can anyone hear me?

Blob Art

These pictures are late in coming, but I still thought it would be nice to put them up. It was Friday, July 31, and I attended a sort of arts-and-crafts meeting at Ramona's house. First I made this cute one of Yakko with watercolor paints, and then we did a bunch of awesome "blob art"! "Blob art", as you may guess from the name, is a technique where

1. You fold a piece of paper in half.
2. Then open it and put blobs of paint on it (its good to use tempura paint because it's easy to pour).
3. Fold the paper in half again and spread the paint with your hands.
4. Finally you open it, and voila! An abstract masterpiece!

Now here's a game I'd like to try: Leave a comment saying what these two pictures remind you of, and I'll add some outlines to them in Photoshop using your suggestions. Thanks a bunch!

More Animaniacs Art

This picture was done first by hand, and then I used Photoshop to color it in. I then took the original photo and turned it into a cute hanging frame in the background. Hey, it's a lot easier than having to upload two pictures to my blog at the same time! This frame is from an episode called "65th Anniversary Special", and there's a part where Yakko says, "These people would clap at anything.
Wakko tests that theory by blurting out, "Hey, everybody! Wanna hear me play Yankee Doodle with my armpits?"

*awkward silence*

"Ahhhhhhhh, almost anything." says Yakko right after he and Dot make those surprised faces.

Ha ha, classic Warners. Now that was a funny episode right there.

I love to draw Yakko! He's just so cool, you know? I can just imagine him saying something clever like: "It's never too late to do something great with your life. Unless you're Da Vinci, then you're history". (He never really said that, I made it up just now!) Same method as above. Compare this with the original sketch in the upper-right corner.

Animaniacs Art

Hey guys! I am so excited to show you my latest art masterpieces featuring the Warners! First off, let me turn your attention to the chalk drawings that I first did of Dot and Yakko.

I know, Dot's head is wrong and Yakko's mouth is weird. Don't remind me. I did these about a week ago anyway. They were done from memory though, so it must count for something. "Where did the chalk-board come from?", you might not be wondering. Well I'll tell you. While me and Bettina were adventuring in Boston, Shira took the time to paint a section of our kitchen wall with this special black paint that turns any wall into a chalkboard! Since then it's been much easier to jot down phone messages and do cute doodles and then erase them whenever we please. This is a good solution for creative little ones who love to do stuff like draw on the walls. It's so much fun!

<--- And now, for my big achievement, a doodle of Yakko, Wakko, and Dot hugging Steven Spielberg! This is what I did with a pencil...

And this is what I turned it into using Photoshop! I love eeeet! I swear, this has got to be my best work ever! However, that will not stop me from making even more sketches of these guys, they are so much fun to do! It's as if they leap off the page with their manic energy as soon as you draw the final line! That's the joy I believe in being a cartoonist. The thrill you feel as you make friends with a new character. I wish I were Steven Spielberg in this picture.

Please share your opinions; the comment link is right under the title, you can't miss it.

Photoshop Paintings

Check it out!

Boston ~ Yakko's Head and Caricatures

July 3~This morning I drew a picture of Yakko's face (shown here, cute, isn't he?), and memorized the first verse of the song called Yakko's World (watch the movie, it's amazing). It's not really that hard once you watch the clip over and over to memorize the first verse, but the other countries later in the song are sung faster and faster and they're harder to pronounce. (Animaniacs. It's an obsession.)

July 4~We had a caricature artist do a picture of both of us, and here is a photo of the final product! In my opinion he made me look more like Tina Fey than myself, but other than that he did a good job. It only took him 7-8 minutes to draw, so I'm pretty impressed. We chatted a little as we posed and he drew, and it was really fascinating. I am intrigued by artists of this sort, because through the years they must meet a lot of people and gain a lot of experience in honing their talent.

Boston ~ 2 Animaniacs Drawings

July 1~Woke up really early this morning, around 6:30. Bettina wasn't up, and I was still very psyched after watching the wonderful "Wakko's Wish" Animaniacs movie the previous night, so I found on Google Images a webpage of how to draw Yakko, Wakko, and Dot Warner, and I proceeded to draw them in my trusty sketchbook, which I brought with me on this trip but frankly hadn't used up till now. Here's the picture, I hope I did a good job in my reader's opinion (as an artist I need other people's criticism):--->

June 2~This morning I did another Animaniacs drawing, and here is the picture to the right. ---> I could've done Yakko better, but I'm proud of my Dot.

Father's Day

I am so happy that today turned out to be so wonderful. I am so lucky to have a father like my Benny, because he is the best dad ever! This morning, as per usual on special occasions, my family had a bountiful breakfast of fruit and pancakes! Then me and my sibs presented our father with homemade cards that he read with pride and love. Want to see 'em? Here they are!

First there is my card, then Bettina's, then Adam's.

Paint Post/Doodle Collection

Hey there! I'd like to show you a few new works.

