Draw Ekey the running robot!

Today we will be drawing some things “slanted” instead of straight and up and down.  Try to notice “slanted things”.  The reason is because my gangly robot friend, Ekey is running.   When you run, usually you lean (or slant) forward in the direction you are going.  It’s hard to run fast if you don’t lean forward.  And other parts of Ekey will be slanted also.

So, let’s start Ekey by drawing his head shape…a rectangle…but notice that I tilted it a little to the right. At the bottom of his head draw another long skinny rectangel (slanted) and put three lines in it spaced apart. Give him a rounded top on his head and put two lines going across it inside this shape (did you notice all of this is slanted?). On top of the head make a smoke stack that l0oks like an arrow.  Darken it in.    Draw a small circle under the head and connect it with a little line (that’s the neck).  Next we draw the eyes.  Each eye will have a rectangle for the eye lid and the letter “U” under it for the eye (the eyes are slanted too).  You’ll draw these over the top of the head shape on each side near the top.  That will mean that you need to erase the lines inside these shapes.  Add the nose as a big curly-Q line that gets smaller and smaller as it goes in. Now you can put dots in the eyes…draw a slanted line for the mouth and put circles on the end of it (those are the bolts that make the mouth open and shut…right now it is shut)….and also add three dots slanting down from under the stack at the top of his head.  Add a little puff of smoke under those.  The smoke is made of a small letter “U” that you make over and over till it connects with the first “U” again….there are four “U’s” in this puff.Now do the other side of the head with three dots and another puff of smoke.  Decorate the inside of the body with two straight lines going across (slanted!) and three big dots in between those two lines. When I add the legs, I want Ekey to look like he is running…not standing still.  One leg goes forward and one goes backwards like you do when you run!  Look at the picture and see if you can make your legs like I did.  Notice that I put small circles at the knees and the ankles. The feet are rectangles….notice how I slanted them when I attached them to the ankle circles. Ekey’s arms are like spaghetti with a good size circle (and a smaller one inside it) at the end of them.   The circles are his robot hands.  His left arm will be waving to us.

Now add his fingers and you are all done!  Notice that when I drew the thumb on each hand, I put it out to the side from the other three fingers.  Look at your own hand when you wave….see how God made your thumb be able to go out to the side?  Cool, huh?!

When I colored Ekey, I tried to make him look shiny like I thought a robot would.  The way I did that was to make each blue shape lighter down the middle and darker as it went out to the edges.  See if you can tell where I did that with the blue shapes….

Last, I decided to put color around EKey.  Since I knew that the color blue and the color orange are best friends, then I chose orange to put around him.  And I wanted to make him look like he was moving fast, so I used long streaky lines of color.  Have fun coloring your Ekey!  Great job!

Drawing a vork 1

It’s time to draw a VORK. Maybe you’re asking, “what’s a VORK ?”  A VORK is a funny little robot-like creature that you get to make up from your imagination.  The main parts in most every VORK are wheels (instead of feet…and there may be alot or just two); a large shape for the body; another shape for the head (although the body and head may be all in one shape) and eyes (lots of them…or just one…different sizes if you like!).

Every VORK is different because we get to change things about them…although they will always have eyes sticking up and wheels as feet.  Enough said.

This first VORK we will use a large rectangle (turned sideways) in the middle of our paper.  But let’s try drawing a rectangle like this…an angle line that goes across the top of the shape and then down..

To finish the rectangle, start your angle line at the top left corner and come down, then across.

Underneath the rectange, leave a little space and draw a circle and another circle inside of it (a little smaller)…looks like a piece of  life saver candy doesn’t it?!

Now draw a straight line down from the bottom of the rectange to the top of circle (that’s his neck…sort of).  For his legs we will draw two straight lines at a slight angle down from the bottom of the circle.  To shade in the smaller circle on the body, use lines going across.

Add a circle at the end of each of the leg lines about this size….

