DIY Light Sabers!!

Ok, so this post isn't strictly and 'art' post... but it is something fun my little family did today and I thought that there might be other people out there that would want to try something similar with their families; so I decided to post about it :D

A little bit of background first- we've been INSANELY stressed this summer.  Especially over the last 2 weeks.   Why isn't really important; it's just been crazy.  So today we had to do something fun.

Ok, so what sparked light sabers?

Well about 4 years ago we started to introduce our son to Star Wars and decided it would be fun to own some light sabers.  We initially bought 2 of those telescoping light sabers- but within weeks we found that they were WAY to painful to be hit with, and let's face it you give a kid a sword no matter what you say they are going to end up hitting you with it.  Not only that... we moved shortly after buying them and they disappeared.  (we lose SOMETHING every time we move)  SO we still wanted light sabers but didn't want to pay the amount of a new telescoping light saber, (which seem to retail for around $12 most of the time) plus, like I said, they HURT to get hit with.

So we looked up alternatives and found a short little post where someone suggested pool noodles.    So we took that idea and ran with it.  We made some pretty awesome little light sabers.  They lasted for about 3 and a half years before they began to wear down.  (pool noodles can only take so much of a beating).

To repeat- it has been stressful; so we needed to do something fun today.  So we built some new light sabers. :D

 Materials:*

• Duct Tape (we got the shiny chrome stuff, but regular silver works) $3.39
•  Black Electrical Tape: $2.29
• Assorted colored electrical tape: $4.99
• Pool Noodles: $1.99/each 

(My Daughter insisted on modeling all of the products)

We got 4 pool noodles- so we spent a total of $18.63 pre-tax.  So we spent about $2.50 per light saber if you include tax. 

*we got everything at target, you could probably get it all cheaper at the dollar store or somewhere else.  We just were at target for something else and didn't feel like going to multiple stores with the kids.

First thing we did was cut the noodles in half.  I just bent them in half and cut them with a serrated bread knife- (I did this before we got the kids to come help build them; so I don't have any pictures of that.)

As you can see this made the cuts pretty rough.  Not a big deal though.

The next thing we did was make an X with the duct tape on the bottom of the noodle; which fixed the rough cut. 

 After that I cut about 4 pieces of tape approximately 8" long each and wrapped from the bottom up.  (you'll see I didn't keep it wrinkle free every time, but they are just for fun, so I didn't worry about it to much)

We then put a strip of the black electrical tape at the 'top' of our handle.

Then everyone customized them with buttons  (cut from the colorful electric tape) and other designs with the black.

 
First light saber that we finished.  My daughter gave her stamp of approval so it must be good!

My son kept doing nutty poses with his, so you can barely see the design, but he was having fun.

 We ended up getting progressively more creative with the designs, So we ended up with 8 pretty cool looking light sabers.

 Final step of course was having a battle in the backyard!!

 

 

 My daughter kept gathering up all of the weapons and running around with them; it was hilarious.

Sorry about the watermark and the bad photos.  My phone camera is dieing and that is all I had on me, so I did my best.  The watermark is there because I'm posting pictures of my kids and somehow I'm 100x's more paranoid about their use than I am about my sketches and artwork.  Go figure.

We had a lot of leftover tape when we finished, you could probably buy twice as many  pool noodles as we did and make a ton of swords for fairly cheap.

I promise to have a more art related post soon, but for now this is what you get!!

~Alicia

Bee drawing drama

So my last post detailed a bit about my computer drama. 

It continued until today.  It seems to be working and I was finally able to process the stupid  video today.  YAY.

So here is my silly video:

I could vent forever about my frustrations in fixing my computer- complain about the fact that my office is more computer parts than art at the moment.  But honestly; I'm just really glad it finally worked.

More art and videos soon.  I've been absent because of a combination of fixing my computer and trying to put away all of the stuff we recently got out of our storage unit (long story short- we had a storage unit when we moved into this apartment, decided it wasn't worth the money and I've been sorting and getting rid of stuff... it's been a lot of work)

So yea- I shall be better about posting art stuff :D

...

As Soon as I find my desk...

Seriously impossible to take a picture that really does the amount of stuff on it justice... oh well...

NIGHT

~Alicia

yet another Blergh post....

 Art this week... I cannot believe it is already Wednesday!! I'm going to get my act together I swear.

Right now I'm doing a lot of brainstorming and list making.  Because of so many unexpected expenses this summer (more on that in a second) I don't know that I'll be able to do Comic Con this fall... unless something amazing happens in the next several weeks.  With my current luck I'm not holding my breath. 

So far this week I've done 2 drawings.  Both of them on Sunday- the little girl to the left and also the bee just below.  I feel like the little girl is largely unfinished- needs a right arm reaching up for... something.  It is forgivable because it was a largely unplanned doodle that I did at church. 

