Apparently those are flowers.

My sister, Tanya, has been drawing since she was a little kid.  Her and my brother are part of the reason why I didn’t push myself to sketch and draw more when I was younger.  They are much more talented and gifted than I am with the pencil and brush.

Speaking of creativity in the family, many of our uncles and aunts are VERY good artists.  My uncle Miguel has art all over my grandparents house using the Pointillism (or is it Divisionism?) technique.  They’re amazing and beautiful paintings.  On my mom’s side, a few of my uncles used to draw a lot of caricatures and other cartoon stuff.  The creativity genes exist from both sides of our family so it’s no surprise that the four siblings are all creative in one way or another.

Anyway, so, Tanya posted a video on her Facebook profile that I wanted to share just to prove my point and to show off how good she is.

UPDATE: Changed the video. This one has her coloring in the drawing.  Much  more interesting to me since I have trouble with color theory and stuff. You can see the rest on her You Tube page and on the website I set up for her at MoiNoir.com.

She is starting her own web-comic soon and I am sure she will do well with it.  I put a link somewhere around here when she starts posting her comics.

It was my brother’s birthday a few days ago and I didn’t get him anything. I have a good reason though! This year, I am trying to give everyone art – I need the practice . For Ciri, you can see the inspiration comes somewhat easily. The last time I spent time with Bobby was probably about 6 or so years ago. The two of us have our little families and only visiting California twice in the past 5 years doesn’t help either. It is understandable that inspiration for his gift was scarce. Until last Thursday night, that is.

Brian, the sole writer/choreographer/designer at MorningToast.com, was hosting his weekly radio show, Cave Radio Thursday night.  When the conversation turned to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, he played the original theme song from the cartoon. After the show I started reminiscing about all the times Bobby and I sat in front of the TV; following along the adventures of the Ninja Turtles. Those were simpler times – beautiful and simple times.   They were beautiful because Bobby and I don’t share too many interests, but the turtles on Saturday mornings were the richest memories I have of Bobby.  So that was it, I decided that I would make something that related to those memories of our childhood.

Bobby’s favorite turtle was and always will be, Leo – the strong and honorable leader.  Naturally I would have to center my art around Leo, and that’s when the image formed in my mind. I sketched for a few hours and finally got something good enough to scan into photoshop and start coloring in.

While I was doing this, I thought it would be a cool idea to broadcast myself on UStream. So, I set up my computer and announced it to my friends and family on Facebook. I experienced a few problems (bad audio was the biggest issue) but I got a good forty-somewhat minutes of video in there. Next event coming up is Mother’s day, so maybe I’ll do this again.  It was good geeky fun.

The final drawing came out really cool.  I’m still learning drawing techniques and skills but the end product came out pretty good.  It’s a simple image and yet I know Bobby will appreciate it a lot.

Leo - Final

Bobby doesn’t read my journal, by the way, just in case you were wondering. Ciri questioned my unsecretiveness after she noticed that I was publishing this post.