Grab It!

Guess I ran out of artsteam after October. Well, once again I hope to make more art and to enjoy 2012. Here's a little painting of made-up creatures. I was inspired by some new art books I got for Christmas.

Figure out what you want in the new year and keep reaching for it!

The Resurrectionist

Meant to post this one on Halloween, but close enough. The final Halloween drawing, which also happens to be the last picture in a sketchbook. A body snatcher at work. It's supposed to be a view from inside the hole, but perspective and me don't mix. Yay!

Hope everyone had a marvelous Halloween, and may the fun spookiness continue for the rest of the year.

Do Fear the Reaper

Aw, missed the 30th by an hour! Oh well. Here's an anteater grim reaper. Watercolor pencils and ink.

A Sailor Travels to Many Lands...

The yearly Pinki the bilby in costume picture. I've been wanting to dress in a sailor outfit for a while now, but they're all very tiny and revealing and cheap looking. Some day...

Watercolor in the Japanese watercolor pad I got for a dollar, so it's not very good quality.

Can't Look This Horse in the Mouth

The headless horseman rides a headless horse. And holds on for dear life (dear death?) A stupid doodle, only 4 more days 'til Halloween!

Aw, It's Only Smokey!

Some kind of vaguely creepy digital thing. As usual, I like the original sketch better.

Long Pig

A quick sketch to get back on track. Scary boar butcher! I've heard that human meat has been referred to as "long pig" in certain cultures, and that pork is the meat that tastes closest to people. Another reason why I do not eat pork...

Fury

A mother werewolf protecting her baby. I should've gone further with the were-ness and rage. I did make her wearing the traditional plaid that werewolves seem to prefer.
Watercolor and sepia ink.

How do you get them so small?

A minor background character from Beetlejuice inspired this picture. I like the traditional makeup and illusions that are used on the dead waiting room people. I watched the 2 scenes that this explorer with a shrunken head is in. He looks like he has big eyelashes in my drawing, when he really has wrinkled bulging eyes. I think it's funny how he has this staring expression. I used my heliotrope pen to rough out a sketch while watching the movie, then went back after to tighten it up. He's contemplating what to do with his hat now.

Things I noticed: in the first scene, his hat has a plain khaki band, but in the very end it has leopard/cheetah spots. He's also has a National Geographic on his lap in the first scene, and what appears to be the Handbook for the Recently Deceased in the second scene. So I did a bonus super-quick doodle of him checking out the magazine.

Beach Bummy

A mummy enjoying a day at the beach. I didn't want her to look this dead; well, you know what I mean, she's dead, but reanimated and is just taking a nap on the sand. Anyway, a non-water soluable pen sketch blended with water, and a touch of watercolor. She has a big hole from where they took our her organs.

Oh no he didn't

I had a tape recorded off TV of the Will Vinton Claymation Comedy of Horrors special. I really liked all the different characters in it. Rewatching it now, it still has its charms. I'm a sucker for stop motion animation. A large part of the story takes place at a kind of monster convention on Halloween. This is a swamp creature guy who shows up a few times. I thought his sweater vest was great, and I liked how he stood with his arms bent funny and half-closed eyes. I think a monster he doesn't like just walked into the room as he was sampling an anchovy-and-octopus eye appetizer.

Watercolor and blue pencil drawing.

Toil and Trouble

A small sketch of the end result of a witches' brew. After Shakespeare:

Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing,—
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble


I drew the ones I could easily show missing their parts. And that are about the same size.

Grinning Ghost

Happy October! This seems to be the month when everyone wants to do lots of art. I won't kid myself and say I'm going to post a new picture every day, but I hope to make some spooky pictures and post them more frequently. We start with a Photoshop drawing, pulling out all the dumb tricks. Transparent layers! Soft brushes blended around the edges! Crazy filters! I don't know how to draw rain but I wanted to get something up. Not all my Halloween art will be scary, though I'll try to do a few creepy ones.

Testing, testing

I bought a new pencil called Derwent Inktense. It's supposed to be water-soluble ink in a pencil form. Kind of like a watercolor pencil, but harder. Where watercolor pencils usually turn to a lighter color that blends easily when you wet them, this pencil got darker and had a shorter time being blendable. Once the lines and washes dry, they're not going anywhere, unlike watercolor pencils that can be re-wetted. Interesting, fun to try out but I'm not switching over to Inktense-only art.

I made a big ol' bear and a pronghorn jackalope! Wee! The color is bark.

Underwater Pineapples

Pineapple fish look very cool. Swimming bilbies like to chase them around.

Watercolor and heliotrope ink sketchy painting.

An aye-aye went to sea, sea, sea...

My sketchbook has sketches, of course, but it also has incomprehensible scribbles and various picture ideas in word and drawing form. I finally did a rough brush pen doodle of a sailor aye-aye that was just a dumb pun on the bottom of a page. I'm glad that it looks moderately aye aye-ish.

Folderol, Musical Edition

Another mini observational comic. There's a neighbor somewhere that loves having all-night-long parties, on various days of the week, not just Saturdays. As most of these partiers seem to like, these folks love their techno bass-bumping "songs". There's no way to hide from them, they rattle the house!

Now why is it that someone with musical tastes similar to mine never does this? I wouldn't object to these types of parties. 2am blastings of Michael Jackson, Oingo Boingo, the Beatles, and crazy old 30s jazz songs? Turn it up!

