Animalia Illustrated

Sooner or Later You'll Dance with the Reaper

2012-01-25T22:48:00.000-08:00

A thought that popped in to my head: the Grim Reaper as a baby. I did a little doodling on brown paper, and came up with these. I thought a pompom and lace around the robe would be funny. I guess these look more like just baby skeletons in clothes than Lil Reapers. I wanted the scythe to look like a little plastic version, like a child's toy and not a real sharp thing.

Ink and gouache.

Grab It!

2011-12-31T16:24:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-01T01:55:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-31T01:23:00.000-07:00

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...

2011-10-29T14:00:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-28T11:56:00.000-07:00

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!

2011-10-24T17:26:00.000-07:00

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

Long Pig

2011-10-20T19:17:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-17T17:00:00.000-07:00

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?

2011-10-14T15:30:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-11T10:34:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-09T15:00:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-04T15:00:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-02T11:13:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-19T10:38:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-26T00:29:00.000-07:00

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...

2011-08-07T17:48:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-02T21:57:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-20T01:28:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-05T20:33:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-24T12:47:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-05T00:57:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-19T19:40:00.000-07:00

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

Horse horns

2011-04-21T21:22:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-14T00:40:00.000-07:00

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!

2011-04-01T00:10:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-16T00:58:00.000-07:00

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!

2011-03-09T00:42:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-24T23:39:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-08T09:57:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-31T00:28:00.000-08:00

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!

2011-01-19T00:50:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-10T19:25:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-07T00:56:00.000-08:00

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.

Goodbye Old Year. Happy New Year!

2010-12-31T01:28:00.000-08:00

Walking away from 2010 into 2011. Wishing everyone reading this a prosperous new year!

Ptarmigan, Winsor & Newton watercolors.

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-24T16:04:00.000-08:00

And a quetzal in a pear treeeee!!!!

3-Minute Comic Theatre

2010-12-21T00:59:00.000-08:00

A very fast comic about life's little irritations. I have a blanket with yarny tassels hanging down on both ends; I guess it's supposed to be decorative rather than used to cover yourself. And I do like bugs, but I still have that human reflex to flip out if I think one is sliding down my philtrum.

Populating Boot Hill

2010-12-14T00:12:00.000-08:00

Another late-night doodle idea was a Grim Reaper from the Old West. This is the sketchbook scribble. It made sense to me but it looks pretty strange now. They had scythes then too of course but I thought he'd be more at home with a giant Bowie knife. And a little scorpion buddy.

I love doing research of clothes from past eras. I used a few period photos, but somehow he doesn't look very Western. Though a lot of the pictures of famous outlaws have them dressed in more formal clothes than cowboy stuff. Surprisingly, the final is very similar in pose to the skeletal (ha ha!) sketch. I inked and painted it in sepia tones to capture that old photograph look. That is one big and crooked knife!

B&W Birds

2010-12-08T19:30:00.000-08:00

Some more birds drawn with my crowquill. The laughing thrush has the coolest 'do. I wanted to draw some that had large areas of black and white. These are really cute birds.

White-plumed antbirds (my book is old and has outdated names) have great tufts in front of their eyes. I wonder how they see.

The quick brown fox just became the lazy dog

2010-12-04T01:22:00.000-08:00

I have sketchbooks near my bed for picture ideas that pop in to my head in the strange times when I'm almost asleep. The other night I had a vision of foxes being miniaturized and pet-ified.

We could end up with Pomeranian-type foxes, tiny and floofy with curled tails. Or maybe a teacup fox, with Chihuahua head.

How about sweater foxes? Or, similar to what happened with those foxes in Russia bred for their fur, ones with dog-like spotting. Fox terrier, indeed!

Another fox on a leash, this time with harness. The last is a weird long-haired, flop-eared variety.

Hoppin' through the forest

2010-11-26T12:41:00.000-08:00

More snowy white forest animals. Fuzzy!

Now You're Takin!

2010-11-20T20:32:00.000-08:00

Scribbley time! These are some doodles with my purple pencil. Takins are very cute and fuzzy. I would like to pet one.

A dumb drawing of a lion that's been interrupted from his shower by the phone (yeah, that's a phone he's holding). Lion styles are difficult if you don't want them to look like Simbas.

A rolly bear. A bear-rel roll! With a giant head and big long arms! Oh bears, with their pointy lips and fuzzy ears.

Inka Dinks

2010-11-17T01:05:00.000-08:00

Talking about crowquill pens the other day made me want to use mine again. I did a few warm-up scribbles of birds. I've always wanted to draw a skimmer, with their wacky beak. Bird feather texture in ink still eludes me.