---> This is Adam's paint-by-numbers project from last post, all finished by Shira. It was just taking too darn long for Adam to do it himself. I know that I didn't have much to do with this, but I thought it was nice enough to write about in my blog.

<--- Now this is something I did. Originally I just had a fancy sun shining on the forest, but it had too much color and it didn't go with the rest of the painting, so I turned my sun into a sunflower. Now the squirrel and the deer have a giant flower to look at! I wonder how big the seeds would come out? (I love eating sunflower seeds, unsalted) I think it may be one of the first watercolor paintings I've done that didn't involve a stick figure me (standing under a rainbow, holding hands with my mom, or in a giant flower garden. You know the way a young kid thinks. Or maybe that's just me).

Below are three instances of bishoujo manga experimentation. Bishoujo is japanese for "beautiful women", in case you didn't know. I love drawing manga, because it's like cartooning, only slightly more artistic looking. However I find it a bit challenging to draw all the hair and the big eyes and stuff. Hopefully if I practice I'll get better. In the future I hope to create more of my own original manga characters for my enjoyment.

---> I copied these out of a manga book by Christopher Hart. He has dozens of "how to draw" books to his name, and his writing style is nice. The undated one was made May 26. I like the way I did both of their hairstyles, even though they are copied. This kind of drawing gives me great practice for getting comfortable and confident in my hair and eye drawing abilities.

<--- Original character, coming through! I am both proud and slightly embarassed to show this to you. On the one hand, I pride myself on the hair, winking expression, and ruffled sleeves. On the other hand the arms are doing nothing, the proportions of the body don't look quite right, and the boobs are obvious. Of course in bishoujo manga, all the women have big boobs, but they only show on revealing costumes. I don't want it to be obvious under a simple frilly top! Oh well. What can you do?

If you like what you see (or not), please feel free to comment (or not).

1st Paint Post

I am so happy today! I just got my mom, my brother, my dad, and myself engaged in a morning of watercolor painting! Bettina didn't feel like painting, because she was busy reading Pendragon #10: "Soldiers of Halla", which she bought a few days ago when it came out. It's the last Pendragon novel ever, so she's way excited about it. ANYWAY...(ha ha, I'm saying it like Leslie)...Yesterday we bought a bunch of awesome art equipment at A.C. Moores, like tubes of watercolors, a starter brush set, a couple of plastic palettes, and 2 pads of watercolor paper. Me and Shira were really the ones who chose all the tools, while Bettina and Adam just tagged along.

After leaving the store, we were ready to begin our painting careers! This morning was perfect painting weather (e.g. cloudy, rainy, not sunny). Before I knew it, almost my whole family has a paintbrush in their hands and creating art! Benny and Adam are working together on a paint-by-numbers for the time being, but it still counts. Here are the beautiful pictures I took of the final paintings:

---> This is my first watercolor painting, called "Essence of Random". As you can see I did a whole bunch of experimentation, to get used to the new materials I had to work with. I've never worked with tube paints before.

<--- This is my mom, Shira's first watercolor painting. I love her style, all flowery and bright. She said she used a lot of water when painting, maybe that's why it looks different. Hmmm.

---> This is Shira's 2nd painting, a crack at pointillism. Beautiful, in't it?

<--- This is Adam's first watercolor painting. Just so y'all know, Adam is 11 years old, and has no previous painting experience other then paint-by-numbers. (Coming up next.)

---> I know, I know; it's not finished yet, but here's how far Benny and Adam have gotten so far. This painting was started three weeks ago, and Adam hasn't worked on it in about a week, so this morning was a nice boost in the productivity department.

My Doodle Collection #9

Time for some more awesome doodles/sketches/artwork/masterpieces! (Hey, it's more than just doodling, but the post-title's still nice, so I'm keeping the name.)

<--- I had a lot of fun doing these; I combined a bunch of different facial parts together into 7 distinct personas. Pick eyes from column A, lips from column B, eybrows and noses from C and D, and you've got yourself a brand new character! Once you've got the face, you could very well go on to choosing a head shape and funny ears too! I got all the face parts from a book called the Creative Cartoonist.

---> This little guy shown in two panels is someone I like to call Josky. You can pronounce it "Joe-skee" or "Jah-skee" if you like, but what matters is that I made up an imaginary animal that has an original name. Have you ever heard the name Josky before? I think it fits him. He lives somewhere in a rocky-mountain-desert, and he's searching for bugs or prarie dogs or something.

<--- Here we have a couple of profiles that I copied from the Creative Cartooning book. I relly like the one that has both eyes on one side of his face, because he looks like he was drawn by Picasso, but he was actually drawn by me! It was fun doing the other profiles too, but they're too "beautifully proportioned" to be funny.

---> Yesterday I went to Borders and got inspired by a dragon-art book to create my own fire-breathing beast. I made this totally from my own imagination! What do you think of that? I also named him Icarus, after the Greek myth of Daedalus and his son Icarus who made wings out of wax and feathers so they could fly out of prison. But Icarus flew too close to the sun, his wings melted, and he fell into the sea and drowned. But my Icarus has fully-functional wings that make him keep his balance when he stands on two legs like this.

