The Unfortunate Artist

Richard Williams, while working on Who Framed Roger Rabbit found this pinned on the notice board:

''Epitaph of an unfortunate artist
He found a formula for drawing comic rabbits:
This formule for drawing comic rabbits paid, so in the end he could not change his tragic habits this formula for drawing comic rabbits made - Robert Graves''

Just recently I learned how lucky I am to not be in the working world. My drawings can be on anything; I am not paid to draw one particular thing. Making money off your art is a wonderful thing, I know, but it filters your creativity in a lot of ways. If you're a classical animator then you can be on the same scene for years. Apparently it really drives the creative juices of of your free time drawing, in fact some artists completely stop drawing outside of work when they get an art related job. Yet others aren't phased by this at all, so I guess it's really down to the individual.

I know someone who is an extremely good clarinetist who went to a school with many other very good clarinetists. He was good when he was a kid too, but there was someone better than him, so in his orchestra he never got to solo because the better clarinetist always did. My life artistically is a little like that. I'm reasonably good at drawing, but of course, there is someone who is always better than me. I've always been the cartoonist of the coop. Only a few days ago did I very suddenly realize that I need to learn to draw. To really draw. Oh dear. Anyway, I was always the one sitting there, artistically alone in the world, while the other girl (who is such an amazing person, she is truly wonderful) was swarmed by art consuming birds, squawking 'mine' like those seagulls from Finding Nemo. Everyone wanted to be drawn. She has to power to make people say 'wow' out of pure shock, and rub their starstruck eyes at this skeptical wonder.

I also think being an artist is a little like having anorexia. Everyone looks so much better than me at art, and I often can't tell whether that's true or not because of my self critical judgment. I also tend to compare myself to a lot of artists. It's more of a subconscious thing, because I research a lot of artists and look at a lot of movie concept art, read lots of comics and watch a heck load of animation.

Drawing isn't a instant gratification thing. It's more a very, very long journey with lots of little milestones.

But it is a wonderful experience. After a while when you get better you can learn to tweak your drawing so that NONE of them are bad! I can do that with cartoons, so my books are filled with nice pictures, but I've just started learning to draw portraits. Well, I hoped that having the ability to draw cartoons would give me a boost, like learning your second instrument would. Nope. My art book is now being filled with good cartoons and very bad portraits. I know that someday I will look upon them and cringe, but they are truly vital for the journey. To be good you must first be bad.

Thank Ralph Waldo Emerson for this uplifting quote. Uplifting is such a cheesy word, but it fits. Believe it or not I used to say the word 'groovy' all the time. Now I say words like 'dandy', and 'spiffy'. I'm a strange piece of work.

Anyway, go and draw me an awesome stick dude!

Word Meatloaf

Hello. By reading this blog you may have realized that you are now subject to reading completely random material. I just flicked through old posts and found myself cringing. Luckily, I wasn't cringing nearly as much as I do when I look at Nyssalove/Nyssa-the-Random, my old blog. It's like looking through school photos of when you were young. If you could you would throw it into the bin, but it secretly makes you feel good about yourself as you are now because you're better at writing/doing your hair than you previously were. In fact, I read an old blog analysis post (I pretty much just took an old post and commented on it and how I've changed.) And for a little fun I'll include some of the funnier quotes.

''And also….shopping? Sleepovers?!
-Shudder- I have a huge dislike for anything like those two genres.
I hate everything pink.
I hate pretty much everything girly (though girly people are fine)''
Hehe. I think that one's quite funny. At that point of time I was trying very hard to be a tomboy, and rejected anything with a warm color. I think I was a bit of a goth by then too. I wanted so much to be different to everyone else. Oh, and I loved labels. I labeled myself with every sub-culture I had the slightest thing in common with and strived to change myself to fit their criteria. By the end of my punk era I had grown out of that. I'm not nearly as into labels now. I just do whatever I want, regardless of what category it fits into.

''To be honest… how is he (Joseph) COMFORTING? All he seems to do is bug me.''
 Poor Joseph. I have to say, I wasn't very nice to him at all back then. I hope I'm nicer now. After all, Joseph is awesome! I remember last week at assembly he got 4 certificates for various awesome things (I got 1 for not getting any detentions) and I shouted 'woo' . Everyone turned back at me and looked at me with almost a look of disgust. ''She...she actually likes her brother....'' is what they looked like they were thinking. People told me to knock it off, that I was embarrassing myself. I think they thought that I'd actually care what they thought at that moment. I just think it's sad that there is such a small level of sibling support among people in my school. People think it's weird...even disgusting that I don't hate my brother. Like it's not acceptable to be grateful for your family. I mean, I hear a lot more people talking about how much they hate their parents than about how much they love them. I think it's a little bit of a show, because I know that most people love their parents deep in their heart.