Put an ‘ X” in each of the circles however you like…

Add a line going across each wheel that goes through the X’s you drew to complete the spokes of the wheels.  Draw another leg line at a bigger slant going out to the right side.  Then draw another wheel that will be the smallest wheel and put the same spokes inside it.  If you can, try to draw all three wheels so that they look like they are sitting on flat ground….that is, the bottoms of the wheels would touch the same line going across the page (but you don’t draw that line, just try to imagine it going across).

 

This VORK has joints on his legs…draw them as dark dashes in the places I show on my drawing (you can add more if you like!).  His arms are curly Q’s going out to the side from the circle body…

At the end of the curly Q arms, put circle dots.  On the head shape, draw a line going up from it (make it as high or low as you like) and one coming out from the right side…

Draw a circle for each of the eyes…short straight lines for the eye lashes and a dot inside the circle.  Where you put the dot will make your VORK looking in a certain direction.   For example, if both dots are at the top of the eye circles, it will look as if he is looking up.  For the mouth of this VORK, make a “saw tooth” line going across the rectangle…close to the top (we will need to draw some other lines underneath this line).  Saw tooth lines are lines that repeat the letter “V” over and over….

We’re almost done….draw three other saw tooth lines under the one you just drew.  Make these lines look like the first line going across.  If you can, leave a bigger space between the 2nd and 3rd lines (teeth lines will go there!)…

Now you can draw those teeth lines going up and down between the 2nd and 3rd saw teeth lines.  Try to stay between those lines.  Time to make our VORK look like he is somewhere.  So draw a curvy line going across the page about as high as I have drawn it below.  Also add some small straight dashes around the wheels so that it looks like a shadow is on the ground from the VORK.

Bravo!  You just drew your first VORK!  Why not give your VORK a name and if you want, add some color….you know I’m going to color mine!

Before you leave, let’s remember that we used straight lines….curved lines…circles…dots and angle lines to make our VORK.  Maybe you can try to make another VORK ?  Or, you can draw your VORK on a piece of cardboard and cut him out…attach a string and hand him from some place your Mom says is ok…HAVE FUN!

Draw Buzz the Bee

Today we are drawing this little guy, Buzz the Bee.  He’s in my doodle bug group and I think you’ll enjoy drawing him so you can put him in your own pictures if you want.  So grab a piece of paper and turn it tall ways and get a good sharp pencil with an eraser.

The first thing we draw is a good size “upside down U” in the middle of your paper…this is a curve line…

Next, draw a straight line at the bottom that will connect the 2 ends of the upside down U.  Then draw 2 more straight lines above that one but leave some space between them.  The face of Buzz is going above these lines so we have to leave enough room for his face like I did in my drawing!

Between the bottom two straight lines let’s shade this in using small curve lines going all the way across slanting the same way.  Skip the space above that and then shade the following shape with curve lines again…but see if you can make the curves lines go the other way across this time.

Now let’s add Buzz’s face….two short straight lines for the eyes (nice and dark)…an oval for the nose…and a curve line (letter “U”) for the mouth.  NICE!

Add two tall curved lines for antennas with the curly q’s going the same way at the ends…

The wings will be curved lines going out like this…sort of like putting the letter “U” turned sideways on each side!

Now for Buzz’s legs….we’ll use the letter “L” with the bottom part darker…be sure and set the legs pretty far apart because we will be drawing a little stinger between them.  And if you notice really good, you’ll see that I turned the feet up just a little bit.  The legs are angle lines….

Now for the stinger….a curly-q !   (which you know is in the curve line family)

And you have just drawn Buzz the Bee!  Oh yeah!  He’s floating in the air in front of you looking at you with that little smile of his….so let’s put some movement lines around the wings since they are moving so fast….(these movement lines are curved lines)

And one of the fun things you can do with flying things is show the path they’ve flown….we’ll use a dotted line (a lot of short straight lines and curve lines put together to show the path!)

Last, since we don’t have anything up in the top left side, let’s write his name there nice and bold with letters that are easy to read….that will fill that space nicely.  As you are writing the letters, try to say what kind of lines you use to make the letters….Straight lines?  Curve lines?  Angle lines?