Everywhere There's Lots of Piggies

Some five-minute paintings of various pigs from Beatles songs. Top: I Am the Walrus; "See how they run like pigs from a gun, see how they fly." That gray pig is a strange-looking one. Don't know how to draw guns so I didn't. Bottom left: The most obvious one, Piggies; "Clutching forks and knives, to eat their bacon." Also in his starched white shirt. Bottom right: Doesn't really count, Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! It mentions a hogshead of real fire, which is a barrel of some kind I guess, but I made the hog going through a fiery ring. I like how the smoke came out.

Watercolor and ink.

Pink & White

There always seem to be lots of albino reptiles and birds, so why not an albino dinosaur? A raptor of unspecific species, with references from Peter Schouten's art. No right foot because I reached the bottom of the paper. Red pen, colored pencil.

I Was Leaping Through the Park One Day

Silky sifakas are some of the rarest mammals. I was reading an article about them and saw a photo of one leaping around. For some reason, I thought of someone jumping and clicking their heels. So, I made a happy lemur on his way to see his sweetheart. These lemurs can have pink spotted faces.

A Lot-i Coati

I wanted to draw some coatis/coatimundis. Such fun noses and tails. An ichneumon (Egyptian mongoose) got in there because a picture of one looked like a fuzzy dinosaur to me. And its name is like the wasp!

Merry Monotreme

In a bit of an uninspired mood. Here's a pinto platypus. A very happy one.

Horse horns

Doodling unicorns again. Then came the elusive bicorn!

Some curved horns on this one. This is the heaviest horse I've ever drawn. I'm liking the beard.

An unfinished classic unicorn, and then, could it be a tricorn? Yow!

With a ring at the end of his nose, his nose, his nose

A boar with some fire, the inaugural picture in my watercolor moleskine. I'm reluctant to draw in it because it feels like every picture must be a gem, since it's such a fancy sketchbook!

Stole'n, with a stone-cold fox!

Why was this fashionable again? Ladies who wouldn't dream of even admitting that creatures could be deceased had them draped right by their faces, feet and tails and shrivelled noses and ears and all.

Ink smudged with a water brush. Boring fact: I was into fashion illustration for a while as a child. I designed some weird and ugly clothes! I still can't draw lace.

What Big Stripes You Have

Inattentive Little Red Riding Bilby stumbles upon the Big Bad Tasmanian Wolf (AKA thylacine). Another small sketchbook marsupial doodle. What a big head you have, Grandma!

The Devil you say!

Noodling around, looking for new and improved ways to draw Tasmanian devils. Did not achieve.

Here are some strange and nautical ones. They have weird flat heads and their eyes seem to be lower than their noses.

This is a bonus bilby with a pet cloud. Whatever, sketchbook!

I don't think the glass slippers will fit

Giant Armadillo-rella is surprised by her Pink Fairy Armadillo Godmother. Correct scale, what's that? A small watercolor sketch to try to get the creative juices flowing again. I always end up putting too much detail when I try to draw cartoony animals that aren't easily recognizable.

Dinos of a Feather

I like drawing dinosaurs, though I don't do it very much because I'm not very good at dino anatomy. I was watching a show about them the other night while falling asleep. Scientists were talking about feathers, and I might have misunderstood in my half-awake state, but I had the idea that most dinosaurs had feathers. So I doodled up some.

This raptory thing was inspired by the hilarious displays of some birds. You know the ones they always put on the nature shows, with funny music as they wave their wings back and forth. He has curly feathers on his head to display too (not hair!) and floofy legs.

Duck-billed dinosaurs are my favorites. This one is more like a condor or even ostrich though. Movies and shows always have dinosaurs roaring, but what if they made more bird-like sounds?

This makes no sense. A triceratops with a ruff of feathers around its neck, and some sticking out of the frill. Kind of like secretary bird head feathers. Don't ask me where they're inserted, I don't know. Must study dinosaur bodies again. 

Ruffed and Ready

Sketches of red ruffed lemurs at the zoo. Lemurs have such difficult faces to capture. I avoided this by doing quick scribbles because they moved around a lot. They spent most of the time grooming themselves and changing sunning positions.









These were done with a Japanese brushpen that turned out not to be waterproof, which I found after I started using watercolor over it.

Re-introducing Folderol!

I've decided to call the sporadic dumb little comics I make "Folderol", which means "trivial or nonsensical fuss", because I make them about things that don't really matter. Time for Episode 2, once again inspired by real-life events. Kids really need a bit more explanation before their teachers send them off to do their yearly science projects.

(This is a real experiment someone really came in to ask where our books about it were.)

New Year, New Banner

I've had the same banner art since 2009, so I painted a new one. I had the idea to make two animals who've given their lives for art. I painted the two on blue watercolor paper after inking them with purple. I ended up flipping them for the banner, which seemed to make the composition work better.

The Siberian weasel's tail fur is used to make fancy Kolinsky brushes. I decided to make them like cherubs or conquering angels. I also took a shortcut I saw in another classical painting of cherubs where each had only one wing. This makes for a more readable silhouette (and I didn't have to try to make even more tricky feathers!)

Oxgall liquid, made of bovine bile, is used to make paint flow and wash easier. This picture is heavily influenced by an ancient sculpture. Even though the jar of oxgall got reversed in the final picture, it's so small and blurred that it doesn't really matter.

Ex Libris

I like books. I like fancy bookplates. I like bilbies. I made myself a bookplate with a bilby on it to stick in my books.

I drew the picture with my crowquill and ink, then colored it blue digitally and added the border and lettering. I found a fun map font with flourished letters. Now I can't bring myself to stick them into any new books.