''I like reading corrupted books, looking at corrupted art, and drawing corrupted people.
I’m great at drawing corrupted people.''
 Okay then.... I may or may have not at that point been a psychopath. Yesterday I was looking through one of those ''drawing for those who really can't'' books by Quentin Blake. It had lots of space and suggestions of things to draw. It would tell me to draw a flower and I would find a picture of a plant torturing and eating to screaming stick chicks. Most of the book was pictures of tied up girls. It's a bit of a shame, really. All that paper, meant for happy, giggly venting turned into  a twisted dark paradise for the masochist that I used to be. Though, to be honest I probably wasn't the only one to draw on my Barbie dolls, tie them up, and play good cop, bad cop.

And if you go on my old blog, you will notice that my writing is very spaced out. I will make up an example here (complete with punctuation mistakes) to show to what I mean:

today the weather is bad

i don't like bad weather

it makes me sad

even though my favorite color is navy blue

because pink is the worst color ever

i hate it , pink s a horrible color

It's like a very bad poem!

I just wrote that while listening to probably one of the most charming songs someone will ever come across: Ho Hey by The Lumineers. I love them. Their songs make me smile and be grateful for all the good music out there. Over the last couple weeks I have gotten the music bug. Maybe Jake Bugg gave it to me (gotta love those pity-laugh producing puns). Anyway, the only cure is listening to The Lumineers, Mumford and Sons, Jake Bugg and Ben Howard. They are very talented people/bands and I would very much like for you to go and check them out.

So anyway, I should really make my blog content steer in a certain direction. At the moment it's mostly just interesting page fillers to convince myself that I am a productive and responsible person. But I know to have a huge collection of readers giving me love (or chocolate if they're lucky enough to be Swiss or  loaded. Money wise, not drug wise. Maybe drug wise, but if they come over with a tray of hash brownies I will have to say 'no' outright, which isn't polite; but I don't want to take any drugs any time soon. Or ever. Not even in the form of a dessert.Sorry, guys. Okay, this bracket is long enough that you'll either have to go to the beginning of the actual sentence or be one of those people who memorize everything they come across. What a cool superpower!) I will have to write about roughly one main topic in particular, like art or writing. Perhaps even art and writing, mushed into one highly concentrated work. Most likely a song. But this won't happen any time soon, so don't put your hopes up. I'm very happy to fulfill a post request, but a blog on how to create zombies might be a little much for me to take. It would be fun, but no.

I decided that that paragraph was long enough. Say hello to Mr New Paragraph! He says that he is very happy to meet you, delighted in fact. Take pride that this particular Mr New Paragraph likes you; because he doesn't like very many people because he hasn't met very many. He's probably quite lonely. Mr New Paragraph is very charming, but he has the habit of making people forget what they were actually going to write in the first place.
 After  a few minutes of interrogation Mr New Paragraph admits that I was going to write that it would be a good idea for me to post my drawing on here so that you are not bombarded with a tough word meatloaf, but a visual glass of water as well to help digest the meatloaf. I just hope today's meatloaf is alright.

So as I said, I would love for one of you to suggest a post topic for me to write on. I would be quite a fun experience.

I hope you have a fun Easter wherever you are and that the weather is good!

 

Blender

Hey everyone! Yeah, so I guess you've been wondering where I've been for the last...6 months? Well, as many of you might know I was Smee in my school's performance of Peter Pan, and I was VERY busy. I'm doing another now, Romeo and Juliet. A bit cliche, yes, but I'm Tybalt so there's no lovey dovey stuff for me.  I only have 18 lines, but they're fun and this means that I have more time to do..........Blender! Yes, it is so important that the very title of this post is named after it.

I've been using for about 3 years now, but I actually started properly using it about a month ago. It's mainly been learning about the new things it has to offer (cycles, wonderful, wonderful cycles!) and learning the kind-of basics again. I'm almost done with that. While messing around I have created about 6 walks, one of which I can watch without cringing, lots of strange shapes, textures, etc. I'm just getting used to it.

If for some strange reason this paragraph is inspiring you to get started there is a massive range of tutorials, downloads, books, DVDs, etc to get you started. Here are my favorites:

Blender Cookie. This is the main website I use tutorial wise. It is a treasure chest of tutorials by the best of the best. If I would ask you to check out one thing it would be this. If you get serious about Blender I would definitely invest into membership of their website, giving you access to vital animation courses.

Blend Swap. If you're like me and you're too lazy to make your own mesh and rig this website is a warehouse of objects, people, animals, etc you can download for FREE. It is truly magical. Just make sure that they're rigged if you want to get going straight away. All the rigs I animate come from this website.

Blender.org. This is Blender's main website. It's where you download it, and has links to many other good websites on it. It's where I started off, and it's the perfect place to.

Oh, by the way, Blender has an animation studio. It's called The Blender Foundation and to this day they have released four short movies, which as far as I know you an watch online, and I'd check it out (especially Tears of Steel).

Alrighty, I'm getting a headache, so I'm going to split.
Hope to see you soon!

Ce Weekend je vais aller a Londre!

Oui oui! Je suis tres exite! Excuse my pitiable French, I do try. But yes, as the title states I am indeed going to London this weekend. I'll be staying there a week with some of my totally awesome family. I'll be art journaling after every day there and I will be bringing my own camera, so there will also be lots of pictures to come with the stories I will tell.

As I mentioned in the early paragraph, I have started art journaling. 'What!?' You may say shocked and slightly annoyed, ' Why art journal when you don't even blog more than once a month!' Well, yes I do need to blog more and I'll be working on that once I can find things in my life that my interest you more.   Anyway, I started art journaling when for my birthday my mom got me this realty inspirational book called Illustrated Life  which has gotten me to start art jouirnalling. I'm going in circles and I need to go to school, so Au revoir for now!

It's Autumn!

Hooray! Today is the 22nd of September and you know what that means! It's autumn! I love it so much. For me it's the part of year that's really busy. From September - December there's lots going on, and the rest of the year is a little emptier. So fall is a really fun season for me. Especially this year. Having moved to England, I'm near Birmingham, London and Oxford, and something is always going on.
So what is going on, you ask? Let me see.....

Things to look forward to:

1. Birthdays

This is the time of year when many people are celebrating their birthdays. To anyone with a birthday coming up, I hope you have an awesome day. My birthday is in 6 days and I will be 13. But don't worry, I won't get any grouchier. :-) I always loved birthdays because it gives me an excuse to decorate stuff and make cake. I love cake. <3

2. Halloween

Ah, Halloween. A day of the year that gives you an excuse to scare the living daylights out of your friends. A night when people give you lots of candy just for wearing a costume. A night when you
get candy-drunk, while forgetting about the insomnia and the candy-hangover you will experience later. This year I'll be in London for Halloween, so that will be a new and fun experience. Halloween is very fun. I mean, how can a day of pumpkin carving, pranks, candy corn, and the weird and wonderful not be?

3. The Birmingham International Tattoo

Yes, Birmingham as a Tattoo! I thought it was only in Edinburgh, but here we are. It s on the 24th and the 25th of November in the NIA in Birmingham.  it will be featuring over 1,000 musicians and performers.

 4. Birmingham International Cake show

The worlds biggest show of cake.  That alone will bring me in. There will be cake makers from Argentina, the USA, Columbia, South Africa, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Ireland, and of course, the UK. Filled with inspirational cakes and bakes, stalls that sell all sorts of awesome baking knick knacks, competitions, tutoirals and lots more! It is from the 9th to the 11th of November. It looks like a lot of fun, and I hope I see you there!

5. Thanksgiving

 I think Thanksgiving is an excellent holiday. It's like Christmas without the present lust. It's a time to be grateful for what we have and how lucky we are to have an awesome family. A time when people give to those who haven't been quite as lucky. Hopefully they give more than a pack of dry beans. :-P I don't remember celebrating Thanksgiving, having spent most of my life in the UK. But this year I will have a small celebration by making a pumpkin pie and watching the New York parade. hopefully the weather will be a little nicer this year.

6. Christmas Markets

Who doesn't love a good Christmas market? This year I'm going to the one in Birmingham, and it is the 3rd biggest in the world! I'm so excited! I always thought that the day I went to the Christmas market was just as good as Christmas day, and I believe this to be true. Pretzels, hot chocolate and Santa Claus. Who can resist?

7. Christmas

According to the stores, it's Christmas already! Last year I started celebrating in October and it didn't feel very special, so this year I'm only starting after my brother's birthday, which is in the end of November. I absolutely adore Christmas. It is no doubt my favorite holiday. A time when I can watch those Christmas movies I've been waiting all year to see (Christmas movies are the best kind of movies. ;-) ). Christmas is a day of pigging out, giving awesome presents and having a great time with family.  Christmas is full of great smells, great memories - everything about Christmas is wonderful so for me it really is the best time of the year.

8. New Year

2013. A strange and unfamiliar number ties with a strange and unfamiliar future. What awaits us in a year to come? Who knows, you might become a billionaire, or start a successful cupcake business. I like to think that in a year time I will have lots more art skillage. :-) What do you want to achieve in a year?

Aside from that there are the more select things to look out for.  I think fall is best served with a pair of binoculars, a sketch pad and a spiced hot chocolate. Huddling under a tree painting, with a toasty sweater and cosy earmuffs. that's my autumn. What's yours?

Well, that will get you set for the coming months. For now, enjoy watching the leaves go purple, and taking out your much missed sweaters. See you all later!