Toy Story drawings

Here is a sketch done in pen that I drew recently of 2 of my favorite Pixar characters of all time: Woody and Buzz. I did it a couple days after seeing the movie "Toy Story 3", which is required viewing for anyone reading this blog post. You have got to see it! It's even better than the first 2 Toy Story movies! I swear!This is the image I based my sketch on. It's a frame from the first movie, which hangs in our room over Adam's bed. We've had it for so long I forget where we got it.

This is another picture I drew with just Buzz Lightyear in it, striking a flying pose.

I am particularly proud of these pictures because the subjects are computer-animated characters, and I captured them just right (if I do say so myself)!

Isn't it weird whenever an artist captures a moment? It makes it sound like the subject is a wild animal or something. Of course it makes sense if the subject is a wild animal, like a tiger or gorilla, but when it's computer animated characters...

Father's Day Portrait

On the left is a portrait that I drew for my father Benny in honor of Father's Day this year, and on the right is the original photo that I based my sketch on. On the back of the picture I drew is a heart-felt note I wrote listing all his best qualities. He sure is a swell-looking guy, isn't he?

Self-Portrait at 5 years old

I should have put this up half a month ago, when I made it, but better late than never.

For many months beforehand I've stared at the picture on the left wondering whether I could become a good enough artist to be able to capture myself accurately in pen or pencil. I used to gaze at it and promise myself I would tackle it the next day, and I wouldn't keep my promises, and every time I'd see the photo I'd feel a little more guilty. Finally on June 15, 2010 I thought to myself, "Okay, okay, I'll draw the picture already. I've been putting it off for long enough." Less than a half-hour later, I have my cute 5-year-old face beautifully rendered in ball-point pen. Hopefully my short story will serve as a lesson to you, my dear readers: Never put off till tomorrow what you can do in a half-hour today.

Art Blog Templates Old and New

For posterity. Lots of great new artwork coming very soon! That's a promise.

Calvin & Hobbes Sketches

Background Info: Calvin and Hobbes was a comic strip written and illustrated by Bill Watterson for 10 years from 1985 to 1995. It follows the antics and adventures of 6-year-old Calvin, a highly imaginative, precocious and mischievous little boy, and his stuffed tiger Hobbes, a toy who is Calvin's constant companion and comes to life in Calvin's imagination.

Recently I got quite interested in Calvin and Hobbes, and so has my brother Adam. We took a book out from the library that was a collection of the cartoon's Sunday pages, full of color. It's so much fun sitting close together, huddling over the book with Adam and alternating turns; I read a page, he reads a page. And we laugh and laugh! ^_^ These are the good old days!

Every sketch on this page was drawn by simply looking at the picture and copying what I see, except for this one located in the bottom-right corner which I traced directly from the book. It's beyond me how Bill Watterson could make a career drawing these characters for 10 years! It's challenging, man! Sure is fun, though.

The Jackson 3

Today I finished reading an incredibly awesome autobiography: Michael Jackson's own book, Moonwalk. It was written in 1988, right after his album "Bad" came out, and the new 2009 edition of the book includes a foreword by Berry Gordy, founder of Motown. It's also got lots of great pictures of MJ scattered throughout the book, which I'll get to momentarily.

On Sunday, April 4th, my family spent the day at the beach for my dad's birthday, and I got to see a fellow artist friend of mine named Gigi, who draws cartoon panels inspired from her life, among other things. I asked her if I could borrow a piece of paper and a pencil and we did some drawing together. She drew some more comic panels, while I did a drawing of one of the pictures in the book Moonwalk. It's of Michael, Marlon, and Jackie. After finishing the pencil work on the beach, I took the picture back home and traced over it in pen. This is one of the few times that I've succeeded (by my standards at least) in doing a life-like portrait of actual people!

Adam and his Friend Eiza

Yesterday Adam's friend Eiza came over to our house to play. Eiza is 8 years old, and he's very funny and imaginative. Here is a moment I captured, using pen and paper, of the two boys playing with Adam's action-figures and cars.

Freak Out!

See the post I wrote on my other blog by clicking on the link below:

Freakazoid Fan!

Foreshortened Hand in Pen

Project #2 in the "Keys to Drawing" book: With one eye closed, make a rendering of your hand with the fingers curled up, thereby tricking your brain into only drawing what you see, rather than how you think a hand should look like. In this drawing I drew my hand, and then I did a drawing of my drawing. This exercise was fun for me, because the challenge of keeping one eye closed while drawing was pretty freeing. It's as if I know the drawing won't turn out perfectly, so I don't worry about it and just draw what I see.

A new drawing!

I started a new drawing book that I got from the library called "Keys to Drawing" by Bert Dodson. It's got some really great projects to try, and I decided that I'm going to do all of them.

The very first project is to do a picture of your own feet. I went one step further: I did a picture of my feet within a picture of my feet! I spent more time drawing the feet than I did drawing the hands, because the feet were the main focus, but I think I did a really good piece. Especially considering I did it all in pen. No erasing allowed!

In other news, my older cousin from Israel who's been traveling all over America has come to visit our family's house for the weekend, and I got to show her my whole notebook of drawings plus my work with Adam and our doodles together.

It was so much fun, not only to show off my mad skills, but also to go down memory lane. I've pretty much kept the same drawing notebook for almost 3 years, and I still have plenty of empty pages left! Hopefully I can rectify that by going through "Keys to Drawing" so I can finally have a finished work.

