Category Archives: Wayne Andreason

It Hurts When Your Artwork Gets Scrapped!

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This Illustration was Scrapped, but Not Forgotten

He DIDN’T MAKE THE CUT, SO HE WAS CUT.

This is the only fame this little guy is going to get, unless we post him on Pinterest.
Folio boy, Will Terry, created this little gem for a job he was working on for Klutz awhile back and this little guy just didn’t make the cut, so he was cut.

They can’t all be gems

But like on Facebook, if you have a million pictures of yourself or loved-one, or you cat, you probably don’t need to post all 1,000,000 of the pics, just post the good ones that get the point across. I know it’s sad when you have something that you work on and work on, our little babies they are, only to have them rejected by “the man”. Or the publisher, or the client. So Wizard boy here gets to come out of the flat file of shame and stand tall in the lime lite on this small time Folio Academy blog.
Here’s a wizard I did a little while ago that was never used by my client – Klutz. I liked him but he didn’t fit into the project so the poor guy got scrapped. Enjoy your 15 minutes my little sorcerer. ~Will Terry

A slice of life story about a spider who got roasted alive,

till he was dead

When I was in 7th grade I was in a science class that required an insect collection. I had a pet tarantula at the time who came to an awful demise when my aunt Jeanine set his jar in the sun. He roasted to death there in a quart jar with holes in the lid, on the kitchen table in the warm sunshine on a sunny day while I was in school  😥
Well I made the best of it, I pinned him to my insect collection board. But the day I took the cardboard of pins and death to school, I chickened out, “He’s not an insect stupid, everyone will laugh at you!” So I took Terry the Tarantula, my great, big, beautiful, wonderful, incredible, super, spectacular, giant, awesome, and very impressive spider off that board and handed it in with out him. He never got to shine, because he wasn’t an insect. I still feel bad about that, I should have left him on there to enjoy his 15 minuets. Insect or not, he belonged on that board with all his dead little friends.
In loving memory of Terry the Tarantula
Counting the one in your cephalothorax, it took 9 pins to hold you down

PRACTICE for PAINTING COLOR & LIGHT; ART CONTEST

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Homework for Painting Color & Light

Here is a little assignment you can do, or not, but if you would like to, take the challenge and see what you come up with.
I would love to see what you come up with and maybe blog some of it. If you do something pretty cool, attach it to me in and email. Well, don’t attach it to me, attach it to an email and email it to me to my personal email.
WayneAndreason@Gmail dot com

Art Contest 

(I just got an idea forming in my brain, this is now an art contest or a painting contest, or maybe a coloring contest, either way, see below, or the bottom, or the end of this blog for details.)

Just Color These

If you can figure out how to download these drawings, or save them to your computer or device, print if you wish to paint traditionally, or work digitally if you’d rather. Or do your best to draw them.
Then color them.

Variations of a theme. 

Colored-Mushrooms-lineSM

Take these mushrooms and make set different. That is, color them different colors, explore different light, colors and what ever. We have an example at the end of this blog if you want to see some possibilities.

Complex things are made of basic shapes

practiceDrawing

Bare in mind, that most things are built with basic shapes, so this is simplified. Take it and decide what you will do with it. Light source and direction. Warm light, or cold, dark and dingy or light and cheery, you decide, add detail if you like.
Santa Claus (AKA Father x-mas) on a Tropical Island

SantaBeachValue

So Santa is on the beach. See what you can do with color on this one. Is it morning, is it noon day, is it evening, morning, or night? You decide. Do one in the day and one in the night if you dare. Same scene but Night vs Day.
Mad Scientist in his Laboratory

jakes

This is an awesome black and white that Jake Parker drew during his Inktober phase last year. This could be realy fun to color, heck it’s fun just the way it is. Think of what you could do with color. You could use harsh light, contrasted by soft light, maybe some creepy fog. Have fun with it. This should be fun for comic book and graphic novel lovers.
and this is “below, the bottom, and the end of this blog”

contest details: 

Entries must be emailed to me WayneAndreason@gmail dot com (that’s code, figure it out, the dot means period and there are no spaces) as an attachment in the form of JPEG, no later than one week from today, Okay, 8 days, take Sunday off and go to church for a change. (this was an attempt at humor, please don’t take offence, I can only be so PC)

We will find some artists in the community to judge the artwork who will choose 1 to 4 winners, depending on how many entries we get. Or maybe I should say 0 to 4 winners as we may not get any entries.

By entering a piece or more, you are giving permission for that piece to be displayed on the internet etc. Just in case.

The winner/winners will get a FREE Folio Academy art lesson course of their choice.