<--- This was made 2 weeks ago. It was really simple to create; all I did was draw my shadow, then fill in the background. The coloring in took a while, plus I had to make it nice and smooth looking.

Please comment and tell me which pieces you like and why.

Mother's Day Card

A picture of the card I made for my mother, Shira:

I believe that the Mothers Day card I made this year beats all the Mothers Day cards I've made before. Can you tell I worked hard on it?

Leslie and Kyle Episode 10!

Did you see that? Did you like it? Well if you did, send this link right away to as many friends as you can, because we want this to be our greatest show ever!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sU0otvVjqiI

Comments and feedback are always welcome. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Signed, Annette (a.k.a. The Funny One)

My Doodle Collection #8

Hiya peoples! I haven't been very good about keeping up with my doodle posts, so to start it rolling again, here are 5 new pencil drawings that you haven't seen before!

Oldest to newest:

---> Here is a kind of test drawing I did when I was learning about the effects of light and shadow on a sphere. I haven't practiced very much at that, in fact I think I copied it from the book. But I did add the ants and the blades of grass, so that makes this piece an original. September 17, '08.

<--- This one is a blatant copy from a "how to draw manga" book that I took out from the library. It was fun to draw, but I can't help thinking: how does someone come up with a character like this? I have no idea whether this was based on a real person or drawn from imagination, but either way the original artist has mad skills! April 10, '09.

---> I am learning that to be a good artist, one has to practice, practice, practice. It's especially good to practice subjects that you don't pay attention to normally, so you really see what you're capturing on paper. That's why I copied this chameleon out of a book of reptiles, because I normally don't think about chameleons. I think I did a very good job! April 14, '09.

<--- This one was extremely satisfying to accomplish. I have drawn a human eye! A woman's eye! Not my eye, a magazine model's eye. It's not on a face, but who cares?! I think this is a product of reading a "how-to-draw-manga" book yesterday at the library and studying the different eye-types that artists use to convey expression. I have always wanted to draw eyes perfectly, because they're so challenging, and I believe this is only the first out of future well-drawn eyes to come. I did it. Yes, me, I did it. Aren't I awesome? I even gave it a clever title, and I have a scrawl to my signature. April 21, '09

---> This one was drawn several minutes later from the same magazine that I drew the eye from, only it was an ad for Smart Cars. They are so cute and tiny! I would like to own one of these babies one day, but I still need to earn my driver's license. I wonder if the tires came out right here? Oh well. It's still cool, huh? Tell me it's cool!

Well there you have it! Almost a month since I last posted attractive hand-drawn doodle posts on this blog, and what do I have to say for myself? Please forgive me!

Benny's Birthday

My dad Benny's birthday was a blast! (If you want to guess how old he is, here's a hint: his age is now a prime number.) Since the end of April Fool's Day, I've worked hard on my homemade birthday card for him, and here is a picture of the front. --->

He loved it, as well as the other cards he got from the rest of my family. It is a long-honored tradition in my family that on someones birthday, no matter if there are no presents or cake, the very least one can do is give a birthday card, either store-bought or hand-made.

My brother, sister and I hold great pride in the fact that we are accomplished personal greeting card writers; we keep getting better and better each year.

My Doodle Collection #7

7. A very fascinating number, in my opinion. For one thing I was born on the 7th (of Sept.), 7 is a prime number, and there are 7 dwarfs in Snow White. I don't consider 7 my "lucky" number, really, but I do consider it one of my favorite numbers. It's a challenging number that isn't tamed easily. But when you do, it gives such interesting results (You get 35, 42, and 133 multiplying by 7, and 1/7 as a decimal number is 14.28). But hey, you didn't come here for math now did you? You came here for art! Well excuse me for exercising both hemispheres of your brain.

<--- For starters, here is a doodle I did almost 3 YEARS ago of a playground at some park. I've forgotten how good I was way back when. It's fun to look into childhood archives and find treasures like this, isn't it?

---> And now, with a snap we come back to the present, and I do this. I first outlined this on the 7th of March (7 again!), using my fine new French Curve tools. Then I thought, "Well, that doesn't look so pretty all black and white. I'm gonna just color the whole thing!". I used coloring pencils. Coloring is a very meditative activity, I find, especially if you color in large spaces. In this experiment, I can see forms of dinosaurs, and waves. What do you see?

<--- I never did put a date on these 2 seashells. Gosh, why didn't I date them? Future or fellow artists, learn from my mistakes; date your artwork!

--->

<--- This one I drew on the beach. Just like last week. It was just before we had to go home, and I captured the moment as best as I could. The waves were very big, and I went swimming twice yesterday. If you can't see the buoy, the seagull, or the faraway boat, click the picture. (Sorry that it's so big, I'm not sure how to fix that exactly.)

Now that I'm done with this, it's on with my day. I need to figure out the meaning of life and hang upside-down for a while. See ya!