#130 RESULTS

Happy Friday!

Thank you for visiting! I hope you enjoyed this month’s CREATE A CHARACTER Activity.

I’d like to kick the post off with fun sketches I received via email! They were created by a mom & son duo!

Introducing CREATE A CHARACTER #130 designs by…

Evan (age 6) and his fabulous mom, Barb!

Aren’t these so spectacular? I love how they used color paper to make their characters pop. Thank you for participating Evan (and Barb)! You both did an outstanding job and I hope you had fun doodling together!

If you and your child/student would like to share your characters next month, please send them my way at amy[at]amynielander.com. Be sure to include your name, age and character’s name. All designs received by March 24th will be included in my next post!

This month’s shapes were inspired by a Sunday afternoon visit to the Detroit Institute of Arts. We were grateful to learn that the DIA is scheduling appointments for families to stop by. It felt good to gaze at paintings, sculptures and artifacts again!

It was tough narrowing down the pieces that caught my eye! What do you enjoy looking at when you visit a museum? My favorite pieces are the sculptures. I never get tired of admiring the drapery and all the soft folds carved in stone. Every detail is remarkable!

Shapes in this month’s #130 Activity sheet were inspired by the below masterpieces.

This is a 1903 sculpture titled Penelope, by Franklin Simmons. The intricate heart-like details around the trim of her dress caught my attention.

This Half-Armor is made out of steel, gold and leather and dates back to 1550. The artist is unknown but the origin is Lombardy, Italy.

Lajos Mack created this Hungarian Art Nouveau vase in 1900.

And below is my favorite painting by John Singer Sargent, Madame Paul Poirson (1885). I think it is striking! What do you think of this portrait?

Below are the details I used to build my Activity sheet…

What shapes would you have picked?

Next, I started making characters! Here is a Before and After look at my #130 Activity sheet and pencil sketches…

A few days later, I filmed a time-lapse of my pen sketches. They eventually turned into Instagram reels.

Now, for a character breakdown!

I always like to think of a theme before character designing. It helps me come up with ideas! Since my fourth shape came from the way Madame Paul Poirson’s hair framed her face, I decided my theme would be…hair! Every character (or animal) I designed is dealing with a hair-related situation.

For example, my first character is LITTLE GIRL WITH LITTLE BANGS. I imagined her having an unfortunate haircut that left her with super short bangs. Has this ever happened to you? Keep scrolling to watch her transformation…

My second character is ready for CRAZY HAIR DAY at school…

Crazy Hair Day is not for everyone though! I recommend reading this delightful picture book by Norene Paulson (illustrated by Camila Carrossine) titled WHAT’S SILLY HAIR DAY WITH NO HAIR if your child/student has alopecia.

I had a hard time turning my third character into a human. So, I turned it into a dog with an odd, mischievous human hair…

Last up, is my fourth shape. Do you remember how I pulled inspiration from Madame Paul Poirson’s face? The wiggly lines were formed by her bangs. I decided to invert this outline into a block of hair for my fourth character! It now belongs to a beautiful, beaming ballerina…

That is it for my character designs! Thanks for visiting! I hope you enjoyed reading my creative process. Maybe it inspired you to visit your local museum! Thanks again to Evan and his mom for participating!

Are you interested in making characters? Check back on Monday, March 1st, to download a new Activity sheet.

I hope you’ll join me!

SHAPES #130

Welcome!

Thanks for stopping by. A new CREATE A CHARACTER Activity sheet is ready to download! Find it here. I’ll be posting my results on Friday, February 26th (and sharing sneak peeks on Instagram). I’d love to see what you come up with! Please share your results using #createacharacteractivity on social media or drop me a note.

Enjoy!

#129 RESULTS

Happy Friday! Welcome to Results Day!

This is the first time the CREATE A CHARACTER Activity ran for a month (versus a week). It was nice to feel less pressed for time! The extra days allowed me to finish color sketches for each character, which I usually could never fit in with my weekly posts.

I did notice a small difference with this extra time though. One of my final color sketches changed quite a bit from the original pencil sketch, which makes me feel like it lost some of its…spirit. Maybe I spent too much time entertaining design directions? I’ll let you figure out which character that is!