Now you are ready to add color to your picture of Buzz the Bee…have fun and keep up the good work  with your drawing! God has given you an amazing gift to be able to create all kinds of cool things….let’s keep using that gift!

Parachute Doodle Bug

Let’s draw a doodle bug with a parachute….look back at the previous posts to see how to draw a doodle bug if you like.  This will help you feel comfortable with drawing our picture today.  To begin, turn your paper tall ways and in the middle upper part of your paper, draw an upside down “U”…this is the top part of our doodle bug’s parachute.

Add a row of upside down “U”s going from one side  to the other…

Next add the doodle bugs head (a circle) under the parachute.  Leave a little room between the two shapes for the strings that we’ll draw in a couple of steps…

Draw the doodle bug’s face…nose, eyes and grin…

Then add the fun antennae’s on top of his head…but put these out to the side a little.  Look at my picture to see what I’m talking about.  Between the antennas will be where the strings attach to his head.

Ok, so now it’s time to draw a string from each one of the points of the parachute down to the top of the doodle bug’s head.  Don’t put the strings in the doodle bug’s eyes or antennas….he wouldn’t like that!

Now add his little body…a couple of “u”s that are smaller than the head….connect them to the bottom of the head (like I drew it in the picture below).  Did you notice that I put the 2 “U”s a little to the right so that they are slanted?  That is because when you float down with a parachute it swings from side to side a little bit.  That’s how we want our doodle bug to look…floating down side to side.   Don’t forget to give him some arms too…so he can wave to you!

His legs are easy to draw….just a couple of “L”s.  But because he is swinging a little from side to side (remember?), we’ll put his legs up a higher on the same side like I drew in the picture.

Add a couple motion lines behind him and there ya go!  Good job!  One doodle bug with a parachute floating down, down, down….If I draw the same thing again but draw the doodle bug even more slanted, he looks like he’s really swinging!

And tilt him even more and it looks like this….

Congratulations!   You know how to draw a doodle  bug with a parachute. Maybe you could turn that picture over (so you can’t see it) and on another piece of paper, see if you can draw him from memory!   No cheating!

It might be fun to add to your picture with some more doodle bugs parachuting down…maybe some are different by adding another smile or a hat or holding something in his hand.  How bout adding where he is going to land?   Maybe he’s landing at wal mart…or your backyard….or your church?  You can draw out your ideas and have adventures with your friends the doodle bugs!  Maybe you can even write a story about your picture….wow, that would be fun!  See ya next time!

DRAW A DOODLE BUG!

Draw along with me as we make a little doodle bug…it’s really easy and we can do alot of fun things with him in other drawing times.

On the middle of your paper, draw a circle…this is his head.

Add an oval inside the circle near the top….that’s his nose!

Two dark dashes side by side above the nose will be his eyes….

And below the nose let’s draw the letter, U …that’s  his smiling mouth…

we’ll use a fun curly Q on top of his head for the both antennas…

his body gets a small letter U connected to the bottom of the head…when we draw something small next to something big, sometimes it makes it funnier.  So we’ve given him a BIG head and a LITTLE  body!

put another smaller U inside the body…and a small straight line going across his tummy….(he might giggle a little when you draw across his tummy)

His legs are easy…for the right leg, use the letter L and darken the bottom part to make his foot…

for his left leg, turn the L the other way and darken the bottom part for his foot.

His right arm will be a curve line with a sideways letter V on the end to make him have 3 fingers.   He is waving to us…maybe he would say in a little squeeky voice,  ”hi-ya!”

and his left arm we will use a bigger  letter V turned sideways and add a dark dot on the end of it .  This will make him look like he has his hand in a fist on his side….try standing up and go look at yourself in the mirror while you make the pose you have just drawn the doodle bug making!

