Gallery Time, some of my Human Mom's art... to inspire you to try

Welcome back,

I did decide to do an art gallery post, but this one is a tiny bit unusual.
So, mom does most of her art on clothing.

Yes, Clothing. She started out in High School and painted a few t-shirts for people and it grew from there, here are two early designs.

and here is how it grew.

Many of these were gifts but some were comissioned as well, that perfect gift might just be take someone's favorite cartoon character and dress them in the jersey of their favorite sports team for a one of a kind totally personal shirt... or a cartoon character with their name on it... or their name in a subtle way, at any rate, this took practice to do, and it is fun for her. She has done a few shirts my size even.

Enjoy the photo's

Love,

 Saige

Lesson Five...Practice

Hello everyone,

How much fun was that westie? I hope you think it was a ton of fun because guess what... if you want to become better at drawing, or soccer, or music, or gymnastics, or dance, or softball, or track, or field hockey, or basketball,or photography, or art, or sewing, or knitting, or crochet, or cooking...whatever you love to do, you have to practice...

Yes, Practice...

I am sorry that I said what may be a bad word for some people. Anyone...and I mean anyone who is really great at something, be it a sport, art, music, dance had to put the time in to get that way. Yes, they had natural talents, but most of the time that is not enough, you have to practice. Even if you never get to be world famous, you get better at it for you. PRACTICE is a must.

Believe me, my human brother is learning trumpet, and you would not believe the difference in his abilities in a years time. Mom totally enforces practice, but she was a musician herself, and she practiced her instruments until she thought her fingers were going to bleed and her lips fall off. My aunt did practice ballet until her feet bleed, poor ballerina's usually have some ugly feet for their art, that is their sacrifice. (or at least my aunt did! now that she is older and no longer dances they are not as ugly, just her big toes look squashy in comparison to the rest of the the family that didn't do pointe anyhow... I am on a tangent)

So, artists get hand cramps, and arthritis...it is all worth it though, and musicians, dancer's athletes.... all get tired and injured doing something they totally enjoy. If you enjoy it then practice should come easy.

However, mom thinks that kids today have more distractions than she did as a kid and practice was easier for her because she didn't have a cell phone, or the internet, many video games, and half the time they didn't have cable in her family. So, mom's main distraction was books since she loves to read. However she didn't have the problem of going on oh say Facebook for just a few moments and hours later realizing she was still on it like we do today. She spent hours playing her instruments. She was an only child so she didn't always have anyone around to play with either.

She spent a ton of time drawing, and her mom taught her how to draw some things, and the more she practiced she got better and better at breaking down a cartoon into it's basic shapes then adding the details and re-creating her favorite cartoon characters. (Did I mention our Christmas tree is covered in cartoon character ornaments? Yes, my human mom is one of those adults that wears cartoon characters on her shirt with pride. She liked her cartoons and still does. )

So, for today's lessons, here is a great site so you can learn step by step how to draw some of your favorite cartoon characters.Easy Drawing Tutorials has many choices in cartoon characters for you to work your way through. Pick a few, draw them and if you have your parent's permission, email your art to me at Lemonhead103@verizon.net and we will make a blog post featuring our fan art. I think I will ask Mom to draw something....hmm I know where her photo gallery is on here maybe I can show off some of her work.

GO PRACTICE !!

Love
Saige

Break it down Lesson Four

In our last lesson we were discussing shape and your project was to practice shapes... now, how to turn your shapes into a picture.

So, for today's lesson I am going to send you to a fantastic tutorial I found on how to draw a Westie. Now, if you wonder why I chose a tutorial on a Westie, well first of all what American Girl doesn't love Coconut?

Coconut has even been shown as a cartoon herself.

And we have an adorable (real) Westie Puppy in my house, his name is Mc Duff and we have two Coconuts for the dolls. We also have a Scottie, her name is Bonnie, here is a photo of them in my human 's car

So this Saige is a big fan of the Westie... I love dogs and horses and cats of course, but since I moved in to this house, I am now a huge westie fan. By the way, he barks at me and my doll sisters and doll brothers all the time, I don't think he quite knows what to do with us yet. He is four months old now. So cute, bold and nutty all at the same time. (woah, I am totally off topic)

Ok so back to art. Follow this tutorial and try your best. I still would love to see your work, so with mom or dad's permission if you are a kid, email them to me at Lemonhead103@verizon.net.

So here is Dragoart and their great tutorial on how to draw a westie. It uses shapes and this is how a cartoonist draws the characters as well. I have been giving you links to great art lessons on the web so my little doll hand don't need to do quite so much typing. 

Have fun and don't forget to send me your drawings. 

Love Saige

Lesson Three Shape Up

Ok, so I am calling this lesson Shape Up because look at the things around you for a moment. The device you are reading my blog on has a shape, possible a rectangle. Is there an on off button? What shape is it? Where are you at, in your house? The doors and windows are a certain shape, the door knob a shape on the shape.

Artists have to break down what they want to draw into a series of shapes to be able to draw it.

Yeah mind blowing, drawing can be that easy.  However, like baseball, soccer, swimming, dance, musical instruments... drawing takes PRACTICE. So sorry to burst your bubble like that. Yes it is a simple process that can take a lifetime to master.

So for todays lesson, we need to practice shapes.