The moustached swift has a very proper look about him. I tried to get some tone and line variations in this one. More to come!

Arctically Speaking

2010-11-10T00:56:00.000-08:00

Painting white animals is a challenge. You have to try to make the shadows look like shadows on white and not gray markings. This is a ptarmigan. I love their floofy feet! The scanner seems to have eaten some of the lighter blues. These are small paintings, about 2 or 3 inches across.

Here I was trying out a water-painting technique. It came out OK; at first it looked pretty bad, but I was able to salvage it. With watercolor, you really have to try hard to preserve your highlights in water. I put on a bunch of greenish blue/indigo stripes down first, then got a wet brush and pushed the paint around. Narwhals are fun, I wish I had a narwhal tusk!

Pensando en la muerte

2010-11-05T11:30:00.000-07:00

This is my Frida Kahlo pumpkin. I couldn't get a good picture with just the candlelight. ¡Feliz dia de los muertos!

Going Bump

2010-10-31T01:11:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween! Monsters have to be trained and cared for when they're not stalking you, you know. The scary one is kind of like a bat-dinosaur-boar. It was fun to do a bit of creature design. An inked sketch that I painted with watercolor.

EDIT: I found the scan of the ink-only version. I sort of like it better.

She thinks of him, and so she dresses in black.

2010-10-26T10:20:00.000-07:00

It's become kind of a tradition for me to draw a picture of my little bilby character in a Halloween costume. This watercolor sketch is a very tiny painting of Pinki as Paul. This is why I don't draw her with shoes on -- look at how weird those Beatle boots look!

Cold Macaroni

2010-10-21T19:08:00.000-07:00

Hi followers! I'm trying to update at least once a week. I hope I can try to do it more often. This picture is a small watercolor/brush pen. Penguins are fun to draw. And I haven't made any griffins in a while, which are some of my favorite things to draw.

The snow came out kind of cool. I made a list of flightless griffins, so that's why it says Part 1. Let's see if I actually draw any more of them!

Up from the Depths

2010-10-15T10:44:00.000-07:00

Another small watercolor sketch. I've frequently had images of big, dark shapes underwater where you don't know what kind of creature it is. In dreams, it's often been scary. I wanted to paint a more benevolent scene. This isn't any particular animal, just one that likes eating lilies.

The one that got away

2010-10-11T10:48:00.000-07:00

This is a picture from my "watercolors of things that pop into my head, possibly to become more finished paintings some day" sketchbook. I had the idea of a large prehistoric deerlike creature with decorated arrows in its hide. Don't worry, it climbed up high and is going to be fine. Now with rudimentary background! I wish I had made his antlers much larger, like an Irish elk's.

Awooooo!

2010-10-02T19:32:00.000-07:00

I heard the song Werewolves of London and wanted to draw a werewolf. He's supposed to be eating beef chow mein but it looks more like ramen. I tried for a wolfier werewolf, in coloring and ears, but he seems to have some werehusky in him. And werenerd!

You fell victim to one of the classic blunders!

2010-09-28T11:10:00.000-07:00

What the heck! A whole month has almost gone by! I have some weird little doodles to post, I'll slowly get to scanning them. This first one is from one of my favorite quotes (more like huge rant) from one of my favorite movies, The Princess Bride. I know Vizzini is a bad guy but I still like him.

Never go against a caecilian when death is on the line! It's hard to make limbless creatures wear little coats and peasant shirts. I did an ugly painting job on this one, bleh.

Brushes with Averageness

2010-08-31T22:53:00.000-07:00

I did a few doodles to play with my brush pen. First is a ridiculous one; the word "binocula" just popped into my mind so I went with it. This paper doesn't like being erased either. I drew first with nonphoto blue pencil (guess it's not non-scan blue) and tried erasing it in places where it muddled the lines, but it took off the top layer of paper, along with the ink. Smudgy vampire power!

I think these old-timey bathing suits are neat. A zebra frolicking along the boardwalk. Jolly fun! I think I drew too small to get a real varied line with the pen, which is what people like using brushes for. My bad.

Sticky Wicket

2010-08-24T00:53:00.000-07:00

A rare acrylic -- and even rarer on canvas -- painting. I just can't get the hang of it. I work too small and even the tiny brush is too thickly coated with paint to work for me. I do like the green I mixed, and I got to use Naples yellow, one of my favorite colors that I hardly ever use.

I used to like to play croquet, though I mostly liked to hit the balls around as hard as I could with the mallet.

