Sunday, September 30, 2012

Doodle 061 - Cat, Mushu and Twilight Sparkle again

Ah, back home again, I love going away, but I always miss my own bed and pillows the most. I had an awesome weekend, visited my happy place (The Magic Kingdom), and the best part was meeting up with good friends.

I am a loner and rather awkward, so, sometimes I forget how very nice it is to be among friends and just talk, have fun and catch up.

Another good thing about being home, is that I get to draw at my desk with decent light again hehehe, so today after eating dinner and resting for a bit I went on a bit of a drawing rampage.

First I did a quick warm-up doodle of my cat, Garfield, he loves Andrei over every other thing in the world, so when he left to pick up some Chinese for dinner he just decided to guard the door until he returned. He really misses him when we go on a trip, even if it is only the weekend:

Waiting - Blue and mechanical pencil om plain Moleskine notebook. Aprox 3 mins.
After dinner I started trying to figure out how to draw Mushu from Mulan, after some adjustments using the blue pencil I figured it out and came up with these:

Mushu, front and profile views from model sheet reference - Blue and mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine notebook. Aprox 15 and 7 mins.
After I got the basics down I tried to do one of his expressions:

Mushu from model sheet reference - Blue and mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine notebook. Aprox 5 mins.
Mushu was a lot of fun to draw, I should try a full body drawing next time.

After Mushu I drew Twilight Sparkle again... because I was still bothered by the fact that I forgot her horn last Friday:

"She forgot my unicorn horn?!" - Blue and mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine Notebook. Aprox 10 mins.
Hehehe she is shocked, and rightfully so, sorry Twilight!

So, that's it for this month, October is here, yay!!! I am so happy that Halloween is so close. I am also very proud of myself for not skipping a single day so far, even when I was on the road for quite a bit. I have to credit the extra push to stay at it to all of you, whenever I feel like just turning in for the day I remember you guys are here and that keeps me honest lol.

2 months down, 10 to go!

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Doodle 060 - Baby Sitter

We spent most of today with great friends having fun. This long weekend was awesome, so I'm ready for the return home tomorrow.

This time I was actually sitting by a light source while I drew, LOL. It is a griffin babysitting little baby griffins.


Friday, September 28, 2012

Doodle 059 - Twilight Sparkle and Disney kind of Halloween

I'm posting this live during a food break at Magic Kingdom's Mickey Not So Scary party.

Since I'm on my phone this post won't be long and the photos will probably attach themselves as they will please, so bear with me.

Todays doodle is Twilight Sparkle, I'm dressed at her tonight.

I drew her in the near dark, so please excuse the mess LOL

Update: Andrei pointed out I forgot Twilight's unicorn horn... Duh! I did draw it on my initial blue outline and then totally forgot to put it down on black. LOL



Thursday, September 27, 2012

Doodle 058 - Simba

Wow, what a day, well I'm now officially a citizen of the USA, yay!

We have been running around all day doing paperwork and then on the road to Orlando.

I just doodled a quick Simba after dinner since I'm staying at Disney World and The Lion King soundtrack is playing.

This is my first time drawing him, so here it goes:


Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Doodle 57 - Figment Inspired Hat Tutorial and Doodle

*Announcement, announcement, there is an announcement going on*

I will be traveling tomorrow and over the weekend, so I won't have an interactive Friday this week. Instead I decided to do a tutorial... for the very first time! This means this post will be extra long and picture heavy, proceed with caution.

Also, I'll be swearing in as a U.S. citizen tomorrow, I figured it was about time I became an American, so we are pretty psyched about that, it has been a long road filled with forms, tests and a lot of driving and waiting around offices, so tomorrow will be a very special day.

After we are done we will be taking off to Orlando, finalizing paper work stuff and Andrei has surprised me with a flash visit to Walt Disney World in order to attend Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party as a celebration for this milestone.

And now, back to what I drew and made today:

At some point my friend Becky asked on twitter for suggestions of what she could wear to Epcot's 30th anniversary celebration on Monday. I suggested a figment purse, but then when I got home and sat down to draw I looked over at a small plushy of figment I keep wrapped around my flexo lamp and had this idea:

Figment Hat Concept Sketch - blue and mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine notebook. Aprox 5 mins.
A little back story about the hats: I made these cute little hats for my mom, cousins and best friend when they came to our Disney Wedding. Like a crazy magpie (again), I bought tons of materials which I have kept, so I pulled some stuff and started to brainstorm.

