Create Every Week #4 - Blow Fish Party

I admit it, I have been slacking off on the creativity side but I did have a play around the other day with this.

I am hoping to up my "kawaii illustrations" game so I decided to combine different expressions with blowfish (fugu as it is known in Japan).

I'll probably paint it with water colours but upload and clean it up a bit so I can play around with digital painting too.

I have been using this book: Kawaii: How to draw really cute stuff and a reference book. Which I'm really enjoying, Ebi-kun too. It has step by step for drawing all kinds of things from people to transport to buildings and how to kawaiify them.

Obviously in Japan everything is kawaii, they have a knack of making everything cute - which other nation would come up with a cute poop emoji? I rest my case.
All the prefectures have their own cute mascots, we have a pigeon, I know right, of all the creatures they pick a bloody pigeon!

But it doesn't stop there, supermarkets, hospitals, schools, even prisions have mascots too - it's a HUGE business. One thing that surprised me when I first came over to Japan was seeing full grown men with cute mascot pens, key-chains and the such like. After being here so long it all seems perfectly normal.

So... what have you been creating this week?

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Creativity Challenge - Fancy Monsters

Today's side by side creativity challenge was to draw a fancy monster, that is to say a monster in his or her best party clothes! Why? Who knows.

It's funny how we didn't look at each others work until we had finished but our monsters are quite similar, both in top hats and bow ties and and  the same type of mouth - how strange!

Ebi-kun's is actually a Mermonster, I like him!

Mine is more of a disco monster, although a top hat at a disco is quite odd, maybe not as odd as a monster at a disco!

Are you joining in with the challenge? What does your fancy monster look like?

Being More Mindful About Creativity...

It dawned on me the other day that the reason I have been neglecting the blog a bit recently is because I usually get inspired to write from the photos I've taken. The photos are often something we have been doing, places we have visited, crafts and projects we have been working on.

Well in the last couple of months, I have been busy with work and Ebi-kun doesn't have as much free time thanks to school so our creative endeavour have taken a bit of a nose dive.

So we decided this week to be more mindful and to actually make an effort to do more of the fun stuff, whether it be crafting, drawing, painting or experimenting.

I thrive on creativity and need to be doing something creative or I go into a boredom coma!

I picked up a couple of new sketch books and we are thinking of challenges to do, we have our own book so we will do the same challenge but interpret it in our own way. Hopefully this will produce some interesting results!

Challenge #1 - Decorate Your Sketch Book

We decided it was easier to flip it over and decorate the back of the book that to try and cover the flimsy front...

Of course, Ebi-kun went for a football theme, he is somewhat footie mad at the moment and currently reading Ronaldo's biography, I can't really complain, there are worse people out there that could be a role model!

I managed to do mine with the book upside down! doh! Of course I didn't realise until I was almost finished. Of well, it's just a sketch book, not exactly the end of the world. I treated myself to some new pens last week so this was a good excuse to play with them!

I've also been playing with some ipad apps, I still prefer pen and paper and because I work online, it's good to get off the screen but I'm a geek and I like playing around with new apps, what can I say!

I'd love to know what you have been up to recently, feel free to join in with the challenges if you need a creative boost!

I'm off to Tokyo tomorrow so that should provide me with some arty inspiration!

 We will be back with more next week...

This is what I wake up to every day....

Ebi-kun is funny!

He is up at 5.30am on the dot, by himself. He comes downstairs and gets dressed then gets stuck into a project of some kind.

The last few weeks he made himself a time machine, a fully working torch out of a smarties tube! Written some newspaper reports, translated a chunk of his Japanese dinosaur dictionary into English and churned out numerous pictures, this morning he was working on a self portrait!

I often wonder what will happen when we hit the teenage years, whether the tables will be turned and I'll have to drag him out of bed or whether he will still have the same mazing self discipline.

Coming from a Montessori approach, I don't want to give him work books or force him to sit down and study, no quicker way to put a kid off learning! So giving him the freedom to choose makes a huge difference. We have talked about keeping his writing level up - speaking in English is no problem. And so it was his idea to translate the dino encyclopedia, he did 20 entries and had to look up the latin names and time periods, which was a great job. I check through an make a note of any mistakes, especially recurring ones, so we can deal with them. Capital letters is the thing he needs to work on at the moment.

The newspaper reports we have done for a while but he came and asked me to make some new ones for him, and off he went again, writing stories about the adventures he has had. If you want to know how to make the newspaper articles, there is a tutorial HERE.

Each morning, I come down the stairs and wonder what weird and wonderful thing he is working on this morning...

BIG Kids Magazine...

It arrived! Ebi-kun scuttled off with it before I had chance to look at it properly...

BIG which stands for Bravery Imagination Generosity, is a pretty unique type of magazine, it consists of work which pairs and adult artist of some kind with a child artist. For example, this issue there is a 'person tree' drawn by a child and a poem written by an adult that goes with the drawing. There is a lot of contributions from artists of all sizes from all over the world and collaborations such as the treasure boats. Ebi-kun's treasure boat was included in the poster that Lilla A put together, can you spot it?

Ebi-kun was very excited to find his ship in the magazine, he says that he feels happy and like he is famous! The magazine makes good reading and it laid out in an artistic fashion plus the paper quality is lovely too. They encourage you to write in the magazine, complete drawings and your own projects, this is the only problem I have with it, and just because I can't bring myself to write in books, it just feels wrong!

To get your hands on the latest edition of BIG kids magazine, you can purchase it here

The cover is by artist Jacqui Stockdale and Makaela aged 8

Welcome Yukika

We have a new member of the family, BabyEbi has a new cousin on the Japanese side. She was born in Shanghai and so they have called her Yukika, Yuki is snow in Japanese (due to the big snow fall there at the moment) and Ka is beautiful flower. Her big brother wanted her to me called Hana (flower).

We don't have a photoe to show you yet but Babyebi drew a picture for you...

and a self portrait he did the end of last year...

Scary Spider

To answer Linda's question first, the rest of the house is getting there, I finally sorted the spare room today so we can now set up all his Montessori things, our bedroom is almost there, just need some more storage boxes for clothes and a mirror. The curtains for the dining area have been ordered and I have almost got as far as getting the machine out to make the other curtains. We still need to put up a shelf in the bathroom so I have a box of bath related stuff to unpack and then 2 boxes of "stuff" which just make me feel queasy when ever I open the box, the thought of sorting it out....

So, whilst I have been busy unpacking BabyEbi has mastered the art of drawing scary spiders.....

coloured in on photoshop under his instruction!

Orangutan

I was washing up this morning and BabyEbi was busy in the corner, suddenly he started shouting "look urangutan, look urangutan". I thought he was reading abook but when I went round to see what he was shouting at he had draw this....

Looks very much like this guy

So I took a photo, since pictures don't keep on a magnetic drawing board, then this afternoon I dropped it into photoshop, traced round the picture in black, deleted the original then we used the paint bucket and filled it in, very easy and very cute results.

Hmm, and I wonder why the packing is going so slowly, I am SO easily distracted, hubby is working in osaka for a couple of days so at least I can get a bit more done in the evenings. (no dinner to cook) And on that note, I am off to make a list - I am a terrible list maker, I can't function unless I have at least one list on the go, often I have a list and sublists, now where did I put the box of pens?