Inkblots

2010-08-19T19:22:00.000-07:00

I have a lot of different black inking pens. I haven't found a favorite one yet, so I buy a new brand almost every time. I want one with the darkest ink that writes smoothly and doesn't get a messed-up tip. I made a test sheet using all of the different pens I have, with a splotch of India ink at the top. Please excuse my sloppy handwriting. Afterwards, I went over each pen with a waterbrush to test if it's waterproof.

The Pilot Fineliner actually seems to have the blackest ink, but it's not waterproof. Sadly, my brush pen is pretty greyed out; I like the variability of a brush and ink but I don't like having to dip it. Does anyone have any other pen recommendations?

Neither More nor Less than a Pig

2010-08-16T00:07:00.000-07:00

Alice in Wonderland seems to be a subject for almost every artist. It's very well-known and iconic, I guess. I doodled up this picture while exploring Wonderland subjects for a gift painting. I decided that no one really wants a picture of Alice and the baby that turned into a pig hanging on their wall. The image of a pig in a baby bonnet is fun though. I drew this with my heliotrope pen, then painted it with watercolor.

Here is a bonus drawing of a mome rath outgrabing. The caterpillar describes it as a lost green pig making a sound like bellowing and whistling with a sneeze in the middle. I always thought the mome raths in Disney's version were cute, but look nothing like the book's illustration.

Double the consonants, double the fun!

2010-08-04T01:20:00.000-07:00

Hmm, been a while since I posted. Nothing more than sketches and scribbles lately, but here's an update. I hadn't drawn my cartoony bilby for a while. Here she is with puppets of a kultarr (little mousey marsupial) and a quokka (medium kangarooy marsupial). She looks like she has dinosaur feet!

The sketchbook this is in has the oddest paper texture. It's kind of rough, but the surface gets destroyed as you erase. It left big smudges all over the doodle (drew it in purple pencil, then inked and colored with watercolor pencils that I left dry) and pills of paper stuck to the eraser. It actually took up some of the ink too. It's better for straight ink or a very hard lead.

Vanished Huia

2010-07-14T22:03:00.000-07:00

I think recent extinctions are pretty tragic, since it's almost always people who caused them. While doing research in college about the possibility of cloning extinct animals, I found out about the huia, wattlebirds from New Zealand. I have wanted to paint them for a long time, but never got around to it. Their claim to fame is the very different beaks of the male and female: males have shorter, thicker beaks like crows and females have long, thin curved beaks. The beautiful white-tipped black tails led to hunting for hat feathers, as well as museum specimens. They went extinct in the early 1900s.

The common belief is that males and females hunted together, with males digging holes in bark and females picking out bugs. I had meant to paint them feeding, but a short account about a pair in captivity struck me as a more interesting subject. The person observed the birds grooming each other frequently, and when the male died, the female pined away for him and died soon after. I made a pair of huia in better days. I took a few photos of my painting process too.

I transferred the pencil sketch to a piece of greenish watercolor paper (you can't really tell it's tinted in any of these pictures). Note the painstaking recreation of a New Zealand tree branch habitat. I started with a wash of greens and purples to be the iridescent colors in the black feathers.

Both birds are lightly painted now. I cheated on the perspective of the female's beak a bit to show how curved it is. Once again, bird feet prove very hard to draw.

Oops, a blurry photo since I turned the flash off when it made the picture all white and washed out. Building up dark color on the male with sepia, neutral tint, dioxazine violet, and perylene green.

I got the bright idea to use my lamp to light it! Now I could see the colors more clearly. I started working on the female too, adding some indigo, viridian, and ultramarine. I always leave the eye for last on a painting of an animal. This gives the work a freaky cotton-eyed taxidermied bird look at this point.

Almost done now. I've painted more on the beaks, legs, and tails. Art supplies in the background include a book of extinct birds and a Simpsons DVD set.

The finished painting. I washed a bit of color behind the birds at the end, a thing I do a lot. The photos show the greenish tinge of the feathers better than this scan. I enjoyed the process of making a sciencey illustrationy painting again. I love the research part, spending about an hour looking up mounted huia photos and contemporary art of them. It took about an hour to sketch them up, and about 3 Simpsons episodes to finish painting it.

Beach Bods

2010-07-09T00:18:00.000-07:00

A small page of ink sketches from the beach last weekend. No one was really next to us, so I drew people as they walked by. The weirdo in the lower left was a little old lady with hunched shoulders and skinny legs who looked like she was having a great time in her giant hat with her purse. More finished art as soon as I make some!

When your bird is broken, will it bring you down?

