Monday, July 15, 2013

My First Drawing Experiences As A Child



When I was a child, adults would ask children what they wanted to be when they grew u (in the 1980s & 1990s) all the time. I never hear that by adults today, but back then  it was common. I loved horses, unicorns, My Little Pony, and loads of girly things. But, I liked things my brother liked also. So, when adults asked me this questions, I told them I wanted to be a Jockey and race horses. I thought that was the best thing ever, and my grandfather had a horse named King.

A few years later, when I was in Girl Scouts, there was a girl that told me she was already a Jockey, and she was too big to race when she told me. I had no idea I could've been a Jockey when I was a kid. But, oh well...

I loved Fantasy and cartoons, and I watched Saturday morning cartoons like The Smurfs, Dungeons & Dragons, or shows like Voltron, and Thunder Cats. I was crazy about a Don Bluth film called "The Secret of NIMH" and "The Last Unicorn".

And, I LOVED Dinosaurs! I was crazy about Dinosaurs in the 1980s!

My First Drawing

I always liked to color with crayons in coloring books, and when these magical markers were the new thing, every kid wanted some! I cried until I got my very first markers, because I saw them advertized on TV. It'd funny because older folks still call them "magic markers", but everyone else just calls them markers. I used to scribble-scrabble & doodle on everything when I was very very little. I remember as far back as 2 years old. I would scribble things and give them to my Mother, or whoever came to visit my parents. Then, I would tell my mother it was a pig (because she liked little piggies) or a dog, or a cat, or whatever... (To me, I didn't consider that drawing.) Then, after a while, I would ask my mother, or whoever, what they thought the picture looked like. and, I would get upset if they didn't know whatever I imagined it was, but they were still very polite about it. 

I guess I must've really annoyed my mother, my relatives, and visitors. 

My mother could draw cartoons, and I would pester her to draw a cartoon of our dog "Chi-chi". For whatever reason, I thought those were the greatest things ever when my mom did that! My mother had her own style, and everything! My mother also made her own wedding gown, several blankets,  clothes, Halloween costumes, did fancy make-up, wrote stories, and was an exotic go-go dancer.

My father also would doodle on the phone -stuff like little houses with yards, clouds, and whatever. He could also do drafting and schematics or something electrical, and he frequently would invent things, or re-invent something.

My brother also would doodle and color with me. So, I thought it was just normal, and assumed that everyone did those things. It wasn't special to me, even tho' I often did them. I just thought it was as normal as watching TV, or any other recreational thing.

When my mother's friends would visit, they brought their kids, and I would also draw or do coloring with them, often for hours, or we would swim, or lay the stereo and run around like crazy animals, or lay hide & seek.

I already could doodle a flower, a heart, and normal stuff, and, had learned to write my name. So, I didn't think it was special. But, my friend Jamie, whom was older than I was, asked me to start drawing again. I always thought it was strange how much she liked drawing, but since she was older than I was, I looked u to her. And, we had contests trying to figure out how to draw things. She was better at it than I was. But, then, in the summer before I started kindergarten, she made a challenge to draw a unicorn! So, we were all excited about that!

Each one of us would take a turn. She went first, but it went terribly wrong. Her unicorn looked like a Rhinoceros! Also, the details were all wrong. I tried, but still, it was wrong... (I was only 4 years old, and about to turn 5 at the end of the summer.)

Then, she went, still wrong... this went on a few times... I knew that the alicorn (horn) was wrong! But, I didn't know what exactly it was! Then, I realized WHY it looked like a Rhino! She kept drawing the horn on the NOSE!

So, when she was done, and it was my turn, I drew the horn on the forehead, and also I drew mine with BOTH ears. When I drew it, I sat back and looked at it, and I KNEW it was RIGHT! It was the most mind-blowing thing of my entire life (until I learned animation)! Like: WHOAH! OMG! I just DID THAT! Then, Jamie looked at it, and she was blown away too! She said WOW! And she was so obviously amazed that I did it, and we had this same shared experience of just WOW or Eureka! The entire time, her little brother & little sister had been teasing us, and annoying us, and making fun of us, and my little brother too! But, when I drew THAT unicorn head, it was this total WOW that happened! Then, her brother grabbed the paper! And, everyone wanted the paper!

