I'm so sorry I haven't been able to post for a while. I did start school, which takes up most of my time. (And homework of course.) But that won't stop me from doing what I love. So I hope you enjoy this outburst of drawings I've done recently when I have free time. I've done a lot of pencils, many others, so I don't post most of them because it's hard to see. Thank you for your time. E.X. PS This is how I sign my work: E.X.

Fruit Drop for Halloween.

I've started (and this time am actually finishing) a little story called Fruit Drop. This is one that I'm going to put on my binder for Halloween day.

My mom particularly liked this little panel of the berries standing there with their little feet.

Work (other than manga).

This is a landscape I painted at my teacher's studio. It is in oil and took a long time to dry:
Halloween is coming and so I made this design for my sister's costume. She wanted to be a David Wright (NY Mets) baseball card, and this is based on a 2007 Goudey for those of you who might know baseball. I'm going as a witch.

Artwork for others.

I started taking requets from people in my class for drawings they would like. I'm only allowed to do this when I've done all my homework and art classes. These also serve as binder covers. This one I did for Amani:

Amani's sister asked for a drawing because she liked Amani's. She asked for a girl with short hair hula hooping. This character's name is Kiwi:

This is the one that I actually gave her; the colored one is the drawing I kept:

This is one I did for Selena. I based it on a character I saw in the book Kamichama Karin Chu by Koge-Donbo:

And this is one I did for Miriam:

There is also one that I did for a girl named Gabby, in a post further down.

Spellbinder binder covers.

This is a binder cover of all my Spellbinder characters, and they're color code to match each other so you know who belongs to who.

These are all the guys.

This is Ribbon.

Life graph.

This was a school assignment for English. It's a graph about some highs and lows in life.

Peace.

I did this picture for Gabby.

Binder cover.

For the third week, I did this for my binder. These are the bad guys from Spellbinder. You might recognize Thorn and Scyth from a previous drawing that I did. But this cover features one of my newest characters, Maria Heart and her Spellbinder, Magenta.

Binder cover.

I do a drawing of people for my binder at school, and this is the second one I've done...it's all the good guys and girls in Spellbinder, my book that I'll get to someday.

Contrast warm and cool colors.

This was an assignment (see below) I had from my art teacher. It's the view outside my school's art room; the medium is acrylic on canvas.

Divde your canvas into thirds--horizontal and vertical--so that you have 9 squares. Decide where your focal point will be: it should not be in the center, but at the inside corners of one of your outside four squares that came from the thirds when you divided up your canvas.

For this exercise use the bottom line of the top 3 squares as your horizon (mountain, trees, whatever you decided). Use the bottom line of the top six squares as a line to set your center of interest (focal point). Not in center of canvas.

Cool colors recede, warm comes forward. Be aware of your light source. Keep a clean paint brush...a paper towel in the hand without the brush. Don't rush, take your time and think. Make a distinct choice or on shadows, remember a middle value on a tree can be a littler warmer because it's closer to us. Also think in terms of complements in shadows, and where we want to dull a color to make a color next to it brighter.

Variety: to stimulate interest, we need:
contrasts (light, dark, half tones)
color (cool, warm, bright, muted)
shapes (different; large and small)

Hayao Miyazaki.

My favorite animation artist and director Hayao Miyazaki appeared today at the Venice Film Festival. He is 67 years old. His new animation is called Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea and it's a big hit in Japan. The voices include actress Yuki Amami andTomoko Yamaguchi and actors Yuria Nara and Hiroki Doi. This movie is competing for a big prize in Venice. The story is from the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale The Little Mermaid (not the Disney version) and is about a goldfish who wants to be human so she can be with her love, who is a five-year-old boy named Sosuke. This is the best part: the animation uses hand-drawn art throughout. No computer animation!

Photo: Denis Balibouse/Reuters

A lesson in color.

This was a very interesting lesson about color. We used cutouts that my teacher had made. I put them together and then learned how to find the reality in them. The cutouts you can see help with depth and shadows even though it's not a real thing. On the right is my landscape.

