Countdown!

I love my family, especially how artistic they all are. Here now are five pictures, one done by each of the five family members (including me), drawn following the same prompt: create numbers with their own characters. GO!!!

Here first is my brother Adam's drawing. On top you can see little people drawn around the numbers 1-9 (the number 3 is on it's side, just thought you'd like to know). Below that, he went and drew even more little characters around all the letters in the alphabet. See if you can spot the letters A~Z, and also admire his ability to go the extra mile :-)

This is my mom, Shira's interpretation of the prompt. Not all the numbers are characters, but they do have a bit of character to them. "1" is a dog/cat face, "2" is a shiny heart, "3" is a pregnant zombie (as far as I can see), "4" looks kind-of like an umbrella, "5" has ripples, "6" is a pair of glasses, "7" is a shark,"8" is a snowman,"9" is hidden among a bunch of balloons, and "0" looks like a yawning sun. Good job!

These are my dad, Benny's doodles. Similar to my mom, he made drawings with character, rather than actual characters. "0" is a balloon with a face, "1" is either a lamp or a face with a huge nose (can't decide which), "2" is a fish with a very fancy tail, "3" is a butterfly, "4" is a field goal with rectangular facial features in it, "5" is two hands (one coming out of both of the ends), "6" is an upside-down face or a six-month-old embryo, "7" is a hangman's gallows, "8" is a face on top of a mirror, and "9" looks like a person.

Now for Bettina's number drawings. These I really like, because you can see how hard she worked on them. She says she's not as good an artist as me, but I say that's false! "1" is a vicious dragon, "2" is a sea monster eating a couple of guppies or something, "3" is a snake (very appropriate for the shape), "4" is a cactus (again, great idea for the shape ), "5" is three different animal faces (see if you can find them all), "6" is a wild face, "7" is a Tetris game in progress,"8" is a very curvy woman,"9" is a cat's head (nine lives, get it?), and "0" is a prisoner with lights shining on him. Amazing work!

Last but not least comes my drawing! It's a whole Number Party! From top-left going clockwise, "0" is about to go jogging, "1" is about to shake hands with a little "7", "6" finds himself on top of "9", "2" (wearing a clown hat and nose) and "5" are admiring "8" because his waist is so thin, "9" is chiding "3" for eating before roller-skating, and two different "4"s are arguing with each other over who is actually "4".

Like I said, isn't my family so artistic? After all the fun we had making these, this could be the start of a regular group activity. Try drawing characters and other things around numbers 0 through 9, and see what you come up with! Thank you and good day everyone!

Dad's Office

I did this drawing of my dad's office in about 2 hours. It could have been done shorter, but in the middle of sketching, he came in and gave brother Adam an impromptu guitar lesson, and I had to set my notebook aside for awhile. A jam-session took place, and it was groovy. Adam on electric, and dad on acoustic. I played a little bit myself, and eventually, both Adam and our father went out and I was able to wrap up my drawing. I did it all in ballpoint pen, no tracing over pencil lines involved. What do you think?

2nd Post in 2nd Day

Three cats doing kitty things. Sorry that one of their heads is off-page, that one was actually drawn head-less.

I got the idea to do this drawing when Bettina started reading a novel called "The Book Theif". It's pretty much the front cover, with my hand about to start off the chain-reaction of dominoes to tumble.

In the comments section of this post, leave a guess as to who you think this male celebrity is. I got him from an article in a recent issue of Vanity Fair magazine.

One of the few times I catch my brother Adam reading a book. He looked so cool I had to make the moment last.

This one I did yesterday after Benny found on his bookshelf a very impressive book on reflexology. It dealt with foot, hand, ear, and head massage as well as shiatsu, and it had hundreds and hundreds of great pictures to flip through and glean inspiration from.

Emergency Art Blog Injection

We all need a little balance in our life.

I drew this on the beach.

The tall buildings and hotels make me wistful and dreamy sometimes.

A treasured stuffed animal. The day I drew "Pumpkin" I actually happened to be at a loss for a drawing idea, so Bettina helped me out by suggesting I draw one of our toys.

I drew this while I was waiting...waiting for something to be over...watching the minutes tick away on my watch and the wall-clock...just passing the time until I could finally leave.

By the way, I'm back!

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?

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."