A few nights ago, I was thinking about what to post next; soon after, my mom came into my room and plopped a stack of huge presentation posters on the table. They were the pages from a presentation I did for 4-H when I was 14 (possibly 13).

When I was in 4-H, every year, we kids created and gave informative presentations on topics of our choice to develop public speaking skills. My 4-H club was very horse-focused, so most of the kids did horse- or farm-related presentations, but anyone could pick whatever topic he or she wanted. First, presenters spoke at their own 4-H clubs, then before a panel of judges at a county-level competition, and then, if presenters placed high enough, at the state level. (There might have been a regional/district level,  too. Or maybe the county level was actually a district level. I do know I earned gold at one level and silver at the next.) The first year I did a presentation, I did it on cat senses.

You may be wondering, “What does this have to do with your art blog?”

The second year, I did one on anime.

I remember that I wanted to do something that would fall into the “other” category and research to learn more about something I already like. And, you know, getting to draw was a perk.

So just for fun, I’m posting photos of some of the art I drew about a decade ago. (No fancy photo editing–just havin’ fun this time.)

Cover page. Rocking the rainbow gradient and Comic Sans (to the dismay of every professional graphic designer.) Click to enlarge.

I drew the elf mage; the other is a print-out from Yu Yu Hakusho. This was on a page explaining different genres (shounen, shoujo, mecha, etc.) If you look closely, you can see that I actually have 2 copies of that image, one pasted on top of the other. That’s because water dripped on the first one, and I didn’t want water spots to show up on my presentation: that would be shabby! Time has now peeled my secret away. I also did a black & white re-drawing of that picture in my sketchbook, eliminating the 2 figures in the middle.

Sample expression & eyes

Little Indian Bomb Psycho (original character whose major appearances were on the corners of looseleaf notes)

Pikachu! (‘Twould be near blasphemy to do an anime presentation and not mention Pokemon.)

A good word to end on.