Let’s begin with inspiration. Where did these shapes come from?

My closet!

I love prints! And after recently watching a season of Project Runway with my daughter, I headed to my closet for inspiration. Do you like wearing prints or patterns too?

After picking out my favorite shirts, I snapped a few pictures and pulled some shapes. I assembled my outlines on the CREATE A CHARACTER Activity #129 sheet and posted it the first Monday of the month.

Pencil sketches were next! What characters could these possibly turn into? My designs did not come easy! Shape #1 and #4 were especially challenging. I had to go through 2-3 sheets to finally settle on characters I liked. Here is a before and after look at my CREATE A CHARACTER Activity #129 sheet.

After I figured out who my characters were, I did a time-lapse video of my pen drawing.

Now it was time to clean up my sketches! I did this digitally (but tracing paper works too!). Check out the design transformations for each character below.

I wanted my color palette to be similar to my printed shirt. These owls do not exist (at least I can’t find them!) but it was fun imagining what they might look like. What do you think?

Shape #2 changed slightly when it came to my word bubbles. Since I completed this pencil sketch right after January 1st, I was still in “Happy New Year!” mode. By the time I cleaned my sketch up (the end of the month) the greeting felt like old news. I decided to play around with a pun instead! What word bubbles do you like better?

Can you tell what changed between the color sketch and the pen sketch? I wanted my peas to look like they were snug in their pod, so I made them bigger.

For shape #3, two characters emerged!

After I sketched this one out, I wondered if butterflies even like tulips? With some quick research, I learned they are attracted to…tulip trees! I’ve never seen a tulip tree before. Have you? You can find a picture of one here. Can you tell what type of butterfly inspired my 2nd character? A Black Swallowtail. You can learn more about them here.

When I colored my line drawing, I noticed my design strayed from my original pencil sketch. I experimented with some lines during the cleaning-up process. Can you spot the difference?

The one on the left is the design I changed when I cleaned up linework. I wanted my tulip to feel more flower-like. I changed the right-side line from straight to curved. I also changed the butterfly’s wing shape from curved to straight.

After stacking up the pencil, pen, cleaned-up pen and color images, I felt like I went beyond the original pencil sketch. Some of flower’s flair was lost. I added the straight line back in and rounded the tips of my butterfly’s wings. I also decreased the size of my butterfly and added a little motion swirl. I think I like design #2 better. Which do you like best? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!

The last character derived from Shape #4. This design was the most difficult for me! It was also the illustration I spent the most time on.

Can you see where I made changes from the initial sketch?

If you guessed HAPPY CAT’s mouth, belly and tail…you are correct!

To make HAPPY CAT more believable, I had to make sense out of his right paw. In the pencil sketch, his foot was attached to a point (which is not quite the case for a real cat)! I turned that strong curved line into a poofy cat beard so I could attach his paw to his body. I also straightened his belly out to balance the straight and curved lines. What silhouette do you like better?

His tail is not as bushy as the original. But, I do like the swoopy stripes. I decided to keep it as is because this activity is all about experimenting and having fun! It is not worth fretting over!

Thanks for visiting and reading about my character design process. If your child would like to create CHARACTER CARDS from these designs (or their own), you can download a sheet here or visit my Activities page. Be sure to print a backside too! They can build onto these characters by creating…character traits!

I hope you’ll check back on Monday, February 1st, when next month’s CREATE A CHARACTER Activity sheet will be available to download (hint: we recently visited the DIA). I’d love to see what your child (or you!) come up with! Please share on social media using #CREATEACHARACTERACTIVITY or drop me a note.

Until next time…Keep Creating!

SHAPES #129

Happy New Year friends!

If you are new to this blog, welcome! If you’ve been here before, welcome back! I’m so glad you stopped by.

Since 2018, this page has been pretty dormant. When schools closed in March of 2020, I relaunched this blog. My hope was to provide kids with an activity that kept them happily amused and fulfilled creatively. I created weekly posts for 4 months until summer break.

With a new picture book on the horizon and other projects to tame, I did not return to my blog in the fall. But that absence of a creative routine made me realize…I kind of need this playful practice back in my life. It made me a better artist (just check the archive!), a better human being (I’ve donated books by our Guest Artists to local schools and charities) and it skyrocketed me out of my comfort zone (it was back to pens, paper and traditional tools versus my familiar digital tablet).

In that spirit, I decided to kick off 2021 with a renewed commitment to this CREATE A CHARACTER blog for the year. I’ll be providing more Activity sheets for families, educators, artists and anyone else interested in joining this creative adventure.

For this commitment to work with my current schedule, I had to tweak a few things…

1) A new Activity sheet will be posted the first Monday of the month (versus every week). I will do my best to make them live every morning by 9am. Results will be posted the last Friday of the month. This change will allow me to flesh designs out more and experiment!

2) “Blobs” will be called “Shapes” from this point forward.

3) I’ll be building my Guest Artist list. It will feature diverse illustrators with published books that inspire students and make an impact. More details to come! If you admire an artist that falls in this category, please let me know!

This CREATE A CHARACTER Activity was created in 2014 for two reasons:

To bring families together and to push creativity.

A personal challenge for me was figuring out who was actually stopping by. Who was benefiting from the activities. If they were even serving their original purpose. So here is a break down of how I see the CREATE A CHARACTER Activity being beneficial to a reader.

If you are an educator, this activity can be a fun learning warm-up for students. Kids can collaborate or design on their own. It will breed idea-sharing confidence.

If you are a parent, this activity can be a playful way to kick off your family’s week! Try it after breakfast on a Monday morning for five minutes (when my kids were young we did this for years). There are no right answers with this activity! That means you’ll be amused by your child’s imagination and surprised at your own!

If you are an artist, this activity will allow you to experiment and grow! Have you ever tried a medium outside of your traditional toolbox? I’ve found this to be the perfect platform to practice just that (here’s what happened when I tried watercolor pencils for the first time).

If you are a writer, this activity can benefit you too! Imagining characters will lead to new stories. I believe you can draw better than you think! But if that feels too foreign to you, use descriptions to capture the characters you envision.

Whatever your background is, I’d love to learn about you in the comments. Let’s build a community that cherishes and celebrates our creative problem solving skills because it is vital (2020 showed us why).

So here we go! Download your CREATE A CHARACTER Activity sheet here. I’ll see you at the end of the month!

BLOBS #128 RESULTS

Welcome! Thank you for stopping by!

Did you create characters this week? I’d love to see your designs! Feel free to share your experience below or post your designs on social media using #theblobblog.

Let’s begin with inspiration! I had some help this weekend which made things easier. I asked my daughter to take a picture of interesting shapes and off she went!

First up, is a baby oak tree we have growing in our front yard.

The miniature, pink ruffled flower is a dianthus.

The patch of sunlight is our sidewalk and the wood floor is our dining room floor. Do you have any of these objects near/in your home?

I began pencil sketches on Wednesday afternoon. My theme turned into BIG, ODD PETS. Because they don’t exist, it was fun imagining possibilities!

Below is my pen time lapse…

The first BLOB was the second hardest for me to figure out. When I tried to make sense out of the bubbly outline my creature turned into a BIG, ODD PET that was part ostrich/peacock/rooster/flamingo. What parts remind you of each animal?

I wanted to keep refining my pet design so I created a color study.

The next BLOB was the most difficult for me! This BIG, ODD PET likes going for walks…upright.

The next character is my favorite. It feels part bear and part dog to me…

The last character is a giant, pet bug. What would you do if you had one?

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you enjoyed following my design process.

Have a fabulous weekend!

BLOBS #128

Thanks for stopping by!

Download a new batch of BLOBS here. Do these shapes look familiar?

Enjoy creating characters this week!

BLOBS #127 RESULTS

Thanks for stopping by! Did you create any characters with this week’s batch of BLOBS? If so, I hope you had fun!

Let’s kick things off with a little inspiration.

Our garden is blossoming and the peonies have finally burst open. I have been waiting for them to grace our backyard with their billowing presence! Their petals look like they were drenched in hot pink ink and the afternoon sun dried them to a perfect fluffiness. Have you seen a bolder color?