We need to show that our doodle bug is standing somewhere (is he in the house or down at the park or at a circus?)….right now he is just floating on our page.  Draw a straight line that will go across your paper so that it looks like it is behind him.  The next time we draw, we can work on where he is.  But for now, let’s just make the line….

and if you want to color your doodle bug, go ahead and pull out your markers or crayons and do it however you want.  This is how I colored mine….Hope you had fun drawing a doodle bug!  Next time we will do some more things with our doodle bug that are really fun!

If you want to add some more things to your doodle bug for now, please do!  I wonder how he would look in a cowboy hat….or with a pair of red tennis shoes or with a big grin and he’s missing a tooth?!  You know how to draw a doodle bug now…. draw another one any way you like!

This is what I get to see during my drawing presentation with kids….I’m amazed everytime the kids hold up their pictures!  And I love to see their proud, excited faces from accomplishing something creative and expressive.

And let’s don’t forget the parents that are brave enough to try along with the kids….way to go, moms and dads…you’re AWESOME!!  (the whole back row in this photo was parents)

magnetic

What is it with the fascination we all have of watching an artist draw?  When I have had a room full of  a.d.d.  kids  going full bore at a school and they couldn’t be quieted down, I have just walked up to the dry erase board and started drawing….silence in 5 seconds….they are completely sucked into my world of drawing.  And then as I continue to draw, they want to try and guess what I am drawing right then.  No inhibition…it’s like it HAS to come out of them.

And before the noise and activity level rises again, I say, “ok, get your paper and pencil out, we’re going to draw a picture together”.  They get so excited and they are moving quickly trying to get their pencil sharpened and paper ready.  It’s amazing really.  And they want to draw so bad that if they get noisy again I just  remind them that we can only continue if everyone is watching and listening.  Then the kids in the class monitor each other making sure the volume stays at an ok level.

That’s what art can do for kids….really.  They just want someone to show them “the magic”….think what a privaledge and responsibility God has given artist to “pass it on” to the next generation.  For the ones that took the time to “show me” when I was young, I thank God…wow, what an impact they had!  Below is my first grade picture when I was known as “bubba”…huh, “Bubba the artist”…who would of thunk it?!

Sweet spot

When we perform, we’re not really our true self that God made us to be.  How do we get past that kind of mentality?  Care….compassion…love for the people and love for what you want to give to the people that is of value.

When I am in front of people, my very best flows out when I am “in the zone” where I truely care and desire that the kids/people get some thing of value that I am trying to give away.

For sure, that’s one of the “sweet spots” in life!

Possibilities….

Tomorrow I will be at Barnes and Noble in Fayetteville.  I asked the lady in charge if I could draw with the kids instead of just signing books…I figure alot more kids would come if they could draw a picture!

Some of these kids I’ll never see again…what can I possibly give them that could help them along their life journey with creativity?

1)a little bit of confidence (from a fun experience of learning) to want to take whatever their next learning step is.
2)an open door….that there are many, many possibilities with things we create if we are willing to “explore”.
We’ll probably do an exercise like the one below to open them up and bring some laughs as they draw with me.  Please pray for me…for them… as we gather tomorrow that what is in the Father’s heart for the kids will flow out to them through me.
And, if you know anyone with elementary age kids, please let them know.  Ok, I know you’re dying to try and make some more faces than I did above…go for it!!!

Confessions of a “drawing junkee”

Behold the power of boldness!

There is something magically wonderful to be able to lead a young person into the creative world of drawing a picture.  I’ve never had them turn me down if I asked if they wanted to make a picture with me.  Their willingness is amazing….unguarding…and full of  zesty enthusiasm.  Who wouldn’t want to be around that kind of circumstance?!

A clean piece of white paper and a pencil or pen in hand and away we go step by step!   I try to break it down into simple steps and simple shapes…a little at a time…I don’t overwhelm them and I strive to set them up for  success.  And it is amazing how their inner treasure chest of creativity opens and spills out…”can I make his hair curly?”  or “I want my picture to have a dog running with a birthday hat!”.

I’m always amazed at the ease that a young person has to flow into the creative river that is within them…I feel my part is merely to “uncork” the bottle and let what is already there begin to come out.