2010-06-17T22:46:00.000-07:00

I needed to do some watercolor sketching. I always have a problem mixing greens, so I wanted to practice, but I didn't want to paint leaves or landscapes. So, here we have a group of seven green species of birds, partially inspired by the Beatles' song "And Your Bird Can Sing" (You say you've seen seven wonders, and your bird is green.)

Featured are the green magpie (the real one has such a more spectacular shade of green on its head I had no idea how to mix), green aracari, green kingfisher (his bill is way too thick), green pygmy-goose, green woodpecker, green jay, and green oropendula. I tried to sketch them quickly as though I was seeing them in the wild. Birds, why must you be so attractive but hard to paint?

The Last Course

2010-06-16T21:26:00.000-07:00

With these five, I have posted 100 different mammals eating. Whew!

This is a Peary caribou, a subspecies of caribou with a white coat. I like push-ups too!

A Sulawesi palm civet with an artichoke. This is one of my favorites out of all of the paintings.

A tricolored disk-winged bat eats a spoon full of rice. Note the suction cups on the wrists and feet.

Hutias are another grayish rodent. But they deserve love too! She has a wax bean.

If you know me, you could probably guess what mammal #100 would be. Greater bilbies have become "my" animal. I love cupcakes too, so she has one (mmm, red velvet). Hooray!

Thanks for indulging me in this repetitive phase. When I started, I had hoped that I'd paint 100 mammals from 100 different families. Well, taxonomy is an ever-changing science, so by using different (sometimes outdated) sources, I ended up repeating a few. I may go back and paint more so I can have 100 different families. Stay tuned!

Almost finished eating!

2010-06-06T11:46:00.000-07:00

A long-crested free-tailed bat with some macaroni and cheese. Nature has some cool hairdos!

This is a Northern Luzon giant cloud rat. With a fried egg.

Silky anteaters are one of my favorite animals. I like when they cover up their faces with their little hands.

This is a chinchilla rat, though I think I made her a bit too chubby. Well, she eats yogurt so she's trying to be healthy.

This red titi monkey has a little slice of squash to eat. I gave her purple nails too.

Yummy, yummy, yummy

2010-06-04T23:22:00.000-07:00

An olingo with a honey bun. I used to love these warmed up in the microwave (the pastry, not the procyonid!)

This is not a shark, even though it looks like one. It's a dwarf sperm whale. These are one of the few mammals that I don't think are very cute. Sorry, sperm whales! Enjoy your crab legs anyway.

This tuco tuco must have something to celebrate, with her glass of Martinelli's sparkling cider.

Here's another obscure one: a Chilean shrew opossum. They have chunky tails. She has a Twinkie.

A red-fronted lemur with some asparagus.

Long Tails or No Tails

2010-05-29T14:02:00.000-07:00

I would like to see a streaked tenrec in real life. Maybe it would like some ramen too.

Greater gliders can be quite a variety of colors. These skates are the kind that I used to have to rent at the roller rink!

A slow loris with a ramune soda. I wonder if she knows how to get the marble out.

This is a green ringtail possum. She has a tomato, but it might be for throwing at bad comedians instead of eating.

Scaly-tailed squirrels are an odd bunch. I couldn't find much information about them. No one is quite sure where they fit in relation to other mammals. This is a Lord Derby's scaly-tailed squirrel with a forkful of salad.

Food by the slice!

2010-05-22T20:20:00.000-07:00

It's tea party time with the pygmy beaked whale. She's made some watercress sandwiches.

A honey possum and the tiniest pizza slice.

A marsupial mole is glad to see a cucumber slice.

Here's a degu, another slightly obscure rodent species. She has a taquito with guacamole.

I like pumpkin pie as much as this prehensile-tailed porcupine does.

Five Epicures

2010-05-17T22:09:00.000-07:00

OK, this hairy-nosed wombat is not drinking a beer! It's an Orange Julius, in a glass. All of my mammals are teetotalers.

This is a spotted bat with a spoonful of Cheerios. The spots are on the bat's back, by the way.

Amazonian manatees have white patches on their undersides sometimes. The one here likes eating fishsticks.

Kinabalu ferret badgers aren't seen much in art, are they? They're cute Bornean badgers (not ferrets). She might share her waffle with you.

Who doesn't like a good numbat? This one has an onigiri, they only food that was suggested to me.

Ingest that food!

2010-05-04T22:44:00.000-07:00

A pudding-holding spotted hyena. Pudding is always better with whipped cream and a cherry!

Hippos like to eat plates of peas.

This is a pocket gopher with an anpan (Japanese bun with red bean paste). I don't know if she likes it or not.

