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!

My Doodle Collection #4: Characters

Here are my best doodles of well-known characters and/or cultural icons. I would like to say that I did all of them on my own without any picture reference in front of me, but then I would be lying. I created all of them while checking them against a picture on the internet or a picture in my house. I hope you like them.

---> July 26, 2006. The Little Prince. I loved reading this book. There are also a couple of movie adaptations, but neither of them are as good as the original story by Antoine de Saint Exupery.

<--- August 9, 2007.

John, Paul, George, and Ringo on the cover of the album Beatles for Sale. I forget about how much effort must have gone into this work, but I'm still impressed with myself. The faces all look unique and distinct from one another, don't they? Their jackets were also an interesting challenge I remember.

---> Somewhere in December 2007. The Road Runner. I copied this off of a DVD cover. He is such a cute character, isn't he? I love the fact that he's a bird. In fact, he's my favorite Looney Tune bird ever! He's not greedy like Daffy, or loud like Foghorn Leghorn, or too cute like Tweety. He's just right. Plus he can't talk, so he crosses the language barrier easy.

<--- October 9, 2008. Jack Skellington. When I was little, I remember being scared of the beginning of "The Nightmare Before Christmas", but now I love the whole movie. I love how Jack gets so excited to the point of distraction when he learns about this new Christmas thing. I love the music and the animation of the movie, plus I like Henry Selick's work. He was the director, just so you know.

---> One day after drawing Jack Skellington. My very own rendering of Alfred E. Neuman. MAD magazine is the best! My brother Adam bought a 2-year subscription (I think) for me and my sister's birthday. Isn't that so nice? It's the gift that keeps on giving. Right now I am waiting for the next issue of MAD. If I don't get my MAD very soon, you're gonna see me get MAD! How confusing. Even this logic is driving me MAD. I want my MAD! >:( Just kidding. I don't even know how to get that mad. () :)

My Doodle Collection #3

Hi-dee Ho! (Just something I came up with just now.) Welcome to my 3rd Doodle Collection! (Just look, don't touch. We wouldn't want your computer screen to be smudged up, now would we?)
---> This, if I do say so myself, is a very cute cartoon version of me that I made about a week ago. I know, I know, dots for eyes. I don't know how to draw eyes that look like mine, so I just made them dots. A good excuse as to why they are so tiny is that I'm a little nearsighted, so I need eyeglasses for when I'm driving or if I want to see something far away. Just a little tidbit I thought you might like to know.

<--- This big lug over here is an original of mine, drawn only a few days before "Sketcher Girl". At the time I was studying a book called "Drawing on the Funny Side of the Brain", and it was all about what the career of a cartoonist is like and how to make pretty good cartoons. Not that I want to be a cartoonist when I grow up, ("Hey Annette, keep those drawings coming, you've got a deadline, let's go, let's go!") but it was very fascinating to read about them.

---> Over here is a doodle I made last summer. Why does it look so good? Because I copied it from a book, and I used blending tortillions on the background to give it soft look. The book that I copied this from was about how crazy the English language really is. It's called "Crazy English" by Richard Lederer. Check it out if you want a few laughs.

<--- I have no idea what to call this actually. I doodled this fish-like creature a looong time ago, in 2007. Oh my goodness! 2007?! How long it's been! *ahem* Moving on.

---> Finally, this last one was drawn in late August of '06. *shakes head in disbelief* It's a short strip about 2 clowns, one of them is a traffic officer, and as the lights change, so does the color of her nose. Yes, yes, the perspective is all wrong, the driver has a very environmentally-unfriendly vehicle, and the officer's nose is so small you can barely notice the effect, but hey, I was only 15 at the time. (Now that I think about it though, I was only about to turn 15, my birthday's in September after all.) Not that that's a good excuse, but still. I'm so glad I've gotten much better at drawing since then.

Well, I hoped you liked viewing some of my original works of doodling. In my next doodle-post, viewers will be able to look forward to some of my depictions of well-known cartoon characters. You'll just have to wait. Too bad.