The bee was slightly more planned- slightly in that i actually looked up reference before drawing.  I found this amazing resource morgueFile a few months back and when I remember it exists I try to get photos from it to draw.  It is a pretty amazing site- the photos are taken by both professional and armature photographers and are free for use by other artists.  Which is AMAZING it gives artists a great resource where they don't have to worried about being accused of stealing someones work.  (copyright gets really sticky when it comes to artists drawing photographs-- go figure-- both of us want to make money off of our art) 

So my 'blergh' part of this... I actually filmed myself drawing the bee- well more precisely I filmed the bee as it was being drawn.  I decided to start doing *something* on YouTube; though honestly I haven't really decided exactly how to use it yet.  So for now I'm filming 'speed' paintings and drawings.  The first I did was of Arya Stark (digital in photoshop).  So far it is the only video I've created successfully.  Oh I've filmed others.  Or at least parts of- I have a digital piece that I've had to put on hold for a little while that I was drawing- and then there were thing here and there that I've been trying to film.  I figured out a way to film with my nice Cannon DSLR camera.... that is a story in and of itself.  For the bee I went a 'simpler' route and filmed it on my iPad mini and then moved the footage over to my desktop. 

This is when disaster struck.  I'm really sick of that sentence coming up in my summer.  The short version of my frustration is that my graphics card likely needs to be replaced.  My computer shuts down *every* time I tried to export the video from Premier Pro.  This is also related to the reason that my other digital painting is on hold.  Graphic card keeps over heating while I'm painting the system shuts down.  At least that is what I *think* is happening.  I've tested everything else in the computer so I'm like 90% sure that I am right; but there is always room for error in my life. 

So I've literally spent the last 2 days fighting with my computer.  I'm clever- I'll come up with a way to get videos up on YouTube one way or another. 

So now my list of expenses are as follows:  Repair/Replace iPad mini, get husband a new laptop (his is SO shot, he's got it 'working' but honestly... it doesn't have much time left), get myself a new graphics card- or maybe just replace the whole darn computer, and then see if the wiiU is still covered by warranty or if I'm going to have to pay to get that fixed as well (easily can blame my kids for THAT one).  There are other odds and ends that I need to repair or replace; but those are all of the big ones. 

There is my update.  Now I need to go draw or something. 

~Alicia

Edrine and her bat

I've named the girl but not the bat....

Anyway- this is largely a repeat for anyone who has seen my facebook page.  But I'm going to repeat.

I've been focusing on digital painting lately.  That is going to change this week 'cause I totally lost my stylus.  I'm sure it'll show up... but I don't know where it is at the moment.

This is what I've been working on (in progression from rough sketch to current place)

her skirt has changed a bit since this drawing

changed the position of the bat to give the drawing more depth

quickly added highlights and shadows- cleaned it up a little after this

this is as far as I got with the color (well the walls are painted as well; but I didn't have that layer turned on when I grabbed this) before I lost my stylus.  I set it down and it rolled... somewhere.  I don't know I was off helping my son with a kindergarten work book. 

 I'm filming my painting- well most of it sometimes I forget to turn on the camera... and some of it just got lost when my computer crashed... while recording :P  But i'll put together a video of it.  I've noticed that I do a TON of redundant things when painting- that has been the positive of the videos.  I need to make a lot more decisions ahead of time- it would WAY cut down on my painting time.

Go figure- my professors were right when they told me that. :P

Night world
~alicia

Life, Art, Improvement!!

WARNING- the following post was written at 1 am after LONG day of cleaning and re-arranging furniture.  It is a little ramble-ly.  But what can you do :D please excuse typos and redundancy.  :)


This week has been a little crazy- so I'm a bit behind on the stuff I posted last week.  The posts I had planned are being delayed- so you are getting this instead. 

So this past week I've been thinking a lot about where I came from artistically.  During the semester my life goes out the window- pretty much I go to school, do homework and take care of my kids.  Housework of any type is prioritized by urgency of task- and a lot gets neglected.  Even though this last semester was lighter, I still was busy enough that the apartment is a TOTAL disaster.  I pretty much spend the first 2 weeks following finals trying to make our home liveable. 

flower girl- April 2014

So I have a lot of time for my brain to think rambling thoughts- which is what brought me to my artistic history.  It is AMAZING how far I've come in the past 3 1/2 years.  I've been finding old sketchbooks and I'm just so grateful that the professors I have had were willing to see past the skills I had at the time and encourage my desire to be an illustrator.  It has been kind of a fun experience. 

