I had seen the familiar look of silent exasperation on his face as I had come trotting up to his desk with that big stupid grin on my face which I know he dreads. I had seen the more inward frame of him barley tolerating me, like he does, turn into an awkward aversion when he had seen the cover. I had watched, with what I swear must have been the creepiest stare of giddy apprehension possible, as his mind connected the pensil behind my ear, to the sketchpad tucked beneath my arm, to the title of the giant tome-like book in my hands, to what must be the contents of said book, and finally to the spastically over-excited grin on my face.
Slamming his pen down on the desk, he had bolted to his feet to stand with such force that it sent his chair screeching back a half-foot before toppling over backwards to smack wooden and hollow on the equally wooden floor below. I had only once before seen his eyes flash like the way they did then, and it had not been directed at me, but at an unfortunate werecat. Scared, I had pulled the book closer to me in defense and the all-too-bubbly smile had disappeared completely from my face.


More terrifying when soft spoken than he could ever be yelling, he had seemed to loom towering above me as my own shoulders had shrunk in as I had quailed away from him, looking from the metallic gleam and focusing my own eyes on the brown stripes of the wooden floor. He had explained to me in a single word his exact feelings toward the changes the idea had suggested. Though the room was quite stocked full with my own things, that four-letter string of utter refusal had seemed to somehow echo throughout the room and reverberate back into my mind where it had bounced in the empty, thoughtless hollow.


Through the corner of my eye I saw him visibly lower his shoulders and step back. Daring to look again, I saw the disgruntlement on his face - a clear sign he had relaxed - and so I decided to risk tempting fate and try again. Blue-green eyes met silver and I took a breath, my face begging, pleading for a consent. "Please?" I asked, taking a step forward. He frowned, much more annoyed than ever angry. "Nein." He repeated firmly. "Please?" I almost whined. "Nein." Came his reply; and his voice began to raise. Flopping my shoulders and the book my tone changed to that of incredulity, "Come on, Doctor, please?"
Spreading his arms out wide in disbelief, as he rambled with this stubborn, unreasonable child, "Nein! No! How many languages do you vant me to say it in? I know vhat you're asking because I know what's in that book. I absolutely refuse to be a part of dass. It vould not be interesting, it vould not be intriguing, it vould not even hold mein attention. Utterly bland und entirely pointless. I do not wish to be anywhere associated vis dass blank, empty, overused, und absolutely uncharacteristic commonplace act which has been countless times before!"


Poking my lower lip out and hunching over, I gave up the vain idea and plopped the three-pound book on the desk with a simple "Oh."
The book's cover as it fell shone with the cursive golden lettering that spelled out it's title that had so disinterested him. Bound in dark leather and pinned with silver studs, the writing of the ancient writer's guide red a single word for it's heading: Clichés


Woo! Long story!
Well... not really. For a blog post, yes it is long, but for an author's standpoint, this was really quick to make.

Now you may be wondering what this is all about, so before I start my review, I need to give a little history. The two characters here consist of me and my own character Doctor Gabriel Fleischer. Dr. Fleischer is a character of mine who I often use in my animations. He's German (hence the accent) and spends most of his time studying those of the canine family. He also happens to be my most favorite out of all my characters I have, but that's a secret. So shh...! 
The setting here for my story is my own bedroom where the Doctor happens to be borrowing my desk as he works out some equations for his current study. The "world" I set this is in, is that little place in the back corner of any author/ artist's brain were they imagine their characters as if they were real. If you're not an author or an artist yourself, you may have a hard time understanding this, but if you happen to have an artistic friend - ask them. I promise you they'll tell you that they've imagined their characters were real at least once.

On to the review!
You may notice a sudden change of tense mid-story. That was purposeful. I wanted to add a bit of something extra to set it appart from my other writings. Also, I wanted to use that past-tense to describe what Dr. Fleischer and I might have as a relationship if he were real - given the fact that I, as a teenager, am the artist and he is the character.
On that note, I think that the same relationship is covered quite well in this particular piece. I did another, and admittedly quite darker, story regarding what relationship he (the character) and I (the artist) might have, but I do like this one much more. I admit that I do give him much more attention than my other characters, so I decided to work that into the short story here. Given his personality, I imagine that having a teenage girl fawn over you when you're trying to work would be quite annoying.

I don't want to necessarily praise my word choice, as that would sound far to egotistical, but I do want to say that I did spend some time and put a fair bit of thought into what words were used to add more color to this. Thesaurus, I love you.