When I did this it looked familiar to me.

Still life.

My teacher gave me these reminders for how to do a small still life, 6" x 8" using acrylics:

set up at least two objects; they should overlap each other slightly. Shadow areas on objects should be made up of the local color of the object. For example, the red of an apple plus a small amoung of the complement of red. The cast shadow and object shadow should be two different values. He told me to "think composition": the main object should not be in the center of the page. Above is a picture of what I was looking at, and here's what I did:

Self portraits.

These are two self portraits that my teacher had me do. The one above I did in his studio. Here are the instructions I got: use charcoal; 10x12; remember how to hold the implement (the medium is charcoal); make a series of straight lines; do measurements. How wide is the nose compared to the eye? Where does a straight line from edge of eye intersect cheek, chin, neck? Keeping those questions in mind I did this one at home:

Sunset.

Here is an artist trading card (ATC). It may seem the texture conflicted with how the drawing went, so it looks a little blotchy, but that was intended. Her name is Sunset even though it's very hard to see.

Back to school again.

This is a picture that I did for the beginning of school that I will put as the front of one of my looseleaf binders. My mom liked the background and my other mom said, "Hm, flying school supplies." Think what you wish....

Worry color session.

This is the second lesson I've done. It's how to color my way. You don't have to listen to it, but if you look at it that would be nice. First you draw a picture, then you pen and print it. Add all the shadows.

When you start the coloring process, you have several choices. One is you can do it all in one color, with different variations in shading. I did this one in gray.

If you do different colors, you ought to tie them in somehow with each other. These are all muted base colors.

In this one, the colors don't really match each other, but there are connections. Such as the blue sweatshirt and the blue skirt and the bright socks and shoes.

Even colors that don't normally work together can work if you tie them in somehow. These are all bright colors.

Finally, if your colors do not match at all and you randomly choose colors from all different sections of the color wheel, which I would not recommend, you end up with something that looks really bad. Like this one.

A picture for a friend.

I drew this picture for a friend of mine and since she really likes animal-cross people and foxes, I decided to draw this one. She does not have a name, sorry.

A day at the beach.

This is a splash page that I did of two characters in my comic Spellbinder. On the left is Gyro, and on the right is Chi.

These are their spellbinders, Aquamarine and Stone. They were having a sand castle contest, and since Stone's specialty is ground, she was able to make an actual house out of sand. The tools that you see on the lower right hand side are what she used to make the house all furnished and complete looking. And Aquamarine made the smaaalll castle you see on the lower left. She's kind of competitive so she wasn't very happy with that.

Rabi-en-rose.

This is a better picture of a character several "older posts" back (a sketch that I did of some of the characters in Di-gi-charat Digiko's champion cup theater). Her name is rabi-en-rose(seriously).

Pisces and Aquarius.

These are two more birthday star artist trading cards. PS These cannot be traded until I have a whole deck representing each birthday's constellation.

Thorn and Syth.

These are two conflict characters in Spellbinder, Thorn and Syth as you may have guessed from the large names on the side of the picture. They have turned into a cat and dog and as you can see they are not at all pleased about that.

Art by friends and me.

These are also comparisons, like the post below. They are all studies in pink. The one above is mine.

This one is by Hopper.

This is by Kiyomi.

Our different styles.

These are pictures that I have up on my wall that are done by three different people. One is mine, the other two are by friends. Can you tell which cutout drawing is by which artist?

This is Flarey.

Pyro.
Panda.

Lavender.

I got the inspiration for this one from a soap bottle. I thought it would be nice to make as a card for someone who was coming over yesterday. She (Emily) liked it.

Ying and Yang, versions one and two.

Ying and Yang are characters that me and a friend (M) did for a little story that we were trying to write. These girls are ninja who will perhaps eventually save the world. This is the original version we came up with.

I was asked to create a new look for them and this is what I decided to draw. The characters are also a little older here.

Starly.

This is a request that I got from a friend. I did this recently based on an older reeeeeally bad drawing that we did more than two years ago.