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Cow Meat

Thanksgiving approaches and I’ve taken it into my head to create a new holiday desktop wallpaper. The wallpaper is titled “Cow Meat:”

Click to view full size

I drew the entire line art version of the picture using the Pen tool in Photoshop, which is a very difficult tool to master. This is one of the first drawings that I’ve done entirely in Photoshop….as in: I didn’t sketch it on paper first before moving it to the computer.

The finished piece totals 69 layers and 8 layer sets (for those of you who are unfamiliar with Photoshop, a “set” is a folder of layers). I don’t know about anyone else, but this is definitely a record for me. I’ve never worked with that many layers before. Actually, I think it about killed my computer to work with this many layers today!

Special thanks to Redheadstock of DeviantArt for the grass and cloud brushes and the wood pattern that I used in this picture. Also, special thanks to DragoArt.com for their “How to Draw Baby Birds” tutorial, which I used to help with the basics of my turkey.

Happy soon-to-be Thanksgiving! Enjoy the wallpaper.

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Graphic Goodness

This is nothing but a show-off post.....but looky what I made my daddy!

It is for the new website he is building. I felt the need to stick my nose into his graphics (because the ones he was using weren't custom at all) and whipped this up for him. Yay for having a OCD graphic-oriented daughter! At least, hopefully he's thinking "yay" and not "wow, that is hideous." LOL.

You may now carry on with whatever you were doing before I decided to interrupt and show off my graphic goodness.

Well, comment first, then carry on.

Eric Draven

I finally got around to finishing up my Halloween drawing for the year. I decided to go with a classic...well, not a classic classic, but a reasonably-modern-classic: Eric Draven of "The Crow." For those unfortunate souls unfamiliar with "The Crow," below is a short blurb and video.

Shelly and Eric were very much in love. But no one gets married on Halloween, not in Detroit. The two are brutally murdered on Devil's Night, a night when the henchmen of crime-boss Top Dollar traditionally indulge in wanton acts of violence and arson. A year later death is no longer what it was as Eric Draven, accompanied by a Crow and gifted with new powers and a world of grief and pain, is brought back to life to avenge his love's death. After all, love is forever. And some of us Believe in Angels. (This description is an accumulation of written summaries listed at IMDb.com)

The movie is fantastic and has some amazing lines. And, of course, who doesn't love a movie with a leather-wearing guitarist with super powers out to avenge the love of his life and save some others in the process?

Without further ado, here is my rendition:

Unfortunately, it does not do the character or movie justice. It's a fairly common pose; in fact, I believe the pose was one of the original movie posters. I was mainly playing with the white on black shading here and am not all-together pleased with the outcome. I was working with a sketchpad that is about half the size of a standard paper and using General's White Charcoal (which comes in square sticks with blunt edges), so details were difficult and I didn't achieve the overall effect I wanted. Oh well, it was good practice with mid tones and highlights, at least.

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Re-hash

The last few days I've gotten a wild hair up my......er......I've gotten the urge to re-hash a few things. If you are super observant (or a follower of my Twitter account) you'll already have seen the changes in the headers on the site. Not a lot of differences. The bar at the bottom has more depth to it, the font and floral swirls are now beveled, and the logo has been moved to a more prominant frontal location.

I've also remade my "Back to Top" buttons. They're now a completely original Anika creation; rather than simply being graphics I'm using from FlamingText.com.

Finally, I've redone my Twitter button a bit. I created the original art button about three months ago. I had always intended to pull it back up and clean it up a bit, but didn't get around to it until now. The original button was more of a sticker in appearance and the shading on my Twitter bird was somewhat rough. I've gone back in and smoothed out the shading and created a new background to the bird.

As you can see, the new background is an actual button...as in a pin-type button. Few reasons I decided on that. 1) I wanted to see if I could figure out how to make it, 2) I wanted the button more three-dimentional-ish, 3) I wanted the colors to match this site more, and 4) I collect button pins and just wanted include one somewhere.

Unfortunately, I've got nothing else at the moment. Trying to think of something special to get up for Halloween. Suggestions are always welcome on that front. Just click the pretty comment link below (right above the shiny new Back to Top button) and give me some ideas!

P.S. I'm not promising to actually DO any of these ideas....but if I really like them, then I just might. :Þ

P.P.S. If you look at my Back to Top button on any page in the site (outside of this blog) you'll see that I made it go pressy when you hover the mouse over it. Ooohh. Ahhh. ;-)

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Trick or Treat

Hello All!

Been a bit since I last updated. Sorry about that. I've not been idle though. Went to Vegas, visited family, got a cold, worked way too hard...and of course, been drawing like mad. I've been doing some work-related graphics stuff, which I'm not going to show off here because, well, work is boring. Or, at least, not entertaining enough to go on about when there are other grand things to show.

Other than work related graphics, I've recently delved back into the world of The Labyrinth. Some of you may recall other Labyrinth fanart that I've done, like Jareth (old and new-ish), Sarah (old and not-quite-as-old), and a Hoggle Get-Well card. Now, I have a shiny new Hoggle drawing to show off. This is done in oil pastels on black paper and is, in my humble opinion, a fitting drawing for the month of Halloween.

I also created a darker version of this, but what it gained in depth it seems to lose in visibility. Check that one out if you'd like to see the changes.