Then, it was like everyone was crazy, and we were jumping around! Everyone said we should show our mothers! Then, before we knew it, we all ran off with the drawing, to the kitchen where our mothers were, and showed them. "Look what Kandy did!"

And, the look on their faces!

It was different than before when I'd show my scribbles & doodles of nonsense...

My mother said: "It's a unicorn." and her friend nodded. They both looked amazed...

To a little kid, this was a BIG DEAL. It was like figuring out how to whistle or how to blow a bubble with bubble gum... but, even more beyond THAT! Because NO OTHER KID could do that! Not even the older kid, who was BETTER at drawing than I was!

My MOTHER, and HER FRIEND, looked at the paper and COULD VISUALLY SEE, and IDENTIFY that I had ACTUALLY drawn something, and it LOOKED like something! NOT like a scribble-scrabble that you had to tell everyone it was a this, or a that, but obviously looked like a mess to anyone else!

After that, Jamie & I drew unicorns frequently for the rest of the summer. But, before school started, I put it all out of my mind... 
To me, drawing was just some kind of thing that everyone did. The neighborhood kids could doodle or color with me, and I thought that was normal.... 


But, on the FIRST day of school, I soon learned that it was NOT normal. 


Kindergarten Drawing

On my very first day at Kindergarten, I was very scared, because I didn't want to part from my mother. My mother was a VERY nice lady, and she was THE MOST beautiful woman IN THE WORLD! She was sexy, cute, sweet, handy, she could dance, and I was always with her. But, for Kindergarten, I cried.

After we sat down, and I got assigned my table, we were handed these BIG FAT CRAYONS! I never saw such a thing! Look how BIG they are!

And, the teacher asked us to draw things. So we did. We drew ourselves, or our summer.
Some of the kinds asked me how I drew some things, and I didn't understand what they meant. So, I told them: I just draw it like this.

Then, we were told we could draw whatever we wanted. So, I just drew a unicorn. What followed after that was really weird for me! Suddenly, the kids at my table, including the boys, were freaking out about the fact that I drew a unicorn. Outbursts of WOW, and "Let me see that!" started happening! Then, kids at the other tables came over, and wanted to see!

And, suddenly everyone was out of their chairs, and all around me, looking at what I drew! Then, it was questions like:

How did you draw that?
Or, did you really draw that?

 Then:
Can you draw a cat?
Can you draw a bird?
Can you draw a squirel?

Until finally, the teacher came over, to investigate what was going on!

And, everyone said:
Look what she did!

I thought I was in trouble! But, the teacher looked down at my drawing and looked amazed.
She told me it was very good, and that I would like art class, and no one was in trouble.

It might seem normal to people today that little girls, or little kids would draw unicorns... but, you see... not when I was a kid... 

You see,  unicorns were a rare thing in the early 1980s, and My Little pony, and The Last Unicorn had only JUST come out...most kids just drew cats, dogs, birds, and that was it... It wasn't until mid-way through my kindergarten year that you could sometimes find a unicorn SOMETHING in a store. It was just REALLY RARE.

Yes! For REAL! Unicorns were RARE in the very early 1980s! 

It's TOTALLY TRUE! Can you imagine? A world with almost no unicorns! 

So, for a 5 year old Kindergartener to draw that was like a huge feat in like 1984! 

I still told everyone I was gonna grow u to be a Jokey... but, by 1st & 2nd grade, everyone had already been referring to me as "the artist". 

I did NOT know you could have a job doing that until I learned about it in school. 


I drew ALL THE TIME! I was a BIG day dreamer, and I couldn't help it! 



Monday, May 27, 2013

Found A Belly Dancer Remake

I had to share this! :D

I generally licence my art sketches/line-art to the kids so that can practice coloring, and stuff. It's FREE and good practrice when your studying arts!

But, this is the first time I've EVER come across a re-make of my human figures! ^,^ Usually, I see kids doing re-makes, re-interpretations, or inspired pieces of my griffins unicorns, dragon,s and especially my wings.

So, THIS was a rare find! ^_^ Thank you Google!

It has an anime feel to it! ^,^ The artist even dis variation on my hair, and not only the pose, but the same hand gestures. ^_^

Well, makes me feel happy that I put my work out their. I felt like no one really liked my art anymore. And, I've been very depressed for a number of years. 2009 was a really bad year for me.

