Craft Humour

Blush, Blush, this image is so me! I think the artist was spying on me when he/she thought up this cartoon. I don't actually know who the artist is - I cut this out of a magazine years ago and found it again yesterday, in amongst my own 'creative mess!' lol.  If anyone out there knows who the artist is, I'd be happy to give them some proper credit. 

 I'm sure I'm not the only one out there (am I??) like the person featured in this cartoon but I am trying to get better this year at being just a bit more domesticated (..and so far, so good!)

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Thanks for looking and for any comments,

qwiksave

Do you doodle do?

As an artist come crafter I do find myself doodling at times.  I tend to like making up my own cartoon characters which is what I used to do from about the age of  5 onwards.  I've been looking at some old Beano and Whizzer & Chips annuals with my children recently and some of the images I remember so well that it took me right back to when I was their age.  Kind of spooky in a way.  I did love comics though when I was little and spent many a happy hour pouring over the characters' hilarious antics.

My sister remembers that I love to do cartoons so bought me this book for my birthday, 'The Telephone Doodle Book', and today I've been filling in some of the pages.  No telephone required.

In detail I had to:

  

...make faces out of photographed vegetables.

Design a cra-zy hair do:

(Some of the drawing is already completed for you, in this one I just added the hair)

(As you can see, I changed my mind on how I was going to do this, the spikes won!)

Next, I had to 'dress Mr Simpson'

Fetching pair of green shorts eh?

Here I added some stripes:

...and finally some more whacky hair:

There are loads of doodling books on the market, get yourself one and have a go!  They are a great way of freeing up your creativity!

Thanks for reading,

See you tomorrow,

qwiksave

Angular Figure

In the 1980's as an art student, I remember seeing images of fashion design and the figures were almost without exception, these tall angular figures with not a curve in sight.  Nowadays I believe the drawings have changed - its the models that haven't got any curves!

Anyway, I liked those very angular figures and have ocassionally drawn some of my own.  Mine a little more cartoony than the serious ones that fashion designers tend to produce.

I did one tonight:

I have coloured it in with my pro-markers and some other pens I had.  I just have to get some more pro-markers though, there are so many colours I need! 

I like the expression I've given her, no smile, just like the models tend to be:

(I must remember to rub out the pencil marks when its dried).

Right, off to play some more Wii with DH, he's beaten me at all the games except one so far! Bah!

See you tomorrow,

qwiksave

Milk Bottle Treat Bag

I've decided to show you what I did today and will catch up on the previous day's crafts bit by bit. 

This was today's craft:

It's a treat for my boys - it has milk bottle sweets in the packet!

To make this I first of all needed  to draw a cow. I do cartoons myself but thought I'd look up a reference of how to do a cow on google and found this website - A guide on how to draw a cartoony cow! Perfect! I used it as a guide and adjusted it a bit.

I s-t-r-e-t-ched him out a bit and changed his tail and details.  I also added a 3-d flower, lettering and drew some grass and sky.  I then added the packet of milk bottle sweets.

He will be a nice Easter companion to the other Easter treat packet I made a while back:

Have a Happy Easter and I'll see you tomorrow!

qwiksave x

Magic Piccy

Where does the time go?  I'm in the middle of crafting and before I know it the time runs out! Don't you find that?  Real life gets in the way and you are called out to make dinner, take the kids to school or one million other things that pull us away from the masterpiece we are in the process of creating! 

Well, I wouldn't call what I'm doing tonight a 'masterpiece', in fact its a bit of cartoony fun for the kids again, which is back onto the theme of Easter. Don't know why I have the Easter theme in my head so much these days, we haven't even had Mother's Day yet! (On Sunday for us in the UK).

For tonight's project, I revisited an old site I used to frequent YEARS ago! Neil Buchanan's Art Attack!  I have done this project:

A Magic Frame  (under 'Art Attacks' heading, go to G-M,  Magic Picture Frame)

The instructions are a bit complicated, so if you want to make one yourself, please follow the instructions from the link.  It looks impressive though, the picture appears to be completely Black & White, you pull it out from its frame and it is in full colour!  The type of thing my little boys will like anyway. 

UPDATE:  I made a mistake making this project - I drew this outline freehand and then realised I couldn't colour it in for this project.  Doh! Lesson learned - Follow the instructions!:

So I made another one....

This time I used the Disney Club Penguin Book and a light box to trace these Puffles...

You pull it out of the frame and as if by magic...

....They colour themselves in!

I made one of these a few years ago that I've also dug out to show you:

Enjoy your weekend and I'll see you tomorrow!

qwiksave x

Baby grow

Nobody able to date the London photos then?  Aww!  Any wild guesses? 1930's? 40's? ...

I'm running late tonight, my husband called from China and was talking to me for ages on Skype!  I daren't cut him off, they are 8 hours in front of us and its quite difficult to synchronise a time when one of us isn't sleeping!

(If you caught this post earlier, I apologise, I really didn't like that box I made, so OFF it went!)

Instead, I've done a simple little cute line drawing of a bear on a babygrow together with a matching coat hanger:

The idea to decorate children's coat hangers came from Martha Stewarts book.  Her designs were in colour though, maybe later on I will decide to colour mine in too.

Cartoon Caricature

I don't very often do cartoons these days, but when I was little I used to  loved making up my own characters.  When I blog hop I am always seeing characters that have been rubber stamped and coloured in by the blogger and often think I would like to be that someone that invents those characters.  I wonder how you go about getting your drawings into the rubber stamp market?

Anyway, today I decided to have a go at  my long lost hobby of drawing as my craft.

Something I didn't do when I used to draw cartoons was caricatures but when I saw this year's school photo (they don't have to wear school uniform!) on our mantlepiece, I thought I would give it a try:

Here was what I did:

Poor Joshua (on the left), I know you're meant to exaggerate features but I think I got a bit carried away with his ears!  Oops...   Actually, Ryan's ears aren't right either..or his hair!  Never mind... .

This drawing doesn't seem to be much of a caricature, its more like a colouring book page, which is fine in its own way I supppose... Its also not like the cartoons I usually/used to do (see my Jan 1st entry) which  I think is the type I will get back to doing more of  soon...

First Post - Acetate Cartoon

For my very first creative post on this blog, I went back to a cartoon artwork that I made way back in 1997! It was a fun, (original) piece made by drawing characters with a permanent marker onto acetate and then colouring them in by painting on the back of the acetate with gouache paint. A patterned paper or picture is placed (can be stuck) behind the acetate for the background. The idea for doing this I got from an old art book that was written by the very talented children's TV presenter, Tony Hart. When painting this one today, I decided to explore further the feeling of depth so I drew the characters on the front of the clipframe glass instead of onto acetate. The characters were painted on the back of the glass with a mixture of gouache and pva:Some of the smaller characters were painted onto another piece of acetate to create the impression of disappearing into the distance and I placed holographic patterned card into the clipframe for the background. Apologies for the quality of the photo of the finished picture (1st photo) but holographic paper does not photograph well.

This picture shows you how the characters were drawn: A successful day creating my first piece of artwork for 2010.

P.S. Just thought I'd add this picture of what my DH and children have been up to today!:
Weather was freeeeeezing today, so what did they do? They went out to fetch some fallen branches and twigs to make a fire in our garden firepit and then cooked the pasta for their tea in this great big cooking pot!  Me? I stayed in the cosy warm indoors!