Also, as a I'm-sorry-for-not-posting-for-two-weeks bonus, here's a pretty Trick or Treat special:

Always Check Your Candy... by =Chaotica-I on deviant ART

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Water Dream

Two updates this week. 1) A new wallpaper photo manipulation for you to oggle and adore:

2) Check out the new Halloween Photoshop Tutorial in the Photoshop section of this site. The tutorial walks you through creating a Halloween desktop wallpaper, the same wallpaper that was the spotlight of last week's blog post.

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Happy...Halloween?

Happy…Halloween?

I know, I know: I’m a little early. The wallpaper that I’m showing off was actually made for a graphics thing at work, but I adapted it and am planning on creating a tutorial with it for CraftyArtWorld. That should be coming out sometime next week, so keep your eyes open.

Here is the wallpaper in all it’s beauty. Clicky to make largey.

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Astronomical Crafts

When I was in sixth grade, I got my first exposure to the wonders of astronomy. This was at a time in my life when my grandfather lived with my family and he, being an avid fan of both astronomy and education, did his best to nurture my interest in the subject. With his help, I created the first educational craft piece that I can remember.

We took a paper towel roll and strung a long strand of yarn through the middle. At the end of the yarn, we tied a washer as a weight. We then cut a piece of card stock into a half circle and taped that to the bottom of the paper towel roll. This was used over the course of a month to measure the movement of the night sky.

↑ Cheap and dirty picture model ^.^ ↑

We picked out a star that we could always find and recognize (in our case, it was the middle star in the handle of Ursa Major, the Big Dipper). The first night, we looked through the tube directly at that star. Because of the weight of the washer on the yarn, the strand of yarn pointed at the ground. With the paper towel tube pointing up at the star, the yarn was at an angle to the tube. We marked the card stock at the bottom of the tube with the date and time.

Each week, at the same date and time, we went out and looked at the star through the tube again. Each night that we did so, we marked the angle of the yarn on the card stock. At the end of the month, we were able to track how high the star moved in that month by looking at the markings on the card stock.

Though this was by no means a scientific experiment (it wasn’t exact measurements and didn’t account for horizontal movement), it was a lot of fun and it peaked my interest in astronomy.

A few years later, that same grandfather gifted me with a telescope so that I could track the stars for real. That same year, I created my second piece of astronomy craft – a solar system mobile. This was, rather pathetically (though creatively), made with the use of yarn, chopsticks, Styrofoam balls, paint, pins, and pipe-cleaners. It was another fun project, as I carefully painted each ball to match the diagram of the planets as they were shown on one of my planetary documentary cds.

It has been quite a while since I’ve kept up on astronomy the way that I did as a child, but every once in a while I still see something that peeks my interest or makes me reminisce. I still love all astronomy artwork (and there are quite a few paintings out there with astronomy themes). What tweaked my interest and sent me down this trip to memory lane was another solar system mobile.

This weekend, I finally found the time to assemble, paint, and hang a mobile that I bought a few months ago. It was quite a bit of fun to put together. The mobile even included the exact measurement distance that each planet should hang from the sun and a packet with some other astronomy information in it. There were a few disappointments with it - like the lack of rings on Uranus, which we now know has rings. Another disappointment was the lack of Pluto, but that isn’t their fault as the lonely…I don’t even know what to call Pluto anymore, a moon?...is no longer considered a planet.

Still, it was a lot of fun to create. I’m curious how long it will last before my cats find a way to attack and dismantle it.

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Paint

I don't really have anything interesting for you this week, so I figured I would share a cool website I found. The website is found at artpad.art.com (I've included a frame to the site below, so you can play with it right here!) and is a fun tool for drawing online. Play on it a little, it's a lot of fun. You can even hang your creation in their gallery.

Or, if you create something you'd like to share with me or that you'd like added to Crafty Art World, then click the "Save & Send" button and email me the image at artistanika@craftyartworld.com.

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Mighty & Powerful Gods

It should be said that I have a deep obsession with Disney movies...particularly movies with awkward characters. This weekend, I watched two of my favorites: Lilo and Stitch (an all-time best Disney creation) and The Road to El Dorado. Lilo and Stitch made me want to dig through my old drawings and pull out the old fan sketches I've done for that movie. Unfortunately, I could only find one of those old sketches. This one was started around two years ago and never finished...water is evil to try and color with colored pencils, which is why the sketch is unfinished. I'll have to get back to it at some point, but for today I avoided restarting my attempt at a wave.

So, that left El Dorado. Love that movie. Miguel and Tulio are two of the best characters that Disney has come up with in quite a while. Then again, I always love the "side-kick" like characters, and Disney admits that El Dorado was made as a movie where the typical side-kick characters are the stars.

I spent an hour or so sketching the characters from the opening scene of the movie.

At some point, I may color the sketch. Not sure if I'll do that with colored pencil or in Photoshop. Depends on my level of boredom when I decide to sit down and color. If I'm really bored and willing to spend more time on it, I'll use colored pencil. Photoshop is quicker and easier, so I'll use that if I only want to spend a little time on it.

Half of my love for Disney movies comes from the music, so I put a video from the movie below. This accomplishes two things. 1) It let's you enjoy the lovely music and 2) It gives you a view the Miguel and Tulio in action so that you can better judge my drawing of them.

My other project of the weekend was to finish the written portion of my Photoshop Custom Shapes tutorial. That tutorial is now up and running. Enjoy.

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