Merry Go Round - Get out of your comfort zone and try something new

It''s time for another ride on the merry-go-round! Jump on and join a group of 8 artists/crafts-women as they link around the world and tell you a little about their lives in art and craft.

This month's topic is : Get out of your comfort zone and try something new

It seems that I could answer this question nearly every week!  With my jewelry this year, I've been out of my comfort zone quite a lot both with learning the colored anodized aluminum techniques and with  the Master Muse challenges.

But I've been COMPLETELY out of my comfort zone starting cartooning classes! At school etc, I always studied the sciences - and was even told I couldn't study art.  That was all very useful when I worked as a scientist for many years - but now it doesn't really help me much!  I've never learned to draw and have absolutely no natural talent for it.  I just can't draw. More recently, this has been a frustration ( and embarrassment ) for me.  But the idea of learning to draw traditionally hasn't really appealed to me, so instead, a few weeks ago I decided to try a cartooning class.

And my conclusion is that cartooning would be a lot easier if I knew how to draw!!!  I have found myself being very uncomfortable.  I had no idea how to start.  So I began by trying to use my jewelry sculpted characters to help me to draw, and thus my first drawings began with Humphrey and Trisha shaped birds.  You can see my attempts here:

 

Then I needed to give them better expressions....but how do beaks work? how does a bird smile?

My teacher suggested I look at making the wings more feather and fingerlike:

Then I was encouraged to try other bird shapes:

And then other animals:

 

 

And then I scanned in one of my drawings into the computer and colored it in:

What I like best about the class is how my drawings have now influenced my  bird sculptured jewelry.  Here is a bronze bird where I added eyebrows and eyelids for more expression:

And here is another bronze bird with more feather and finger-like wings

And here is a much more expressive and animated bird - Jump for Joy!

When I started the class, I didn't have a clear idea of why I wanted to do it.  I don't want to be a cartoonist or illustrator...but I just felt I should explore it.  As you can see, drawing is a real challenge for me and most of my drawings look like a young child did them. 

But I love the way that I used my jewelry to initially help me start drawing and now my "drawing" is helping my jewelry.  What a nice circle.

I still feel very uncomfortable drawing - and showing you it here - but at least I'm trying.  It's also giving me confidence to try on aluminum too and create a new range of doodled jewelry:

So I don't know if I'll ever feel comfortable drawing - but I do think we all need to stretch ourselves and this is definitely a stretch for me.  And you never know how learning one thing will affect other things in your life!

Go on  - try something new this week! 

If you need more inspiration, click on the links below and see how the other merry go rounders have been uncomfortable!!  We live in all different places around the world, so time differences may impact when we all get our blog post up.

Kim at Vilt a la Kim - http://viltalakim.blogspot.com
Sara at Crafts of Texture - http://sarastexturecrafts.blogspot.com  
Fabienne at Easterya Jewellery Creations - http://easterya.blogspot.com
Mariana at Florcita - http://www.florcita.eu/
Agathe at Le Bar du Vent - http://lebarduvent.blogspot.com
Lily at Lily Pang Art and Design - http://lilypangart.blogspot.com
Mitsy at ArtMind - unable to join in this month - http://artmind-etcetera.blogspot.com

A whale's tale

My brother in law is staying with us at the moment, so we took him to Monterey for a few days and just got back tonight. While we were there, we went on a whale watch trip as he has never seen a whale before.  I love whale watching and seem to do it regularly either from further up the coast in California from the beach or on the East coast or wherever..... just lovely creatures...... and I love listening for the sound from their blowholes.

The trip started with the sealions!  There are so many in Monterey Bay that they are looked on as a nuisance. Ah.....! I have such fond memories of swimming and playing with the sealions when I was in the Galapagos Islands that I can't possibly imagine them being considered anything but playful sweet creatures!

This guy looked like a statue!

Then we saw humpback whales.  As we all know - getting photos of whales is  really tricky - but I did manage to get a few of mouths - as well as the obligatory humpback and a few of nothing but ocean!!!

We also saw a blue whale and then some dolphins on the way back.....and then of course, back to the sea lions!

This one looked sad that we were leaving....or maybe he just wanted a nap?

It seems an odd coincidence that in my new cartooning class just this past week I had to try drawing whales and dolphins! Just really quick sketches which reinforced my belief that I can't draw!!! Then I had to "cartoonize" them -  like this one:

One happy dolphin!

Who knows where this latest whale watch will now take me???

Expressive birds

So I wonder if you noticed anything different about my bronze bird that I photographed yesterday???

If you look carefully, you may see that, unlike my other birds, this little bronze guy has eye lids and eye brows too!  and yes, a little topknot feather.  Can you see?

I guess my not including eye lids before was an anatomical error as all birds have eye lids. In fact birds have three eye lids - an upper one, a lower one and a nictitating membrane.  Unlike us, however, their moveable lid is the lower one.  As that looks a little odd to us - I gave this guy moveable upper lids instead!

And as for the eyebrows?  Well - no. Birds don't have eyebrows - but I have artistic license!

So how come my new bird has two new anatomical features?  Well, I started a cartooning class last week!  I can't draw and don't particularly want to learn to draw "regular" things - but I thought cartooning might be fun.

When I met my tutor, he'd looked at my website and jewelry etc and he decided that I was a "three dimensional cartoonist!"  I like that phrase!  I started work on drawing cartoons based on Humphrey and Trisha ...... I have a lot to learn but in the process we spoke about expressions and how eye lids and eye brows add to expressions - and voila!  My sculpted birds now have lids and brows so I can start working on different expressions!

I have my second lesson today.  Looking forward to it.  I can see that my sculpting and my cartooning will be switching back and forth with me learning things in one and adding it to the other and vice versa!  And my goal is to be able to show you some little cartoons here on my blog.  Hope they won't cause too many raised eye brows!