My 'Throw Back Thursday' isn't from one of those sketchbooks- though that would be fun.  This is actually from a painting that I did almost exactly a year ago.  It is a piece of a larger conceptual illustration that I did for the class.  I'm not really a fan of the whole piece- but I've always kind of loved the girl that I painted.  So I cropped her out and have been using her as an icon of sorts for the past year.  Though there have been things about the painting that have bugged me.  A Lot.  So I finally sat down and repainted her. 

flower girl - April 2015

The original painting was done with water colors on illustration board.  My repaint is more of a paint over; I imported the image into photoshop and made myself some brushes that would match the strokes of the original and repainted it.  I did my best to fix the anatomy problems that were bugging me, also the shading... I did some weird things the first time around. 

I think the most fun part of the repaint was imprinting the style I've been developing onto the piece.  Fuller hair, lots of curls, rounder face... Honestly I hadn't realized how much 'style' I'd kind of stumbled into this past year.

I've never really thought of myself as having a style- actually it was all I could do when I first came into the program to just keep my head above water.  I've been focusing so much on just learning to draw that I couldn't see the ways I was improving.

I have a year and a half left, assuming no crazy disasters arise in my life (which happen far to often then they should!!) I'm looking forward to seeing how much I've grown when I've finally finished my degree!! It'll be amazing!!

~Alicia

Catching up!

Ok- so between graduations and just being sick- I've been a total bum when it comes to art.  (whatever virus I have seems to have migrated to the muscle tissue on my neck and shoulder... yay...)

I'm going to do a more satisfying entry later this week.  This entry right now is mostly for my own purposes.

• First thing: I had a blast doing the A to Z Challenge and intend to make up the days I missed/re-draw some things.  I've already stated this- but re-iterating mostly for my brain and list making purposes.  The deadline I'm setting for myself is May 11th.  At least to get caught up and to do my reflections post.  
• oh yea- and I'm still going to compile all of that into some form of book
•  My monster- Quincy from Howard Lyon's workshop- will be getting a bit more work done on him- at the time I thought I had a much closer deadline then I ended up having.  So I'm going to be working on him and re-posting on May 14th.  Partly because I just want the painting to be more finished.  Partly because he should be doing a post on the Muddy Colors Blog that Friday about the workshop, and I'd like to send him an updated version of it.
• I'm a blog-a-holic and I have recently created a Sketch Blog that I posted 3 times on and then ignored... hey! Life happens!! But my goal is to do 2,000 sketches on that blog between now and the end of the year.  I'm going to start working on that soon.  Specifically this Thursday I'm going to start updating that. 
• Speaking of sketching... let me explain my lovely picture of books.  Last week I bought a ream of 250 sheets of high quality toned card stock and bound it into 5 separate books.  Each with 50 pages.  I've not yet decided if I'm going to draw front and back for each sheet or just front.  It will likely depend on the medium I'm using as well as the purpose for the sketchbook.  I am going to try to fill them all up by the end of the summer.  I need to get into some better sketching habits- since this fall I'll have *at least* 200 sketchbook pages to fill- more than likely I'll have 300-400 to fill.  yay!! I actually am excited.  Sketchbooks have helped me to improve SO much.  I'm still deciding *what* I'll be sketching.  Full figures and portraits for sure... the others I'm still brainstorming.
• I've also got to sit down sometime and figure out comic con... at this *exact* moment there is NO WAY I can go... 'cause of money for a table and stuff.  Plus I need to produce a lot of art to sell.  I'm in an interesting bind right now- I've had enough mini disasters in the last 2 weeks that I've determined that I need to raise AT LEAST $5,000 (this amount includes cost of comic con itself, other art related expenses plus money for replacing the random electronics destroyed(through no fault of our  own!!) in the past few weeks) so yea... that
• also websites... I have 2 that I want to get up and running; the first is obvious- my art website needs... well something on it.. the other I'm not going to point out at the moment.  It's more of a graphic novel that I've been writing/wanting to write for the past several years.  I *really* hope I have time to sit down and hammer out a years worth of script so I can start updating that thing. 

That is all just art life.  I still have a household to run- and a lot of that running in the next several days is going to be cleaning/spring semester recovery based.  

So getting sick at the start of summer- while weirdly relaxing (hey I couldn't do anything so I laid in bed and plaid Majora's Mask 3DS) it really has set me behind some what.  I honestly wanted to get a mothers day piece finished before mothers day so I could toss it in my etsy store.  Well I'll still make one.  It'll just be late.

Anyway- That's it for now

~Alicia

Zebra Moth!

I could not find a poem for this one... I'll have to write one later or something.

I'm working on illustrations and poems for the week I missed.  When I do my reflections post I'll include links to all of the caught up days :D.

I've stated this before- but I do intend to assemble all of this into a little book; plus some additional drawings and poems not included in this.  I'm actually pretty excited about this project.

I have more to say but want to save it for the reflection post; So I guess I'll leave my A to Z commentary at that.

In other news; I loved the Zebra moth and have a fantastic idea for a fantasy piece that I hope to get a sketch up sometime tomorrow.  :D

~Alicia