Category: Blog

Yada, yada, yada 🙂

Hi it’s James here.  You might be looking at this post thinking who did these?

But today the drawings that you see here are going to be memories for me when I’m older!  These are my drawings that I will remember for years.  To do these you need to go to YouTube and find a how to draw lesson/tutorial and click on it. Next, you draw what the person says you need to do in pencil. Next you use a sharpie to go over the pencil. (Tip – If you did a drawing with small gaps between some pencil you should use a thin sharpie, not a fat sharpie). When you have finished going over the pencil with your sharpie you can choose to either colour it in on Adobe Photoshop or colour it in  colouring pencils. (I went with Photoshop).

If you want to do one of my Five Nights at Freddy’s drawings there are some videos down below.

There is also a fun video below on Five Nights at Freddy’s.

P.S It’s about the game Five Nights at Freddy’s (CAUTION! It may be scary)!

I was born in London, England.  The item I’m sharing is a silver teapot which is part of a tea set.  There is a photo below.

It is special because English people drink a lot of tea and when my mum and dad were living in England, their friends drank a lot of tea! I found this article on a website called ‘Tea in the United Kingdom‘.

It was bought by my great great grandparents Arthur and Selina Chapman.

They passed it down to their son who was my great great uncle called Alan Chapman.

When Alan died the teapot came to New Zealand in 1998 to my grandad Chapman for his Silver Wedding anniversary.

Grandad Chapman is my dad’s dad.

The tea set has to stay in the Chapman family.  Grandad will give it to my dad. My dad will give it to me or Daniel. It must not be sold (or else)!

There are some very special marks called hallmarks on the tea set that tell you where it was manufactured, when it was made, the Assay Office where it was marked and the quality of the silver.  Dad and me looked up what assay means.  It means the testing of a metal or ore to see its ingredients and quality.

You can see the Hallmarks here. The first hallmark is who manufactured and it was Mappin and Webb Limited.

The second hallmark is an anchor, the Assay Office in Birmingham.

The third hallmark is a lion, the quality of the silver. This silver is called Sterling Silver.  There is 92.5% of silver.

The last hallmark is the date it was made. This letter ‘E’ means it was made in 1929.  We looked this information up in a book Nan had and on the Internet.

 

 

This is my new book logo that Jana (My dads friend) made for me.

Jana is an artist (She is amazing). She also has a website. To see her website click here.

I had no money to pay for a logo.  Dad said “Perhaps if you offer to give Jana a copy of all of your books you have written, Jana may be kind enough to make a logo for you”.  I got the logo because I gave her all of my books that I’ve published.  Some of them can be found here.

Thank you Jana for making my logo. It is so cool and thanks for putting so much work in it 🙂

James

 

 

In the summer holidays I went to Whoa! Studios (That’s in Auckland) and I saw a play called Custard of the Caribbean.  After they showed us how they made the play Daniel and I got a photo with some of the puppets and got an ice cream.

At my swimming school I made a Duplo obstacle course based on this TV show called Wipeout.

The last 2 photos are me and my brother, Daniel, at East End beach.  We played at Paris Plage and had fish and chips in the evening.

If you want to see my brothers website, click here

This is me when I was six months old at the Burj Khalifa with my dad.

I was flying from London to New Zealand to meet my Grandad, Nan, Poppa and Nanna in 2009.  I flew on an Airbus A380 which is the worlds largest passenger aircraft!!!

This is my Op 2 #2 song on the piano that I made using Guitar Pro. I wrote it for Amanda my piano teacher.  I will be able to play it when I am older.  Press the play button to play the song and listen to it. It took 1 day to make.

My Piano Composition

In term 2 of my piano lessons I moved up to level 1. It is a good time because I am learning new songs to play and learning new notes on the piano like treble A,C,E and learning FACE on the treble lines in unit 2.

I have been learning some songs to play when I do not even need to practice and I have been showing Amanda, my piano teacher, that I can play the songs that I do not need to practice . Amanda was so proud that I could play the hard songs. It has been going well for my piano this term.

This is part of my minuet project for my music teacher, Amanda.  I coded my minuet from my music book in Sonic Pi.  Dad did one too.  His does the teachers part too.  You can see it here.

Click the play button below to hear the Minuet.

crotchet = 1
minim = 2
dotted_minim = 3

use_synth :piano
use_synth_defaults attack: 0.0125, release: 10

use_bpm 120

# Bar 1
play :c4
sleep crotchet
play :c4
sleep crotchet
play :b3
sleep crotchet

# Bar 2
play :c4
sleep minim
play :d4
sleep crotchet

# Bar 3
2.times do
  play :e4
  sleep crotchet
end
play :d4
sleep crotchet

# Bar 4
play :e4
sleep minim
play :f4
sleep crotchet

# Bar 5
2.times do
  play :g4
  sleep crotchet
end
play :c4
sleep crotchet

# Bar 6
play :b3
sleep minim
play :c4
sleep crotchet

# Bar 7
play :f4
sleep crotchet
play :e4
sleep crotchet
play :d4
sleep crotchet

# Bar 8
play :c4
sleep dotted_minim