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: