Joy To The World!

Merry Christmas!!! For the illustration here, Brady won an award in the Orlando Sentinel's Holiday Art Contest this week! There were over 2400 entries, and only 42 kids got awards.
I'm so proud of her!

Thanksgiving play!

Here's a pic of Brady and two of her best friends in her class this year, Bailey and Chloe. All three were narrators of the play (because they're so good at public speaking) . Afterwards, since they hadn't gotten to be in the "prop school bus" that figured in the play, like their non-narrator classmates had, all three had to run over and pop their heads through the window. I was lucky enough to get this shot of them. Too cute...

Summer Cartooning Class

This past Summer, Brady finally got to take the Cartooning class she's been waiting to be old enough for, at the Orlando Museum of Art (They actually called for me to teach it, but I was too busy). On the final day, when I went to pick her up, she had this big poster board in hand with her project from the last few days. Their assignment was to come up with a story, and draw a comic page of it...
The story, she told me, is that a girl finds a lsot dog (Brady REALLY wants a dog these days), and the dog is sad. The girl takes the dog to the mall, buys him a collar, and then they leave the mall, and live happily ever after.

I knew something was "different" when I looked at this page, but couldn't determine what, exactly. I knew that it was odd that she'd made an unconventional panel arrangement that was still readable. But then, she pointed out to me, she'd made the story IN THE SHAPE OF A DOG.
.........

I was speechless. I have scanned in and highlighted the page here to the best of my ability (although it doesn't do it justice). Making unconventional pages, in the shape of the thing you're talking about? Geez! I didn't even know about this until college, when I read Will Eisner's books on storytelling. How on earth did she know about it?

I still don't know. And, I even asked...no, her teacher never said to do anything like this. She just came up with it. I guess all that comic book reading we've been doing rubbed off, somehow.

Epcot!

Here's a picture my Mom took of me and my friend Tommy Richmond, when his family was here in town a few weeks ago. This is a picture of us and Stitch at Epcot.

Me and Chloe

Here's some new pictures of me and my friend Chloe Tower at lunch.

This one's of us in a boat on the lake. We had lots of fun!

Brady draws at School!

Here's a couple of cute pics of our budding caricaturist drawing at the "Eco-Cafe" at her school recently. The idea was for kids to perform a talent or show an interest they have in something that they might want to do for a living. "Eco" as in "Economics", not ecology.

Brady't two choices were either art or COMEDIAN, she said! Since knock knock jokes are about the extent of her joke repertoire, we steered her toward the art, and had her draw her pregnant teacher, Mrs. Millsaps. It went well, and she did GREAT. She even drew Mrs. Millsaps' belly, whcih all the kids laughed at , and the parents thought was cute. She wore a cool little beret, and looked like the hip art chick she is.

Like, is this cute, or what?

Another pic of baby sis....

She loves her Comics!

Brady and I have had "comic book day", where we go to the comic store and out to eat while we read them, almost since she was born. Back then, of course, I used to read to her. Nowadays, she sits there and reads her own. Totally Spies, Nancy Drew, Justice League Unlimited, and Power Pack are some of her faves. This pic is from the Orlando Megacon, which we look forward to attending each year. She's holding the latest issue of "Mystery Girlz", another comic she digs, done by a good friend of ours.

stood

Guess what!!! Kaley stood up !!!!

Wecome to my Blog!

Hi! this is Brady. My Dad taght me how to post on my blog! Please enjoy my art work!!! Let me know if you like my art work!!!!!!

Daddy Moe's

Well, I taught Brady's art class a couple of days ago at her school again. It was a lot of fun.
We talked about shapes, and I had them do pictures from words, like the "fourteen" picture I had posted of Brady's some time ago. Well, continuing the exercise, I've had Brady do a few more at home since then. This one was from today. You can see the original word I gave her, "DADDY". She made it into a picture of our family at a favorite restaurant we go to, "Moe's". Left to right, there's: a counter person, me, Brady, a Moe's worker giving us food, Mommy, and baby Kaley.

I'm not sure how my kid comes up with this stuff. She does it so easily. Hopefully I'll have a chance to post more soon.

