2012 note: This page has been here a long time. Some of the links are gone now, but most are still good and they all lead to others, so go forth and frolic in ideas!

Put your cursor somewhere in this aquarium. Click.        Be at peace.

Paper Toys you can print out and build. The artistry is not in the manufacturing of one (though that can be fun) but in the original design of them.

Teeny Little Super Guy Teeny Little Super Guy not only had a great theme song, it was a combination of stop-action animation and animated cartoon, in a really interesting way--plastic cups were the animation cells, and they were moved around in a real-world environment as the cups were changed, so the character on the cup moved too... Well just watch them! There were more. I hope they'll be on DVD someday. They originally appeared on Sesame Street in the 1980's. I'm grateful to the geeks who know how to transfer these and put them on YouTube, and to Jocelyn Vilter for letting me know they were there. Two full episodes, about three minutes apiece: Danger and Eggbeater (episode about practicing to ride a bike, basically, I think, sort of). There are others on YouTube. My favorite, called "Baseball," has been removed, but in that one some of the animations are on mugs (so not clear plastic) AND two mugs run into each other, and so this involves pottery animation, kind of (has That ever happened before or again!?). There are several people to credit, but the details are here in a Wikipedia article, with lots of background. It says there were thirteen episodes in the series. I'd pay for a DVD in a heartbeat.

Pavement Art—"Anamorphic illusions drawn in a special distortion in order to create an impression of three dimensions when seen from one particular viewpoint." Chalk on sidewalks, by Julian Beever. Holly's favorite is to the right. That's chalk on a flat sidewalk, and the artist posing for effect.

ArtPad. ArtPad saves the process and plays it back, so one fun thing to do is to put a drawing or some text and then cover it over and see it reappear. The picture I had there has expired, but it wasn't very good anyway. If you click "view another" and then "skip to beginning" you can see something someone else has done. Then click "paint your own" on the left. Save the name of it; you don't get to pick your own name. Also, you can speed up the playback, top left slider.

Boohbah Kaleidoscope—move the tabs with your mouse to change the kaleidoscope effects. Easier for little kids is the sock coloring game.

Japanese Cartoon

Strongbad answers the question "What would you look like as a Japanese cartoon and what would it be about?" This is art about art. These are cartoons about cartoons.

"Can you draw a dragon?" (the birth of Trogdor)
I would put a picture of Trogdor here, but that would ruin the fun of seeing the origins of... TROGDOR!

More art than game—very interesting. Flow is a quiet, simple, beautiful video game created as a theses for a master's in fine arts degree in China, it seems. There is another there called Cloud. Flow can be played online or downloaded. Cloud is a PC download, but you can look at a little film of level 2.

Tie Dye Temple has free backgrounds and inexpensive tie-dye shirts and hats. It's a shop, but the patterns are fun to play with. If you click on the backgrounds they will fill in the page behind, and you can see how the patterns continue. Very pretty. Gallery of Tie-Dyed Art by artist, so click around there. The sponsoring site, Dharma Arts, sells supplies for tie-dying, silk painting, marbling and other such things, and blank white clothing to do it on! Computer Jigsaw Puzzles of tie-dyed art.

Scott Kim's Inversions—word art which says one thing but says the same (or a different) thing upside down. Some are animated. Here's an example. It says "Ultima" either way.

Pumpkin Carving 101 with links to some amazing pumpkin art by Scott Cummins, in Texas, called Pumpkin Gutter.

Movie Monster Art by an unschooled kid, by the guys who do Strongbad (the claymation is just after the greenscreen which is just after "12 levels of blinkiness" and don't forget Trogdor), and by Ray Harryhausen.

What about Art? In an interview with Herman Zimmerman, art director for several Star Trek movies and two or three of the series, he said: One of the best educations for what we do as art directors is history. Learning history, and the history of art, the history of the theatre, politics, sociology, you name it. Because the history of civilization is the thing that you have to call on—your experience of that is what you have to call on—to create the environments that you're going to be asked to create. Among many other things, he created the Bajoran sailing ship, that didn't have an engine or anything. Commander Sisko and Jake go out in it in one episode. It's beautiful. Click here for this and another illustration and some text on this.

Everyday Art&mdashDesign

Everyday Art Webpage and also a place you can contribute your ideas: Topics Blog, on the Everyday Art week.

Very Many Art Links
            of all sorts

Art, Music, and Theater Links
Children's Literature Collection and other book-arts links, Victoria and Albert Museum site
CBBC Art site



To send more, please write Sandra@SandraDodd.com
To find more, click this and put in "art" and any other word or three.