Sushi tarsier! Another animal that just doesn't look right with tiny eyes, since their eyes are usually giant.

A long-eared jerboa is about to eat a cheese doodle.

Five More Mammals

2010-04-25T11:25:00.000-07:00

A drumstick-carrying springhaas. It must be from a little sparrow or something; kind of sad I guess.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I forgot what this Chacoan peccary is supposed to be eating. I think it's a Rice Krispy treat, or a sponge... At least she has nice red shoes.

Southern giraffes love candy corn almost as much as noncandy corn. I wonder if they've ever tried to make candy corn on the cob.

The pacarana (different than the paca previously seen here) has a glass of grape juice. And a fine cap.

No, I didn't forget the dorsal fin, and it's not under her dress. This is a finless porpoise, not a beluga. She's eating some red licorice.

Happy Earth Day!

2010-04-23T01:25:00.000-07:00

I needed a little something to cleanse my art palette after all the gouache mammals. I did a little watercolor doodle for Earth Day. Not that it has anything to do with it specifically, but it does have birds! Chestnut-naped forktail is jealous of roseate spoonbill. I don't like the way the girl came out, I need a new way to draw faces.

Mammals Small and Gnawy

2010-04-15T19:53:00.000-07:00

A naked mole rat about to have a tiny fish steak.

This is a rabbit viscacha. Very cute little animals who enjoy horchata.

A golden mole grips a yam. Or is it a sweet potato? I always forget the difference between them.

Here's a kangaroo rat with a radish.

Last in this batch is a white faced tree rat. This is a species of spiny rat (they have pokey little hairs mixed in). She's got a blueberry bagel.

Still Hungry

2010-04-08T00:00:00.000-07:00

A mountain beaver (not to be confused with regular beavers) is a primitive rodent. This one is a churro fan.

This one does not look good this big. I apologize for the messy koala; the actual painting is probably the smallest one so far, and is about 3/4ths of an inch high. At least she's proud of her curly fry.

A bonneted Atlantic white-sided dolphin is about to sip her magical underwater pink lemonade. I made the head look more like a bottlenose though; they have less prominent rostrum.

Little Red Riding solenodon takes a cheddar biscuit to grandma's house. They are strange animals.

You can see that I painted this one before Easter. This orangutan has some Peeps. I'll admit, orangutans are not my favorite animals, but all other apes are too dark to show up well on the black paper. Sorry, Pongo.

Mammal Snacks

2010-03-26T00:10:00.000-07:00

This is a monito del monte, a little South American marsupial. This picture didn't work out so well because they have huge eyes, and I've been making all of these animals have little dot eyes. I should paint another of these; they're really cute. This one is going to have the classic treat Ants on a Log (peanut butter and raisins on celery).

Now this is something I've painted before – a red river hog. She has a pinafore and a tater tot. They have the funnest ears.

A yellow-winged bat in striped socks is going to eat some spinach ravioli. There are a lot of bat species, all of them being most difficult to draw standing on two legs and holding something.

This turbaned little creature is a piebald shrew. She's having a brownie with walnuts, mmm!

A shawl-wearing long-tailed porcupine. She has a dish of flan.

More Munching Mammals

2010-03-21T10:52:00.000-07:00

A Slurpee-sipping paca. They're like big fawn-spotted guinea pigs. I got some new arm warmers that are almost this color.

I saw a wild minke whale once. Here's one about to have a delicious cinnamon roll.

This is a spectacled dormouse. Contrary to various Alice in Wonderlands, they do look different than regular mice. Note the cute fluffy tail. She's having a non-alcoholic mint julep, just like the ones at Disneyland.

Hey, at last, someone having a healthy food! A vicuña in a breadfruit polo with a carrot.

Desmans seem to like standing up on two legs; I've seen a few pictures of them doing it. This one looks like she's going to dance in a chorus line. She's holding a piece of beef jerky.

Still Mammaling Along

2010-03-19T01:00:00.000-07:00

Today's batch of pictures starts with a chevrotain. Wearing a mango-cardigan and getting ready to eat a poorly-painted cracker.

Female narwhals don't have the big tooth, you see. All the better to enjoy a rainbow shave ice!

So much confusion here. She's a long-tongued nectar bat, eating a cheese cube on one of those frilly toothpicks, and has a dragonfruit necklace and spats. Spat bat!

A Yarkand hare that needs to learn how to hold a teacup.

I like 50/50 bars! So I made a white-handed gibbon liking one too.