Negativity:
This is one of my more favorite works of literature, so I find it a mite hard to critique it. One thing I will say, though, is that I have a problem with run-on sentences. Several of my friends commented on that when I showed this to them, but I left it in here. Also, I notice that I can sometimes go on a bit and detail things that might not necessarily need to be detailed. The chair falling, for example. I described the push, I described the sound of the push, I described it's decent, I described how it hit the floor, I described the sound it made, and I described the floor it hit. That seems like a bit much, dont' you think?
Finally, I do have a hard time balancing the Doctor's accent. When I first created him, his accent was so thick it was hard to even read what he was saying. Later on, I started creating some mental rules for when and where his accent should appear, but I still wasn't happy. Now, I'm starting to pull off just a touch more, but it seems I'm backing off too far. So, help with the accent would be appreciated.

That's it! Expect to see this guy more in the future, he is  my favorite character, after all.

Your turn! Critiques from the audience, GO!

Defining the Abstract

    Defining the Abstract

Catching a cloud

    Timing the timeless in the

Blinding Shroud

    Temporary Eternity

Dark as day

    Falling to Freedom as the

Death dies away

    Screaming a whisper

Killing the Dead

    Your heart fills with Love as your

Eyes see the Dread

    A gray, neutral midnight

Not a Place nor Alone

    A loving, hating deep-fright

Is the great twilight zone.

This is coming from the 8th grader who loves paradoxes. Paradoxes, oxymorons, nonsensical contradictions and the like. Even now,  two years after this poem, my love of paradoxes remains firm. The self-contradicting endless mind-bending loop of a true paradox will entertain me for hours.

As you can clearly see, this poem was born from my love of said reality-bending strings of wonderful nonsense.

On to the critique! 

You may notice some odd capitalization choices here. That comes from my own poem style of capitalizing words that hold weight in the meaning of the poem. This has gotten me in trouble with a number of grammar teachers who also happen to be grading my poems. "But it's my style!" I'll complain. "But it's incorrect." The would reply. So I would then return to my desk with an 80% and theatrically pout until my friends came to see what was wrong. I then would tell them in an overly-dramatic voice that "The teacher said it wasn't right". I was clearly not taking it too harsly, but wanting (as usual) for an excuse to pull a funny face or speak in an odd voice.

Negativity:

The second half of the third stanza. I'm not too fond of it, as it seems to grate against the general rhythm of the poem. Nor am I fond of the words, but really I was desperate for a filler.

Using the words 'twilight zone' in the poem at all. 

Some of you may be familiar with the wonderful black and white television show that went by the same name. It specialized in odd, abstract concepts such as the mannequin really being the one in control of the ventriloquist or a boy with Godlike powers who would turn anyone who upset him into giant toys.

While the show does fit the theme of my poem, I really don't think that using a show name helps the poem in any way.

Granted, most people may not have even heard of the show, but for those that have, that blight stands out.

Here we are, it's your time again!

Critiques from the audience.

My Ebony Wings

My Ebony Wings
They carry all my dreams
Safely through
The torrid storm

They carry all my dreams
And Myself
Through the storm
With each beat

And Myself
Is safely through
With each beat of
My Ebony Wings


Hoora! Poetry!
This was done as a school assignment in 9th grade. It's a type of stanza repetition to which I have forgotten the name. The point is to repeat half your lines from the first stanza, then half from the second, to create a third stanza made up of words from stanzas one and two.
It was a style I tried and will not be repeating. It's not my favorite. Being somewhat of an odd purist with poems, I more enjoy the structured rhyming of your "standard" poem over the repetition of this form.


Now about the topic. Flying has been one of my dreams since I-don't-even-remember-when, and recently the thought of a pair of gigantic black wings has oddly intrigued me. So here's me, in a poem, about big black wings. 'Nuf said.


- The Teenage Artist

In case you've been wondering: Yes, that image in the background is mine. Here it is.
Based after the song I was listening to for five hours straight while drawing this, The title of this fun little bit is Taste of the Milky way, and if features my wolf character Vesper. Yes, I am a wolf artist. Deal with it.
Don't worry, not all my characters are this exotic. Actually, most of them are quite visually bland. I make up for that with the characters themselves.

What to say about this? Well, first off it took me five hours to turn out this dang thing. Five hours, eight layers, some iced tea, and Galaxies by Owl City on repeat is what it took to make this, and for that I am proud.
Color wise, I really think the image fits together. Vesper is mainly blue, and so is the background. The stars are there and they stand out, but they aren't garish. Since most of the space is blue, the whites and yellows really pop out at me. The shading is near perfect, with a couple flaws on the face and one spot at the chest. The forced perspective on the paw I'm proud of, and I really like the glow on that ring.