Want to make your own? Well, hopefully my directions can help along.

First, materials:

I had stick-on felt, normal felt, 2 pieces of letter sized construction paper, scissors, assorted ribbon and shiny scrapbooking embellishments, a glass with a peculiar shape and some silk flowers.
 First, mark a piece of construction paper, my glass has a smaller base than rim, the very first time I did the hats I didn't know what I was going to do and tried to eye it out... it wasn't pretty, it was then that I saw this glass on our cupboard and used it as my guide:

Marking the bottom and then the rim.

Ta-dah! You don't need a glass, essentially all you need are 2 small circles, the smaller one will be the lid of the hat and the bottom will be the brim.
 After marking the top and brim of my hat I wrapped another piece of construction paper around the glass and figured how tall the glass was and marked and cut a rectangle out of the cardboard to form the main body of the hat.

You should have 3 pieces, the brim (I cut a whole the size of the top of the hat inside of said brim), the lid of the hat and finally the rectangle for the body.
 You will make a cylinder with the rectangle:

Don't try and make a perfect roll, Remember how the glass flared out? Well, you want your body to do the same.
 Pass the body through the hole of the brim, play around with the shape of the body, adjust it as you would like.

This is what my preferred shaped looked like:

Starting to look like a hat! Or a teacup... or a teacup hat!
 Next I used the lid to make the top opening of my hat a little bigger, you want to be as close to the lid as you can, it will make things easier later. Do leave some of the lid hanging over the front of your hat, you will see why soon:


Since Figment is mostly purple I used 2 letter sized pieces of stick-on felt. I like to use this kind of felt on tiny hats because it is more stiff and easier to deal with than the floppy normal felt. You can find this felt anywhere, from Walmart to Michaels and it is very cheap.

See? It sticks!
 I cut a piece of the felt to match my body pattern


Then I stuck the felt onto the construction paper (if you are planning on making more than one hat, copy the pattern pieces onto a blank piece of construction paper so you don't have to re-measure things).

After I did that I carefully made the body of the hat into a cylinder again and started to play with ideas with ribbons I had left over.

I barely had enough orange ribbon, but it went around. Hooray!
 After trying that out I became convinced that the brim had to be pink, so I cut a brim out of another letter sized piece of stick-on  felt on pink:


Just punch through and cut out the center hole.

 

 I then cut another round piece, the same diameter as the brim, but didn't cut out the hole on the middle, leave it like that, trust me.

The 2 pieces of the brim.
I tried that out and didn't quite like it, too pink. My stuffed Figment wasn't pleased either.

Naaaaah, no good.
 So, I cut two brim pieces out of the second piece of purple felt. I liked it much better.

Yessss.
 I then picked a contrasting ribbon to go with the orange ribbon I had already picked for the hat.


 Using the hot glue gun I glued the back of the body together:

It is perfectly fine for it to look like this, it gives it a very cool shape and flare.
 To glue the brim down just hold the hat upside down and hotglue the bejeezus out of the place where the body and brim meet, don't worry if it looks ugly, we'll fix it.

Sorry about my bad manicure, I had great TARDIS colored nails and after a week of work, etc I haven't had time to paint them again. Ugh.
 Let the glue cool off and then turn your hat right side up.

Note: I added wings to this puppy and on hindsight I should have FIRST put the wings in and then added the lid, so yeah, if you add wings, do that first, then this step hmmmkay?

To glue the lid to the top of your hat line the top of your hat with a small, very hot line of glue:

Patience and a steady hand help... unfortunately for me I have neither of those, much swearing and burning of finger tips ensued.
 Peel the film away from your stick on top and place over the hot glue:


Press for a bit and let glue cool.
Turn the hat upside down again, cut notches on the part of the cylinder that is sticking out of the brim at the bottom and then cut the notches down. Leave a tiny bit of a lip sticking out, this will keep your body and brim together:

Notches!
Now, to fix the mess: peel the protective film from the sticky side of the felt on the brim and then place the section of the brim without a whole on top of it:

Now you see the mess...
Now you don't!
 And so, you will have hat ready for decorations!