Make a series of a shape on your paper, or in Paint on your computer and then explore the color wheel...see I told you that would keep coming back, and color it up. I made an example for you. I chose rectangles and warm colors for my example and I used paint on the computer.

Have you seen rugs that resemble this or fabrics? I have.

So once again, I would love to see your artwork. Send it to me at my mom's email address, Lemonhead103@verizon.net and I will add them to a post about our lessons. I can't wait to see what you create. Remember to get your parent's permission.

Lesson Two: Ok so now what to do with color....

In my first art lesson we went over color and the color wheel. Color is very important to art. So, today I want you to use color and create a picture of something colorful. It can be a rainbow, a balloon, a beach ball, and you can use any art medium you like, crayons, markers, pastels, paints, collage, any medium including photography but it has to be your own. I am not concerned with how good the lines are or how perfect it looks, because if it is colorful it will be perfect. So go out and explore color. Are you going to use cool tones, warm tones, complimentary colors, primary colors, secondary colors, tertiary colors or the whole wheel? I will be excited to see what you make and I will make a blog post of all the pictures you email me.
(well, my mom helps, so email her, lol ok?)

Use the title Saige's Art lesson 2 and email to Lemonhead103@verizon.net.

I am going to start you off, This is a photo that I edited in the style of an Andy Warhol portrait. He was a famous artist for doing prints like this of famous people. My famous person is my sister, Beth.
Notice all the color? So remember we are looking for color.

Have fun with it.

Lesson One : Color or lets not try to re invent the color wheel....

Sir Isaac Newton developed the first circular diagram of colors in 1666. Since then, scientists and artists have studied and designed numerous variations of this concept.  So the color wheel has been around forever.  Do you know it? A color wheel and knowing how the colors are on it will help an artist to know what colors compliment each other, or go together, and what color are opposites or what you would consider clashing colors. 

So for today's lesson on the color wheel, I am going to give you a link where you can print out your own  color wheel to fill in.  If you want to make one that is doll sized, print it out wallet sized and that would be perfect for dolls like me, but for you, print it out people size or a full sheet.  Card stock would be great if you have it. You will need crayons, markers, or whatever art supplies your parents will let you use, so, ask. 

 http://www.color-wheel-artist.com/printable-color-wheels.html

This is the one you need to print out.

Ok so First lets go over Primary colors
The three primary colors are Red, Yellow and Blue. If I only had Red, Yellow and Blue paint along with Black and White, I could mix every other color.

The first three colors I would mix from my primary colors would be the secondary colors. Secondary colors are made by mixing equal amounts of two of the primary colors, so if I mix red and yellow I get orange, if I mix red and blue I get purple (or violet) and if I mix blue and yellow I get green.

Did you notice that the primary colors make a triangle? The secondary colors also make a triangle. Now if we lay them over each other we notice that  we have something like this but tilted differently on our handy print out. It is a wheel so it turns. Anyhow, we can see that the opposite of Red is green, the opposite of Blue is Orange and the opposite of Yellow is Purple. Now think of all the places you see those color combinations. Opposite colors make each other stand out more. Think of the red and green christmas decorations, or the yellow and purple used often at Easter... Blue and Orange on sports team uniforms or on signs.

Mom used opposite colors when she designed her shop logo, since her shop name is Lemonhead 103 she used yellow and purple.

Tertiary colors fall in between each of the colors above and they will fill out the color wheel  that we printed out.  Your filled in wheel should look like this :

Half of our color wheel is considered warm colors and half is considered cool. Can you tell what colors are warm and what colors are cool? 

Warm colors should make you think of a campfire, and cool of a nice cool pond. 

So, warm colors are Red, Orange and Yellow. Cool colors are Green Blue and Purple. 

If you would like to print this out as well go to http://www.artprojectsforkids.org/2012/08/color-wheel-for-elementary-students.html. and You might need to make this a 4x6  for a doll poster. I believe a wallet would be too small. 

 So, now when you make art you now have your own wheel to study.

Woah, where to begin. Ok well I am Saige, and I am really new to this. As you may already know this was my sister Beth's blog. She had not been feeling well for the last several months and has not blogged . She asked me to take over and hopefully inspire people to create.

I love art. Art is all around us. Even the clothing you are wearing is a textile art, someone had to draft the design's pattern and make the clothing, even in a factory. The cartoon you love the most is a form of art. Music is an art too even if I can not sing. Seriously, I have been asked to stop on several occassions.

You can find art in your world, think of what you pass that would make a photograph that is pleasing to look at, perhaps a farm, a big skyscraper, a wooded area. You do not have to be great at drawing to make art. Photographs are art too. You can edit photographs on line soo easily for free there are several places that you can use their sites to make cool effects happen.

I hope I can inspire you all to make some beautiful art.

I am going to give everyone some simple lessons and art projects that they can try their hand at to see if they can flex their art muscles and practice and remember, EVERYTHING IN LIFE WORTH DOING TAKES PRACTICE!  Art, sports, music, dance, even homework is a form of practice. I did art all the time from a small child with my grandma to get as good as I am today, and my adopted mom practiced her flute for hours to be as great as she is today. Like they said in the original Fame movie "You want Fame? Well, Fame costs and right here is where you start paying in sweat." and I love that line because it tells you that you need to practice, even those of us with natural talents need to practice.