Here you can see the full version of this re-make:



Belly Dance-Art trade with Toshinden-fanclub by ~cupcake2088 on deviantART


Here's my original 2008 peice:


Turkish Bellydancer by ~BlackUniGryphon on deviantART

That's Lively (my character). My stuff is never blond. but, I licensed the line-art so that kids could have fun with it. ^_^

I've actually been considering all month whether I ought to do a blog just based on my character, "Lively".

Does it seem like a sign???


Monday, March 25, 2013

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Blog Flux Directory

Tuesday, March 05, 2013

FREE DOWNLOAD Old School Goddess Desktop Wallpaper

FREE DOWNLOAD:
Old School Divine Goddess Intention Desktop Wallpaper

Artwork By Artist "Black UniGryphon" 烏獨角獸
( Kandice Kathleen Zimbleman 任思麒 )








It's an old school wallpaper, so the resolution is lower. But, it works fine. It's especially good for Smartphones.

You can download it below: 



Divine Goddess Wallpaper by ~BlackUniGryphon on deviantART

Friday, March 01, 2013

FREE: Old School Tigress Goddess Furry Wallpaper for Desktop or Smartphone

* Here's another OLD SCHOOL Wallpaper!
FREE DOWNLOAD

Chinese Tigress Goddess Furry Art
By Artist "Black UniGryphon" 烏獨角獸
Kandice Kathleen Zimbleman-Wang 任思麒








Originally formatted for older versions of Windows or Mac, but it works fine on smartphones, and can still be used on newer versions of Windows, but it's an older resolution, so it might appear smaller.

You can download the full image from the link below:



Tigress Mu Laohu Wallpaper by ~BlackUniGryphon on deviantART

FREE Old School Wallpaper: Monochromattic Purple Black Unicorn Poem

Here's an old school wallpaper I made from way back in the day.

I've found you can still use these on smartphones, and they still work on newer versions of Windows or Mac, but the size is smaller than the higher resolution new stuff.







Artwork by
"Black UniGryphon烏獨角獸
Kandice Kathleen Zimbleman 任思麒












Download it for FREE (Virus free)
Klick below:







Black Unicorn Poem by ~BlackUniGryphon on deviantART

Monday, February 25, 2013

The Complete Portfolio of Belly Dancers Artwork (Digitally Colored) By "Black UniGryphon" 2003-2011

Here is the COMPLETE List/Portfolio of Black UniGryphon's Belly Dancers & Exotic Maidens
(The finished Digitally Colored Versions)
(All Colored in Adobe Photoshop 6.0) 

They are original hand drawn pencil sketches which are cleaned. these are ONLY the Digitally colored/finished works:







Artwork by
"Black UniGryphon" 烏獨角獸
Kandice Kathleen Zimbleman-Wang 任思麒












 Sketched in 2005-2006:
(Colored in 2006- 2008)












































































2008:


































































































2009:
































































































2010:











































2011:











































Misc. Other:

Drawn in 1996, Colored in 2000:









































2003 Furry:










































For larger resolution versions & prints of artwork by "Black UniGryphon" (Kandice K. Zimbleman) visit the gallery on Deviant Art.<----->

Original Belly Dancer Artwork by "Black UniGryphon" (Kandice K. Zimbleman)

Whoah!

I hadn't ever really realized that there was quite a number of closet fans of my artwork that were belly dancers! It just never really seemed that anyone ever noticed much, and I just did them because I not only LOVE belly dance, love TO belly dance, but I also LOVE drawing and depicting ethnic, and exotic dancers (as well as Ravers or Go-go dancing).

But, when I did a search of "BlackUniGryphon" or "Black UniGryphon" I found several dancers had made accounts on DeviantArt just to fav' my work, and ended up hooked on the art sharing site.


 So, just a lil' bit about me:


 Hi! I'm the artist alias "Black UniGryphon" (BlackUniGryphon).
My real name is:
Kandice Kathleen Zimbleman
My legal name is:
Kadice Kathleen Zimbleman-Wang








My Chinese name is:
任思麒 (Witten in mandarin Pinyin as: Ren Si-Qi)
(Sounds like: Run Szzz Tchee)




 


This is how you write "Black UniGryphon" in Chinese:
In Mainland People's Republic of China use Simplified Chinese like this: 乌独角兽
But, in other Chinese places on islands like Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Macao, it's written in the Traditional old script like this: 烏獨角獸
And I would also use the Traditional way if I were to do something dealing with Japan, because I don't think they can read modern simplified Chinese.