It will still be rough around the edges, but don't worry, we'll make it better.
 Figment has little orange dragon wings, so I drew some on a piece of construction paper, the color doesn't matter, we will cover it up anyway:

Wiiings, the box the wing is sticking to helped me visualize the way they would stick on the hat.
 With an xcacto knife cut a slit on the side of the hat, do not make it long, leave it short so you can wedge the wing in.

Copy the pattern and cut another wing, I eyed the position, you can use a ruler if you want... I was rushing, so I didn't.
yay!
 As you can see I made small notches on the pattern for my wings, I folded the notches in so once I slipped it into the slits the wing would stay put. Use the wing patter to cut out some more felt.

I didn't have stick-on orange felt, so I had to make do with some floppy orange felt I had:


Repeat the pattern four times, you will have to stick one piece of felt to each side of both wings:

Weee!
 Place the wings on the slits and using a small bit of hot glue, secure them to the body. Like I said before, leave the lid of the hat off and you can glue the wings to the inside of the body where it doesn't matter if it is messy or not.
It sorta liiiives!
 I secured the orange ribbon around the hat and made the ends meet on the back. I used a left-over flower to cover the seam of the ribbon ends:


With lots of care and little by little, cut the excess of the lid that might be hanging over the body of the hat, then carefully make a sliver of a line of hot glue around the top and cover the imperfection with the contrasting ribbon. Do the same on the brim.

I then just added some random scrapbooking embellishments and voila!


Final steps: Get a plain, cheap headband (I still had a bunch, and I was lucky because I found an orange one! Woot!

Make a small notch on the bottom of the hat, this will allow the headband to mesh better into the hat.


Cut some floppy felt on the same color of the bottom of the brim to help glue the headband to the hat:


Place the hat slightly off-kilter, or straight on, your call, on the headband:


Using hot glue, glue the bottom of the headband to the hat and the felt to the headband AND the hat. This will keep things in place and make the hat easy to wear.


And so, here it is: A figment hat in less than 2 and a half hours!

OK I am exhausted now, gotta go clean my mess and get ready for tomorrow.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Doodle 056 - Yaaaay! or Happy Birthday Jim Henson

Yesterday I had the idea of drawing something Muppet related to honor Jim Henson's birthday, but my low attention span and work got the best of me and I totally forgot, hence why I am a day late with this post.

So, happy belated birthday Jim!

Yaaaaaaaaay! - Blue and mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine notebook. Aprox 10 mins.
Ah gotta love Kermit, curious side note: Andrei's voice sometimes sounds like Kermit on the phone and he makes a great Rainbow Connection rendition when he feels like it LOL.

Growing up I was a huge fan of Sesame Street, The Fraggles and The Muppet Show. Yup, they were wildly popular both in Mexico and Spain and I really can't imagine my childhood without them.

I was very young when we moved to Spain and I was shocked to discover the Spaniard version of Sesame Street or Plaza Sesamo (Barrio Sesamo in Spain) as we called it, was oddly different from the Mexican one... and once I moved to the U.S. I discovered the original U.S. version was also different from both the Mexican and Spaniard one.

I am sure a bunch of you know this, but Sesame Street was adapted to different countries for cultural purposes, while most of you had Big Bird, in Mexico we had Abelardo, who happens to be Big Bird's cousin:

(In this video you can see the Mexican version of Big Bird, here he is talking about how much he misses his cousin Big Bird and the elderly gent is suggesting he writes him a letter)

And then, in Spain they had a big departure from Big Bird and had 2 "Big" characters, Don Pimpon and Espinete. It was so weird to me since I had grown with a big colorful bird and then, my baby brother grew up only knowing a giant pink hedgehog:

(Don Pimpon is the big guy with the hat, Espinete is the giant pink hedgehog, I can't believe it but I remember watching this episode so clearly. Ah childhood memories!)

Funny isn't it? I know a lot of you guys are from all over the world, did your versions of Sesame Street have really different characters too?