It's strange going through my notebook, drawing after drawing, doodle after doodle, phase after phase, and then come to a big old section of blank pages and say, "Eh, that's all I have so far." Instead I want to have a full notebook and at the end say, "And that was the beginning of my drawing career from Sept 2007 to (fill in the blank) 2010."

New Art Collection

First off, here is a bunch of doodles I did with my brother Adam. His are on the left, mine are on the right.

Added background info: Notice the heads of the cartoon mice Pinky & The Brain? We borrowed a DVD from the library and copied them from the cover.

Notice the tiny Phineas & Ferb heads? Those were from memory. I like to keep in practice drawing those 2.

Notice the lightening bug looking up at the stars and the cute little frog? On the 16th we went to the theater and saw the movie "The Princess and the Frog". If you've watched it, you'll know how special that lightening bug is. I just drew the frog from my imagination.

Now, here are a couple of drawing exercises I did myself yesterday. The whole homeschooling group first had to draw lines with different tools and name every tool they used. There were the conventional tools like crayons, pencils, pens, brushes, and pastels, but we also had access to napkins, toothbrushes, sticks, knifes, and our own fingers. This is the result of my experimentation.

Next, everybody had to draw self-portraits of themselves using mirrors and with the one rule not to erase anything. There weren't quite enough mirrors to go around, so Bettina and I had an idea: being twins, we were perfectly suited to draw each other, seeing as we look almost exactly alike. I drew this portrait of Bettina using crayons, so I would be sure not to erase anything.

Please leave a comment after reading this post. Any feedback is much appreciated. Thanks!

Beach Landscapes

Today my family went to the beach for President's Day. It was the first perfect day in weeks! Above 70 degrees Fahrenheit. My family hasn't gone to the beach together in over a month, and it was so nice to get back to the sun, the sand, and the surf. Not that we actually swam in the ocean; it was too windy. It was also too windy to play a good game of Frisbee, but we played for a good 15 minutes anyway and had lots of fun.

Sometime during the day, I just took a look at the wide open sea, how the sky turns from dark blue to light blue when it touches the horizon, and how the water looks greener the further away it is. I decided right there, "When I get home, I'm going to paint that!" And I did!

Believe it or not, I only used 4 colors to achieve these 2 paintings: Cobalt Blue for the sky, Green Deep for the ocean and shrubbery in the foreground, Burnt Sienna for the sand, and Burnt Umber for the palm trees.

Luckily I had the foresight to snap photos of my painting before and after I added in the palm trees, because both pictures are masterpieces in their own right. The first one is basic, creates a sort of isolated atmosphere, and is easy for anyone to copy. Before I could call it finished, I knew it needed something to make it stand out, so I would know that I put some creativity into my work.

The second one is the final product, and I'm very proud of how it turned out. When I showed my family, everyone loved it and said it was my best painting yet. Bettina said that the figure in the foreground looks less like a person and more like a trash can. I don't take it personally though. If I intend for the figure to be a person, than that's a person, but anybody can interpret it differently.

Please leave a comment and tell me what you think about my art, how it makes you feel and what it makes you think. Thanks!

Happy Valentine's Day!

In honor of Valentines Day, I started painting again! This painting is mostly an experimentation of blending reds and blues, and I also tested out my jar of masking fluid for the first time.

To make the picture much bigger, just click it!

I hope everyone had a good day today celebrating with the people they cared about and loved most, I know I sure did.

"All you need is Love"

~John Lennon

Phineas and Ferb Craze!

Okay, remember when I had that whole Animaniacs craze 1/2 a year ago? Well now I've gotten hooked on something else: Phineas and Ferb! Arguably the best Disney Channel cartoon show in the history of Disney Channel cartoon shows! I haven't been able to stop watching episodes of the show on YouTube, and it's so hilarious, with it's reliable running gags and precision comedic timing, and well-written characters and plots! Plus a new song every episode! The appeal is in everything! Oh, and the pop-culture references! Gotta love those! Well, at least I do. I know, I should really get a life.

But in the meantime, I've been doing a lot of drawing to, in a way, extract the cartoon characters from my brain and onto paper in an attempt to clear my head a little. It's actually pretty therapeutic. What do you think? Do I do these guys justice?

Cartoons. Even though they're not real and just made up of thousands of drawings shown in quick succession on a television screen, it sure feels like they think and act like actual people. Thank you to Dan Povenmire and Jeff Marsh for creating this whole new world of children's programming. The best part (or the worst part depending on where you stand on spending time watching cartoons), is that much like "The Simpsons", this show is still coming up with new episodes every week, unlike "Animaniacs". Gee, I hope "Phineas and Ferb" don't suffer the same fate that Yakko, Wakko and Dot had to go through back in the nineties. Cancelled just because it wasn't attracting enough of it's target age-group. Please let it be as successful as the Simpsons. Thank You.

Doodles With Adam

Hi! I'm back, and I brought my brother Adam with me! My doodles are on the left side, and his are on the right. Click the picture to make it bigger.

Last year, I noticed how Adam didn't have much opportunity to show off his artistic skills, or practice them even. So now, on most weekdays, he and I take a page out of my trusty sketchbook and we doodle together side-by-side. It's a beautiful bonding activity, and the both of us are getting much better at drawing!