Cute 'n Fluffy

2010-03-14T01:01:00.000-08:00

Pink fairy armadillos love old-school bottled sodas. She's wearing two carnations on her head too.

I've drawn many a platypus in my day. Not one eating a donut before now, though. Bonus persimmon hat!

Here's your favorite American marsupial and mine, the peanut-eating, muskmelon-snooded opposum!

A plantain squirrel samples an edamame pod.

A checkered elephant shrew has a delicious Pop-Tart, possibly cherry flavored. The cliche of the fez had to show up sometime in 100 clothed creatures!

Itsy Bitsy Mammals

2010-03-13T21:10:00.000-08:00

A cinnamon bear (the black bear variety, not the red candy) examines a giant Jell-O cube. With a fig medal!

This is a female red kangaroo, which are blue, not red. She's enjoying some orange juice while wearing a dapper vest.

A tapir with a croissant. I bet you can guess why I gave her a watermelon shirt.

This picture didn't quite work. It's an arctic fox, though it doesn't look much like one.

A long-eared hedgehog is going to have some gummy worms.

Animalitos

2010-03-13T20:48:00.000-08:00

This little Przewalski's horse is very sporty, with a peach tank top and a rice cake. I like the hair gap from the headband.

This putty-nosed guenon likes toast and jam. Her sweater is supposed to have a plum on it.

A ringed seal with a tasty skewer of various foods.

Gundis are round little rodents with interesting ears. They live in colonies, and look very soft. Sometimes they like olives of both colors.

A nautical walrus having a green bell pepper. Aye aye, cap'n!

100 Mammals IV: A New Hope

2010-02-22T00:55:00.000-08:00

A river dolphin eating jellybeans. They were hard to paint since each is about one millimeter long. I have a hat like this; it's warm but I look like a crazy person wearing it. You can't tell, but there's a thistle stuck on the side (not a feature of my hat).

Hyraxes are funny, though this doesn't look especially like one. This one likes eating defunct brands of chocolate sandwich cookies that almost sound like her name. I've never liked Oreos, but Hydroxes were good.

This is a sea lion, not a seal. Because it has earmuffs on, meaning it must have external ears under there. That's a nacho, by the way. With guacamole and some specks of salsa that seem to have disappeared.

This rhino is wearing some kind of weird gloves. She's drinking a green boba.

A caracal enjoying a broccoli tree with ranch dressing on it.

My Li'l Mammals

2010-02-15T12:43:00.000-08:00

A leaf-nosed bat contemplates a tiny pickle.

A sweater-vested dugong with a corndog. I thought the orange slice on the sweater was unclear, so I gave it an orange charm bracelet too.

A pangolin with a milk shake -- the kind you can stir yourself in the metal cup.

A colugo, or flying lemur, eats popcorn. Popcorn is hard to paint.

Last up, a mountain goat with a deviled egg. That's a pear on the scarf.

More mammals (More-mals?)

2010-02-11T22:51:00.000-08:00

First up this time, a bushbaby. I forgot what a shrimp scampi looked like when I was painting this. It seemed weird to make a bushbaby with little eyes.

This is a tree shrew. It's having some hot chocolate with marshmallows.

Here's a quoll enjoying a mint-chip ice cream cone. I was into little animals with long bushy tails I guess!

I have a jacket just like this pretzel-eating moonrat's! I don't want to paint too many animals with a lot of black or dark brown, since that's hard to make them show up on the black paper.

Two-toed sloths are slightly less known than their three-toed cousins. This one is gnawing on a strip of bacon, by the way. When I get too tiny, I lose the details! I should get one of those brushes made with one hair.

100 Furry Milk-drinkers

2010-02-09T01:14:00.000-08:00

Ah, a new art challenge for myself. I wanted to use gouache, and got out my black sketchbook. I painted this little elephant drinking strawberry milk first, and was inspired to try to paint 100 tiny pictures. Now, a few things I like are mammals, cute things, and food. So, what better to make than 100 tiny mammals with food! A came up with a few guidelines: each mammal will be different, each will be holding a food or drink item, each will have some kind of clothes or other body adornment, each will have tiny indigo dots for eyes, each will have a fruit or flower somewhere, and each will have pink cheeks. Phew, that's a lot!

I figured if I did five a day, I'd be done by the end of the month. I don't know if I'll keep up that pace, but the first five were completed. Each painting is about an inch high, so these are scanned at five times actual size or so. This makes all errors even more glaring. While the elephant is highly stylized, the next few are getting more detail.

The beaver is using cob knobs! All of these have my trademark microscopic white eye highlight.