Contestants are not allowed to EVER be offended by Will’s or my attempt at humor. We mean no harm, except to that girl named Tammy who tore up a picture I drew of a dinosaur back in second grade. I do mean to offend her but she can still enter. I promise I won’t tear it up. I think her last name was Roundy.

and oh yeah, you can’t go around selling it as your own work as the drawings are drawn by Will Terry

and Jake Parker who are famous artists and hold copyrights.

have fun.

EXAMPLE: COLORED MUSHROOMS

So we took the mushroom theme and ran with it to give you and example of what you could do.

Colored-Mushrooms

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PS if you know Tammy Roundy that went to Lincoln Elementary school in Salt Lake City about 45 years ago, tell her to friend me on FB. Any of you may friend me too. thanks. Your best friend, Wayne  https://www.facebook.com/wayne.andreason

The Folio boys road trip to Las Vegas

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Las Vegas trip

It’s never a good idea to send Will and me to Las Vegas. We went once before and it’s the reason I’m listed in the Guiness book of world records under human appendage modifications. LOL.

We walked around.

The California Teachers Association chose one of Will’s books – Armadilly Chili for their Read Across America book for 2010 and 2011. What an incredible honor! They brought him out there two or three more times that and the following year to speak and to sign his book at their conferences. It’s was so fun to hang out with their committee members in Vegas. And eat.

We learned that the famous Faberge egg company had just gone out of business a few weeks earlier (still don’t know if this is true but the dealer made sure we knew that there is now a supply and demand issue) It would have been a good idea for us to have been rich before this trip. Either way, we came home broke so…

I must not have wanted my picture taken. Or I was just in a stupor of thought, or lack of thought. Or maybe I was trying to “act natural”.

Why Does My Artwork SUCK? Why Most Adults Draw Like Children

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“I would do more art but my art sucks.”

I hope that doesn’t ring familiar to any of our readers or followers here, but I have heard this and similar complaints quite a bit over the years.

Anyone can be an artist. Especially you!

Anyone can learn how to draw and how to paint. “Even me?” Of course you. It doesn’t matter if your not gifted, with tons of natural drawing ability, most of us aren’t. (And we HATE those who are. Well we don’t hate them, some of them are my best friends, but we are often jealous.) Like anything else, it takes study and practice. It helps to enjoy it however and the sad thing is, it is hard to enjoy it when you suck at it, so then it’s hard to practice, and then it’s hard to improve. It can be a vicious cycle of procrastination.

Do you ever wonder why most adults draw like children?

It’s because they stopped drawing while they were children. It’s not because you need to be gifted, or blessed with some amazing ability to draw and paint. It is simply because most adults stopped drawing while they were still children. If you stopped drawing at the age of six, you are probably still able to draw like a six year old. So if you want to draw better, draw more. If you want to paint better, paint more.

Why does my art suck?

Why does my artwork look like a child drew it? No wonder I stopped drawing when I was six years old, I was drawing like a six year old.

A lot of children play piano better than I do. Do you think that since I’ve never studied or practiced piano, that that would have something to do with it? Of course it would. Why do I play piano like a five year old?  I believe that with the right instruction and practice, I could learn it, and if I wanted it, and enjoyed it, I would do it.

Children have an advantage when learning art.

They don’t care if their art looks like a child did it. So they don’t get frustrated as fast when it doesn’t turn out. Their moms and dads are more likely to post their work on the fridge and compliment their little heads off too. You won’t get that from family and friends and critics at your age. But we adults can take criticisms and we can also learn.

So get started, don’t worry where you are, but look where you’ll be.

It is a new year and a great time to resolve. Get a sketch book and a few pencils and start now. When you draw something and it sucks, and if your like me, a lot of it will, especially if you are as critical of your own work as most of us artists are. Take your sketch book with you and draw. When you are wondering what to draw, don’t worry about making some master piece, just draw. Copy the dishes, the cel phone, the tires while you are in the waiting room at the tire shop. Draw the magazine rack while your in the Dr’s waiting room.

Warning! Don’t draw the people there, they will want to see your work and then wonder why a full grown artist, with a sketch book and every thing, is drawing like a twelve year old. Doodle, work on your line quality, draw a few circles with a template if you want, then decide on where the light is coming from and model (shade) them into spheres. Copy other artists drawings. Have fun with it and keep learning.

sketch of spheres and a light source.

Draw some circles then model them. Render them later when you don’t know what to draw.