Brady's little sister

Look out, world! She's crawling! Yep, at six months. The pediatrician says she might walk NEXT month. Good grief! She's really turning into a happy little baby, too. God is good.

1st gig

Well, we all knew it was going to happen. Just HOW SOON we didn't know! The other night at my 40th birthday get together, we mentioned to Brady how, since there were no other kids, she coudl set up and draw caricatures if she wanted...even put out a tip jar! Her eyes got big as saucers, and she ran over to the easel we had set up. She didnt' stop for hours! Here's a shot of her at work.

Oh yeah...the tips? She made $70!!!!

LOCK DOWN!

Hey, gang. Brady's Dad here. Ya know, there's so many pervs out there, I decided to lock this blog down, to where only those who are invited can see it. I know you all understand. IF there's people you know of who would like to also see Brady's artistic progress who is not on this list, let me know and I'll add them to our member list. I'll try to scan in some of her recent work and update the blog soon...promise!

Zomboy

This piece was commissioned for the trade paperback of the "Zomboy" comic book by Inferno Studios. Brady got a copy of the finished book as payment!

Ronald McDonald

Yep, we went to McDonald's again. This time Brady did her own version of Ronald McDonald as she finished her milkshake.

Pirates!

Brady and I went to McDonald's today. Health food, don't you know. We took our sketchbooks, to do some life drawing. If you don't have a child, you may not know that the latest Happy Meal toyline is for "Pirates of the Caribbean 2". They have a couple of cartoony plush figures of the main characters. Brady likes the Jack Sparrow one the best (cause the others are skulls and dark stuff). So, she decided to draw this scene with him in it, instead of actual people in the restaurant. I thought it turned out pretty cool:

Fun with Numbers

Brady did this sketch today, and I thought I'd share. She tells me it's of a line of people waiting at a movie theater concession stand. There's a lot going on here, and it takes a minute to look at, to appreciate it all. What impressed me was that there were people of varying heights, varying races, and varying clothing and hairstyles. Plus, there's some really good hands here. Not to mention that there's background! There's a checkered floor, a counter with a cash register on it, a movie marquee with times on it above their heads, and way in the back (perspective!), there's an arcade with a driving game in it. Good grief! I don't do backgrounds NOW half of the time. And she's not even EIGHT yet!
Keep reading, though, because this gets weirder.

David Cowles, a friend and huge inspiration of mine(www.davidcowles.net), was in town with his daughter a few weeks ago to see Disney. We had dinner with them one night, and Brady bonded with them over a game of "number fun", drawing on the "To Go" bag as we waited for our check. What you do is someone draws a number, and gives it to the next person, who has to figure out how to make it into a drawing. I was surprised that Brady was holding her own with them. At the end of the meal, David promised Brady to send her some "Numbers Homework" in the mail. True to his word, a few days later, a small sketchbook arrived in the mail, each page with a different number on it. Some were easy, but some were pretty hard...like the number "seventeen"...SPELLED out. I was impressed again with Brady's creativity, and she did about half of the book in one sitting (she'll finish it soon, David, and we'll send you some of the drawings!). SO....I decided to give her a project of my own. We have a "Summer Fun Sketchbook" that we're keeping this year, and I gave her some "Number Fun" pages to do in it. This drawing of the crowd at a movie concession? It started out as the number "Fourteen". See here for yourself:

Here it is again, superimposed over the final image:
I was impressed with the drawing itself, for the reasons I pointed out, but now I was speechless. I have no idea how she came up with all of this. Wow

Joe Bluhm

Another NCNer and great friend, Joe Bluhm. I can't find his photo right now that she drew from, but this likeness is even stronger. I will post his photo when I find it. For this one, I asked her the same type things: "What's big about his face?" "What's small about his face?" "What's different abotu his face?". Then, we made a list of those things for her to refer to while she drew.

Mike Paglia

One of the great things about the National Caricaturists Network (NCN), is meeting caricaturists from all over the country and the world. Mike Paglia here is an NCNer, and one day Brady and I decided to let her practice her buddign caricature skills on Mike's face. We first talked about stuff that stood out on his face, and then she drew him. I scanned it in for her, and she thought it was cool to color it on Daddy's Wacom tablet.