This echidna is eating one of those twisty unicorn pops. You can't really see the little toe nail ring on one foot.

This is a pika, if you can't tell. She's holding a blueberry muffin (maybe just the muffin top).

The last painting I did is of an aardvark with a beret and a loaf of french bread. Bonjour!

From the depths of the jungle primeval...

2010-02-04T20:42:00.000-08:00

I painted this jungle girl-type before. I liked her design, so I did a bit of doodling of the same character. She seems to live in an unidentified country in a wild landscape, is short with big messy hair and has a big booty good for walking everywhere. She also wears a bone bracelet on one arm, a flower in her hair sometimes, and prefers to make her outfits out of the pelts of various species of mammals, being careful to preserve the tails.

I don't have a name or any other back story about her, I just think it's fun to draw somone living off the land and having adventures with animals.

Ho ho!

2010-01-26T19:48:00.000-08:00

I've had this idea for a while, and just got around to sketching it. I think this would make a fun button set -- animals with double names. I can't think of a good title; it seems that there are lots of words that have rhyming syllables but I can't think of any with repeated syllables.

There are a few more birds that fit this category (dodo being the most obvious) but I didn't want too many of them. I like motmots a lot. Did you know that they make their tail feathers look like this? They pull bits off to make the little spatulas.

Dikdiks are quite a bit skinner than this one but I was trying for more cartoony. The cuscus is my favorite drawing of all. It would be fun to do these again, or some more. I just like to get the idea down before it's lost to the ages like so many of the artwork I see in my head but never record. These are tiny watercolor paintings with purple inking, by the way.

New Year, Old Art

2010-01-17T23:47:00.001-08:00

The computer was out of commission for a while from right after my last post until now. I wanted to put up the last picture I did in 2009. It's a family a raptory dinosaurs of indeterminate species. Yeah, the father dinos probably didn't stick around raising the babies, but I wanted to draw him anyway. They're based on grebes. Ink sketch with messy watercoloring.

Christmas Cheer!

2009-12-24T00:45:00.000-08:00

Happy Christmas one and all! Reindeer are cute with their giant heads and spread toes. Sometimes they have white faces and pinto spots. Experimenting with some weird stylization on the legs; a drying-out red pen and watercolor drawing in a sketchbook.

Going the way of the dodo

2009-12-20T00:34:00.000-08:00

I painted this little picture sitting on my bed listening to mariachi music. The idea was from a receipt by my bed that I scribbled "angel dodo" on when I woke up in the middle of the night once. Double wings are weird, but I wanted to have it flying. I based the coloring in part on the bleeding heart dove. I was going to give it a halo of feathers like a crowned pigeon; then I decided that was going overboard with the Columbidae and religious imagery.

I got a new pen that's supposed to be gray ink (it's really a permanent Martha Stewart scrapbooking pen). I'm disappointed that it's not as light as I wanted. It looks like slightly faded black ink. Martha, how could you! I should've got the indigo or heliotrope one.

Fling! Monkey Doodles

2009-12-11T10:40:00.000-08:00

Not many people seem to like monkeys. I do, I think they're fun to watch and have interesting expressions, shapes, and colors. Here's a page from my sketchbook, with bunches of scribbles relating to monkeys.

Patas monkeys look like English gentlemen to me. They have white mustaches and kind of parted hair.

Uakaris are a bit (OK, a lot) scary since they're bald. They do have neat fat fluffy tails though. Squirrel monkeys are cute, right? They're so little.

Spider monkeys have fun hairdos and really skinny legs with big tails. Capuchins can have nice styles too; sometimes they have 2 bumps on their head. The little one at the bottom left is a common marmoset, which are very cute and have giant white ear tufts.

Why don't you take a picture, it'll last longer!

2009-11-29T13:38:00.000-08:00

I'm rusty with gouache! I acquired some postcard-sized pieces of brown paper which I thought would be good for gouache. I was watching Pee-Wee's Big Adventure and thought it would be fun to do a series of little paintings of some of my favorite movies. This is from a scene where Pee-Wee is dressed as a woman to escape the cops. As you can see, I did extensive research for no reason.

Here's a frame I took from the movie that lasts about 1 1/2 seconds so I could get a good look at his shoes.

Here's the inspiration for the painting.

I had wanted him to look more generic, since I wasn't going for a perfect likeness of Pee-Wee; I want the clothes to be recognizable but not necessarily the face. Oh well, I may do some more to practice.