And oh yeah, don’t scribble out the “bad ones” in a fit of rage just because you don’t love ’em or they don’t turn out perfectly. They are just sketches, they’re not your children, so they don’t have to be perfect. Don’t tear out the pages that you hate, yet. Every year or so, go through and take out the ones you do like and compile them into you real sketch book. That’s the sketchbook you’ll let people browse through and wonder why YOU are gifted with such a wonderful,  natural ability.

Closing 2012, teaching the world how to be an artist since 7/20/11

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Time flies when you are teaching the world, how to be an artist.

FolioAcademy went live on July 20, 2011 and even sold a few of our courses on that opening day. Since then we have added all kinds of content, made tons of new friends, some were heavier than others, started this blog, and completely redesigned our web page. Below is a pic of the old us. 

the old look of folioacademy

Art Lessons Online: Folio’s Humble Beginnings:

Folio Academy, first known as Fun Art Now, (oh how we brainstormed on that name) was started in 2010 by artists Will Terry and Wayne Andreason in Cedar Hills, Utah. The headquarters was soon moved to Provo, Utah where it remains. We soon changed the name to folio academy, short for portfolio academy, as we figured fun art sounded like a site for children. All that brainstorming for nothing.

Circa November 2010, accomplished illustrator/artist/college instructor, Will Terry was looking for a way to assist his students at Utah Valley University and Brigham Young University with a means to take home a few art demonstrations. He created a few art demos with a cheap hard to use, editing program, a $100 little digital camcorder and a microphone that he borrowed from his children’s Rock Band video game. He posted them on YouTube for his students. As it turned out, there were and are a lot of people out there that want to learn art. Not just college students but a lot of would be students that don’t have the means to attend school, and more.

There was actually quite a demand for this type of art learning platform and a lot of people, I included asked Will to make more of these tutorials and teach the masses. In the spring of 2011 Will asked me, Wayne, to join him and we set out to teach the world to sing do art, well mostly how to draw and how to paint. We teamed up with Ryan Haldeman, of Amber Media Pro, famous for their wonderfully hilarious shorts called Kid History, we found some investors, hooked up with a talented programmer who is also world traveler but happened to be renting from Will while we were getting this all started. He now lives on an island in a lake somewhere in Malaysia, where he commutes via the WWW as our web master. Ain’t the internet great. And we got started teaching how to be an artist.

It didn’t take long till we realized that we didn’t know it all. OK, it was pointed out to us right away. So we realized that in order to “teach the world how to be an artist”, we should get some real artists to help us with our quest. So naturally we approached some of the best artists in the world and then wondered why they weren’t all that interested in climbing on our little cause. We are proud to say that we have been turned down by some worlds best artists who were too busy, some pretty big names. We also learned that some wonderfully talented artists aren’t always wonderfully talented teachers. It is nerve racking to stand in front of a camera, do your art work while talking to an audience that isn’t there and act natural.

the old logo

As we got rolling however, were able to talk a bunch of wonderfully talented artists and teachers into joining our quest and we are still thankful to them. It is a little sad that the great artists out there are also the busy artists out there too or we would have more. We have also had artists approach us to get on board and sadly we have to turn a lot of them away as their art work lacks the professional quality that we need to maintain here at folioacademy.

Since going live in July, 2011, we have assisted clients in more than 30 countries around the world. We know we still have a lot to do and we plan on making FolioAcademy the best place online to learn art. So stay with us. We plan on being here to assist you while you are a beginner, an intermediate and a pro. In fact, at that point, you may very well be assisting us with our ever growing library of wonderful art courses for everyone.

lots of love, happy holidays, Wayne

PS here is a little testimonial from one of our peeps, Agy, probably our number one fan.

“THANK YOU Will Terry and Wayne Andreason! I’ve been yakking about the Folio Academy courses . . . I love the fact that they’re reasonable in price. I love there’s a LOT of great information. And I have to say I love the heart of it. I’ve had wonderful friends try to explain the Photoshop process . . . Wonderfully giving, patient, artists, but I really [diddn’t get it] and they were all so wonderful at it, I didn’t want to ask too many questions when I didn’t “get it” and appear stupid. So I didn’t “get it”. Then I found Will’s course, and he not only explained it the way I needed it to be shown, but he also did it from a similar point of view (a painter who wanted to expand the boundaries) Often he would explain a process in a similar way as painting with acrylics (one of my favorite mediums) so I really KENNED it. Now he’s REDONE the original course, because he could improve it. I just LOVE that. As someone who worked compulsively, I get and admire this. Folio has a special offer for December. Will will (hehehe, that’s just funny there!) be blogging about it, when he does, I’ll share the link on my page. I just wanted to crow a bit, and let them and the world (okay not really the WORLD, but anyone paying attention)I appreciate the effort and THANK YOU, again!”