So with all the things I like, what is there for me to hate on?
Several things, actually. Something you might notice quickly is the wacked out proportions of Vesper's face and head. While if you were to take each piece individually, the proportions are perfect, as a whole, they're flawed. What do I mean? Well.
The forehead. It's huge. The reason actually has its base in my own technique. See, to draw the head I use base construction lines that I'll erase later. For the head, that's a circle. However, I have a really bad issue with not being able to figure out the angles of the circle itself. Oftentimes I rely far to heavily on the curve of the circle and treat it as the actual finished lines rather than a guide. This is something I'm trying to break myself of and may have started to conquer with my new style (to be shown at a later date).
Second of the proportion issues is the eyes and mouth. I'm trying to work with better angles when it comes to canine snouts, but as you can tell here, it din't quite work out as planned. The eyes are askew and off center, the mouth is curved incorrectly, the jaw is not where it should be, and the shading is too dark.

While I do love this piece, I feel it has some core issues that take it far from what it could be if I had payed attention.

Now it's your turn. How do you think I screwed up on this? Am I right or wrong? How could it be better improved, and is there anything that I left out in the review?

- The Teenage Artist

Shining Cross

Hooray! My first bit of traditional work uploaded here.
This fun little piece was actually done today. Water colors and oil pastels on... paper...
As the first time I've touched oil pastels and water colors in six years, it's actually a decent job. I'm quite fond of the grass which, unfortunately, could not quite be captured on my camera. I blame the lack of a scanner. From what little of the grass you see, I'll have to tell you that I used two different greens and several differing opaquenesses (is that even a word?) using multiple levels of water. Oh, water colors, how I missed you.
The cool shine effect was done by cutting out a cross from a sheet of cardboard and scribbling on it with the oils, then smearing it with my finger.

Enough of the good stuff, on to the bad. First off, I got a dot on my cross! The point of the piece was to keep the cross perfectly white to have it stand out in stark contrast with the rest of the colors, and to symbolize Jesus's purity. But I got a smudge on it. Sad face.
The clouds. Good gracious, the clouds. They look like... nothing I've ever seen. I couldn't get them to quite work. And it's actually the cloud's fault I got a smudge on my cross in the first place!
The sun is okay. I shouldn't have filled it in with that other yellow, but other than that it's decent.
The sky. Just the sky. I just messed it up so much that I have nothing more to say about it. I broke the first rule of novice-water-color-usage and tried to use black. To horrid outcome. As you can see.

So this piece is an odd mix of success and failure. The grass and shiney stuff really make my day, but that horrid splotch of black in the sky really draws attention away from the white cross. The clouds look like pieces of poo, and I got a smear on my cross.
So I don't really know what to call this one.

Your call. I need you guys to critique this one for me. Failure or success? Good or bad?

- The Teenage Artist

On to animations.
As you may have noticed due to the fact that I'm posting a video here, I make animations. This one here is my best work. Next week, I'll post my first one, and you get to compare them.

Starting off with the song - This animation (or, Flipnote, as it's called on the site I post it to) is set to one of my favorite songs, Fireflies by Owl City. Not much can be said on this topic, save that this is a beautiful recording.
All my animations are made on my DSi, and so the audio must first be recorded before it can be used. This can lead to very poor sounding recordings that have ruined many a good animation.

Now for the art.
As the best work I've done, I am obviously quite proud of it. However there are mistakes that I made out of sheer lazyness. The most obvious is during the 'I'd like to make myself believe' section of the stanza. I failed to recognize correct anatomy, and the animation is quite choppy. Even during the simple heart-and-word effect, the animation coud be improved.
Other than that, though, It's great.

- The Teenage Artist

Emmanuel

From something old, to my most recent. This is something I actually finished last night (10/12/2011). The collage I'm looking at - Azuza Pacific University - is having their anual Christmas art competition. The spots are open to Students, Staff, Alumni, and Other... I'm pretty sure I'd fall under the Other category seeing as I'm stil in High School.

I'm quite proud of this little bit. It's my first time using textures in anything, and now I've officially fallen in love with them. Thank you internet for providing the means to add sparkly things to my art.

The image itself is a whole new style that I haven't really explored until this point. I'm not so sure if I'll continue to use it, or if this will be a one-time deal. We'll see.

Now for the harsh part. I don't feel like this is complete. I have no clue as to what this is missing, but it feels like it's lacking something to tie everything together. If anyone has any suggestions, that would be great.

Like I said before, this is my first time exploring this style of drawing, so I guess that may excuse a small amount of mediocracy, but I doubt it. 

Other than the odd lack of something-that-I-have-no-clue-what-it-is, I actually quite enjoy this one. It took me a while, and I'm proud of that. I successfully used textures for the first time, and I managed a new style. That's something to be proud of.

Just like last time, this is the point where you guys tell me what you think. Give me your own review or opinion, and tell me wether you think my review was fair.

- The Teenage Artist