Next door to our peonies are Fire and Ice Hostas. Do you have any of these plants in your garden?

I also passed through town during the weekend and was happy to see shops starting to open. This sign made me stop and feel grateful that we can finally venture out again.

The last image is from a hair salon (not open yet) that had positive messages displayed in their window. This particular panel was my favorite.

I began pencil sketches on Wednesday afternoon. Here is a look at my Activity sheet BEFORE and AFTER designs.

After designs were locked in, I moved onto a time lapse pen drawing…

My theme this week was FUNNY MONSTERS. I was ready for something light, fun and kind of kooky. My first character turned into STRIPED AND SPOTTED MONSTER.

My second character has a little rhino and a little elephant feel to it. Here is HORNED MONSTER…

The third character is my favorite. Introducing HAIRY AND TOOTHY MONSTER…

SCARED MONSTER was also fun to bring to life…

What do you think scared him?

Thanks for visiting today! I hope you enjoyed following my character design process.

Have a wonderful weekend!

BLOBS #127

Thanks for stopping by! Download the latest CREATE A CHARACTER Challenge Activity sheet here. Let me know how your characters come out!

BLOBS #126 RESULTS

Dear Friends,

It has been a sad week in the news. If you are a child, I hope you have talked to your family about what racism is and how we can all work together to abolish it. If you are an adult, I am doing my best to educate myself on how to help make our world right. This will be a journey. My first step is to share the words that are important to me and communicate their meaning with art.

This week’s post is dedicated to our Black community and the heartbroken families. If you are a person of color and are offended in any way by my interpretation of these words, please let me know.

So, let’s begin…

My inspiration came from a quick getaway last week. We headed north.

I woke up the first morning to see a family of ducks traveling across the water together. They looked so peaceful swimming in the giant lake. They had it all to themselves! What would you do with all that water?

The next image is a nearby birdhouse. I couldn’t get a good look at the bird perched on the balcony, but she appeared to be a Grackle. Have you seen this bird before?

We almost left without packing our favorite beach activity! We love playing Trac-Ball next to the water. I decided to use our racquets as shape inspiration.

And it wouldn’t be a beach getaway without a grand sunset!

Did you spot the row of ducks?

Next, let's look at my BEFORE and AFTER Activity sheet…

Once ideas were locked in, I moved onto pen drawings…

If this is your first time visiting, my character-creating practice has led me to one conclusion. If I’m stuck, I think of a theme! Those themes usually come from my week of experiences. When it came time to come up with characters on Wednesday, I hit a wall. I couldn't see any characters in my BLOBS.

So I turned to words. These concepts were on my mind: Equality, Sow, Educate and Unity. What do these words mean to you?

My first pair of characters helped me communicate my Sow theme. We need to work together to create permanent change in our world. I learned that the Black eyed-Susan symbolizes justice. The flowering plant below is a majestic version…

The next group of characters communicate Education. We need to read often and learn more about our Black community and history.

We learned about Maya Angelou, Miriam Makeba, Nina Simone and Wangari Maathai a few years ago when we ordered the book GOOD NIGHT STORIES FOR REBEL GIRLS. What Black figures in history have inspired you?

The last characters communicate Equality. We are one no matter what our skin color is.

The last BLOB was especially challenging. I focused on Unity. The first showed a row of characters brought together by a rainbow. But it didn’t feel powerful enough for me. Martin Luther King, Jr. and I share the same birthday and I remember learning about him in kindergarten (Thank you Mrs.Nigerian!). I decided to honor him in my Unity image and share a quote that moves me.

This is a fictional banner created by kids and filled with their hand prints. If you could make a banner to celebrate Black lives, what would it look like?

Thank you for visiting today. If it’s hard to communicate how you feel during this time, I hope you use art and character design to express your emotions. If you feel like sharing, I’m here to support you!

Be well.

BLOBS #126

Thanks for stopping by! Our little getaway last week inspired this week’s batch of BLOBS. Download an Activity sheet here. Enjoy creating characters!