What's an Electric Guitar Really Look Like?

Have you ever been drawing something, and then realized you weren't exactly sure what it looked like? When this happens, you can do a couple of things: You can just draw it the way you imagine, or you can go find an example.
A lot of people see my cartoons each day, so it's important that I get things right. For example I once drew a lawnmower wrong and people didn't understand the drawing.
A great thing to have around is a Visual Dictionary. I have a big one and a little one - there are lots to choose from. Some are mostly buildings and vehicles and things like that, some are all about animals or science. I keep them nearby when I am cartooning. You can also look online for images through Google, but often you don't get a very clear picture or the results aren't really what you want. A visual dictionary is great when you just need to look up what a semi-truck or a guitar or a fire hydrant look like.
So if you have a birthday coming up, maybe you can ask for one!

Fascinating Look at an Animator at Work

Bill Plympton is a wonderful animator. He has been making animated shorts and movies for a long time. Recently I discovered that he has something on his site called an "Ani-Cam," which shows time-lapse movies of his drawing board as he is making animations. Check it out!

This is a great way to see how animation is done. You'll notice that he's using what looks like tracing paper, so he can see the drawing underneath. This is called "onion skinning" because the skin of an onion is layered and you can see through it. You put each new drawing on top of the last one so you can see how to draw the next frame.

You'll also see that sometimes he's looking at something that seems like a comic page. These are storyboards, where he has drawn out how the story goes. They are used to figure out what scenes to draw in what order, and keep the story moving along.

There are lots of time-lapses on there, I've only gotten through a few of them. But they are really cool and fascinating.

Sock Puppets Rule.

The next time someone gives you a hard time about losing all the matches to your socks, just make a puppet. Then put on a show. Nobody will give you a hard time any more.
Here are some tips:
1. Put the sock on your NON-writing hand to decorate it (example - if you are right-handed, put the sock on your LEFT hand), so you can see how the sock fits and so you can use your writing hand to do the work. Or, you can stuff the sock with crumpled newspaper to make it poof out while you decorate it.
2. Use white glue, and press everything on firmly.
3. When you want to get the sock off your hand to let it dry (or just rest between performances), pull it by the nose, gently.
4. And of course, as the example shows, you can never have too many googly eyes on your sock puppet. Googly eyes also rule.

Drawing What You See

Do you draw what something looks like in real life, or do you draw what you THINK it should look like?
It's hard to draw what is in front of you, because the lines that make up something often don't look like anything at all. The edge of a table is just a slanted line. A person's face is really squiggly and weird looking.
Try this: Pick something, like your hand, or a flower, or something in your house. Put it in front of you. Now, try to draw the outline of it EXACTLY as you see it. Just follow the lines, wherever they go. Don't try to draw a thing, just draw lines. You may be surprised at what you get.

Make Your Own Super - Potato?

Superheroes, sidekicks, villains, and giant battles to save the galaxy are cool. Everybody knows that. So what do you need to make your own? Well, anything you want.

For example, a group of kids and I recently started with nothing more than a potato. A Potatosaurus, to be exact. Which was basically a potato with legs and eyeballs and a couple of sprouts sticking out of its head.

Next, people started drawing pictures of the Potatosaurus attacking cities and eating everybody. Not good, right? This guy needed someone to battle.

Enter Super Fridge. It turned out Super Fridge could throw food at people. He was friends with Butter Man, who was the only guy who could plug the Fridge in when he ran out of power. He also had his own little shelf in the Fridge.

Here's what the Potatosaurus-Fridge battle looked like. That's Butter in the middle. Those are Tater Tots attacking Fridge's head. That's food in Fridge's mouth.

Well it got weirder from there, and pretty soon we had to make a chart showing all the characters. It was the appliances vs. the foods, except Butter who sided with Fridge. There was Kiwi Man, and Banana Dude, and Pancake Batter Boy (who looked like Batman). And the Tater Tots all had their own names. Oh, and Cooler, who could throw juice boxes. And I think a microwave, and a lemon battling a bowl of soup.

At the end we copied all the drawings and put them into a short book, which we called "Kitchen Wars."

So as you can see, you can make the ultimate Battle for Earth happen using just about anything. You just need a hero, a villain, some sidekicks, superpowers and weaknesses, and some pencils and paper.

So go save the Earth! Or the galaxy, if you want something bigger.

Maxfield Parrish

Not too many artists get to have a color named after them, but Maxfield Parrish is one. The distinctive blue color that he gets in his paintings is called "Parrish blue."
Maxfield Parrish was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and lived from 1870 to 1966. Like Arthur Rackham, he had a unique style and used it to illustrate all kinds of fantastical stories. Nobody really comes close to the look that his art has. One of his most famous paintings is called Daybreak. His panting "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" can be seen on the wall of a bar in San Francisco (you can get a look at it here), which is named Maxfield's. I've been there - it's really neat. I think you have to be 21 to get in though. But no rush!

Arthur Rackham

When I was a kid, we had a copy of Alice in Wonderland that was illustrated by Arthur Rackham. Arthur Rackham was English, and he lived from 1867 to 1939. He illustrated tons of stories, including Fables and Peter Pan. He had this cool style that I always found really beautiful and really creepy at the same time. He could make the most realistic monsters you can imagine. You can learn more about him from Wikepedia here, and see a bunch of his artwork on Google here. Take a look and see what you think. Creepy? Cool? Both?