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!

My Doodle Collection #6

Behold! A new doodle post! The first four sketches are a few months old now, but the last one I created just 2 days ago. You'll see.

---> Here is one of those sketches that I copied upside down so it comes out more accurate. It's titled "Portrait of Leon Bakst", and I drew it way back in July of '08, which was, let's see...8 months ago. The original artwork was created by Pablo Picasso, and I copied it from the book "Drawing on the Artist Within".

<--- This one has no name, and it was made on the same day as "Leon Bakst". Basically I took a line for a walk, and then I stopped to see what it looked like, and I saw a bunch of faces without eyes. So I filled in a bunch of eyes everywhere. I'nt it neat?---> Now this sweet little house is on the cover of a book called "The Willoughbys", a story about 4 old-fashioned children who think it would be a fun idea to be orphans, while their parents think it would be a great idea to abandon them (like in Hansel and Gretel) and go on a vacation. There are big words, a nanny with a Mary Poppins-like character, and a melancholy millionaire who finds a baby on his doorstep. I tell you, great story for kids. If you notice, on the date it says 1-21-08, when I actually mean 1-21-09! My bad. <--- And now this one has a similar problem, namely I dated it 12-27-09 when I actually meant 12-27-08. Am I wacky or what? Anyway, the unicorn is lamentably not an original of mine, but an illustration I copied out of my mom's old high school yearbook. I think it was one of her friends that drew it. I dream someday of being my sister's illustrator for her story that she's writing, and one of the characters happen to be a unicorn, so it was a fine way to practice.

---> Finally, this sketch was drawn on Sunday at the beach that I go to. I drew a portrait of my friend Gigi's baby brother, Jovee (pronounced like Jovi, but spelled with 2 e's at the end). My friend didn't come to the beach though, so I just asked the mom permission to draw her baby. Jovee is now 5 months old. Have you ever drawn a baby before? It's not a task for the faint at heart, you know, what with all the squirming. But in the end, or maybe sometime in the middle, it feels worth it to capture the round, chubby shapes and the alert eyes and the tiny fingers and toes, on paper. I hope I did Jovee justice.

Thank you for viewing! It's so much fun putting up my favorite drawings on Blogger. It inspires me to draw more masterpieces. Now that the SATs are over (hallelujah!!!) I won't be too busy to do a doodle.

Isn't that cute? Do-a-doodle? Oh well. See ya soon!

My Doodle Collection #5

Surprise! I'm not going to wait another day for my doodles to go up on my blog, so here are 5 more of my favorite works. These pictures were all drawn in pencil, but I edited them in Adobe Photoshop so that the backgrounds are all bright and the outlines are all dark. I like working in Photoshop; so many cool effects and filters! Anyway...

<--- This is a zebra.

And this is a giraffe. --->

Both were drawn on November 16, 2008. I copied them out of a book called "The Cartoon History of the Universe: Volume 1". It was a world history book in comic form. Everyone should be able to learn history and read comics at the same time!

Now the rest of these masterpieces were all made on the same day: March 2, 2009. That saves me a lot of jumping around memory lane, doesn't it?

<--- This one I drew first. It is an "Annette Levy Original", called "Guy with a bird on his head". I was inspired after watching a movie called "The Tune". It was a very surreal and well-animated story about a song-writer who's trying to write the perfect song for his slimeball boss Mr. Mega, so he can keep his job and his girlfriend. As he rushes to work, he gets lost and ends up in a town called Flooby Nooby, a Wonderland-like place where he meets an Elvis-impersonating dog, a noseless cabdriver, and the Wise One (a confusing guru who speaks in words that make no sense) as he tries to get to Mr. Mega's office to deliver the song. I just thought that drawing a guy with a bird on his head would be pretty fun to do.

---> Right afterwards I still felt the drawing urge, and so I drew my eraser. I concentrated on the light and shadows, and you know, it got me to really see the eraser. It wasn't too hard either. Usually I think drawing light and shadow is pretty hard to do, but if you see the subject, and you draw what you see, it just kinda pops off the page, you know?

<--- Finally, this is a vase of flowers. The vase I based on real life, the flowers I came up with by myself. The flowers that were actually in the vase were a little bit tough to recreate; too many petals.

These things were so much fun to make. I've shown them off to my family, and they are so supportive of me, and so I'd like to thank them publicly.

Thank you family!

I love drawing because all through the day I really look at things, and think about who designed them and how they came up with the idea.

For example, when I go to the supermarket, I notice all the brand names on the candies and cookies and chips, such as Tostitos. Did you ever notice how the 2 Ts in the middle are sharing a chip, and the i in the middle has a bowl of salsa on it? I wish that I came up with that!

Anyway, ciao for now! Bye!