 I actually wrote the Chinese translation of "Black UniGryphon" to mean mean a type of magical or mythical unicorn, or 1-horned beast. It actually means "Darkish/Blackish Unicorn" because I didn't want to use the commonly used word for "Griffin" which is actually a VULTURE! I take offense to that. Griffins are pretty & graceful, as well as robust. Vultures are ugly & clumsy, and have bad taste in all things. I also didn't use the common word for "black", I used a more educated, and prettier & poetic sounding "wu" instead of "hei". "Wu" can also mean very dark, but not in a bad way.

Many people in Chinese will tell me that using 乌独角兽 sounds too manly, or masculine. But, I don't care. Even in Chinese culture they have a story of the Dragon Princess "Long Nü" which is a female character, even tho' "Long" (Dragon) is generally ONLY used for a man's name. In my culture, equines & unicorns have become more effeminate, even tho' they were originally masculine. (Look it up, it's true.)

 "Black UniGryphon" is my Fursona which comes from the  Furry Comunity.

NO, despite what rumors you MAY have heard from Vanity Fair, Episodes of X-Files, etc. I DO NOT GO TO SEX CLUBS DRESSED AS AN ANIMAL! That is TOTALLY FALSE! Most Furries don't do that! But, I did go to several conventions, namely Anthrocon. Often as a dealer, or as an artist, and was even published in their Convention book. And, yeah, I did wear either wings, or a tail. But, people bring kids, and there's no weird sex going on.


I have also been publishing my artwork online since 1999, under the aliases:
ZBlackUnicorn, BlackUnicorn, or EbonyUnicorn

Anyways, dance & music have always been an important part of my life. When I was a kid, I could've become a musical prodigy, but instead I chose visual art, and my music teacher was furious. I used to play violin as a kid, the recorder, and even had to take guitar class in middle school, plus I used to be in chorus, and even stared in several talent shows as a singer. I often times regret having not done more with music. But, instead I went crazy with arts & sciences. (That's a long story.)




Dance, however, has helped my life very much. It helped me to deal with depression, once I'd realized that my artistic dreams, after graduating college and trying in vain to go back to school were crushed by the 777 stock market crash that caused the Bailouts and the "great recession" which I actually call "the economic melt down". So, my dreams of going to CAL-ARTS were crushed. I was devastated, and I would stay in bed crying for years.
















What pulled me out of that was an interest in belly dance, which also got me back into Yoga. But, I've taken a few lasses by Zoe Jakes, and also Taiji Chuan (tai chi), Taiji Gungfu Shanzi (Tai chi Kungfu fan style), Taiji Jianzi (sword Tai chi) and a lil' bit of Qigung (Chigong). I'm not an expert in either of them, but I can dance improvisational belly dance not too bad, and I'm not perfect with yoga, but I can do some advanced poses with my likes like butterfly & lotus stuff.

So, naturally, my artwork began to reflect my interests.


Generally, when you see my artwork, you will notice that the human figure of a woman, is usually my character "Lively".












But, I have noticed that many of the dancer fans whom like my work, also like my Chinese inspired work (much of which I'd created when I lived in China), or my fantasy work as well like Unicorns.








The easiest place to find my work is my gallery on Deviant Art: Here

If you like dancers, you will want to check my "Maidens" sub gallery.

My Chinese Inspired Art: Here

And, my Fantasy stuff is all over the place in there. It's mostly what I'm known for on the internet.

But, when I was a kid, I liked to draw American comics, and especially exotic beautiful ladies.



I still like those things. But, much of my Furry/Anthro audiance wasn't exactly happy with me when I switched back to drawing human figures again. But, I just CAN'T be stuck in being a Furries ONLY, or BEASTS/ANIMALS only artist. 

As for my interests in dance, I do have a Pyrate Cosplay character that I dress up as:

Marshall Kändiß (Or Marshal Kandice)
Which I've mostly dressed up as in Philadelphia, but a tiny bit in Boston.








But, enough of me, I'm sure you're more interested in my art than my dancing.
;-P



Anyways, here are a few examples of my artwork, if it's dancers that you are looking for:














































Well I guess I ought to blog a complete list of my dancer pieces.
I have so many, and many different kinds.

I notice belly dancers tend to like many styles of dance as well.