I hope you will enjoy his show

2009-11-25T00:44:00.000-08:00

I've had an urge to draw the Beatles, but not being a good portraitist, I of course wanted to make an animal instead. The Sgt. Pepper's outfits are so cool, so I did a watercolor sketch of a fox in George Harrison's ensemble. He's a poorly-drawn Bengal fox. Get it, a fox from India, George Harrison, huh huh? What an awesome hat he had, and black spats. He's playing a flute because George is holding a flute on the cover; it's true, look it up!

Also, flutes are hard to draw and I'm too lazy to look up what they look like.

Bunnicorn

2009-11-19T20:47:00.000-08:00

I wanted to make a little painting and ended up with a uni-cloud, uni-flower, and uni-bunny eating a cheeseburger. I don't know either. They kind of look more like they're wearing party hats, but they are horns.

Flu-dles

2009-11-15T12:35:00.000-08:00

Nothing fabulous to post, so I decided to put up some drawings I did when I was sick. I was in bed all day, alternately sleeping, feeling horrible, and being bored. My fever-ravaged mind thought that CatFox was the best idea ever, so I doodled it in ballpoint pen. Note the stylish ear strawberry. I also made a bear, possibly coming out of hibernation, wearing knitted arm warmers like I have.

The red ones are a lion costume and a kakapo. They have chubby cheeks. These are pretty bad, but I don't draw too differently when I'm well.

Chomp!

2009-10-31T13:13:00.000-07:00

I like Halloween a lot! Too bad it'll be over tomorrow :(. I wanted to do more art but didn't get around to. So here's a sketch I did in like a minute, then hastily (poorly) colored. Explorer bilby bobbing for a donut -- it's apple cider flavored, yum! Please excuse the horrid quality of the picture. It's watercolor on drawing paper with no under sketch again.

Piggy puttering around

2009-10-24T19:53:00.000-07:00

A Visayan warty pig shuffles around the house. He likes his slippers and periodicals. There are lots of these guys at the San Diego Zoo; they run around and do funny things. I like their fuzzy hairstyles and interesting tusks. I can never see the warts though. This is a small sepia watercolor doodle. I love the look of brush-inked stuff but seem to have more problems with real ink, so I went with paint and my waterbrush instead. I'm proud that I didn't mess it up, since I didn't make a drawing first, just started with brushstrokes all over.

Musky Odors

2009-10-17T19:38:00.000-07:00

I'll only be drawing musk oxen from now on.

OK, probably not, but they sure are fun. Giant heads, so furry, tiny eyes and feet, huge horns. I drew these with an old dying pen after finding an ancient issue of Ranger Rick. Some are slightly changed copies from the photos in the article, some are made up. Ran out of room for entire bodies on the page again, whoopsie!

Costume Time

2009-10-16T01:06:00.000-07:00

Halloween is fast approaching; time to come up with crazy costume ideas! I have always liked the cute look of the mock turtle from Alice in Wonderland. Here's a design for a costume of it, modeled by Pinki the bilby. It didn't take long to see what an impractical costume it would be, with no fingers and the big hard shell. Plus the hooves had to be big enough for long bilby toes to fit in to. Oh well, it was worth a try.

Small blue pencil drawings, plus a bonus gouached painting!

Banned Book: Little Black Sambo

2009-10-02T16:32:00.000-07:00

Here's where all the tigers are from. I had this book when I was pretty young. I don't know where it came from, it looked old when I got it, but I loved the illustrations. The story was fun too; tigers wearing clothes and it ends with pancakes. This book is banned for the obvious racist connotation of the title, even though it was originally a little boy from India. As time went on, the character changed to African, with many versions having stereotypical depictions of Sambo (black face, "native" type dress.) There's a Little Golden Book with very cute tigers but a grass-skirted Sambo illustrated by Gustaf Tenggren, who did the Poky Little Puppy and others.

We have a few updated versions of the book at the library, one renamed just Sam and one giving him an Indian name. My favorite image from the story is the tiger with shoes on his ears. Probably because the shoes were purple and had curly toes and he just looked really cute. Poor tigers turn into butter at the end though!

Latest fashion

2009-10-01T20:00:00.000-07:00

My final illustration for the week. Purple curly shoes are fun. Each of these pictures took about an hour from first scribble to last brushstroke. This one didn't scan the colors as well. I made the sky pink because I got a pink paint splash on this half of the paper and didn't want to try to remove it since it had fully dried. This image is my favorite from the story, and this is what I really wanted to paint. I'm not satisfied with how it came out, but what artist ever is?

Tiger, Red Coat, Burning Bright

2009-09-30T22:46:00.000-07:00

The third picture in the group of four. This jacket looks rather Michael Jacksony, doesn't it? I used some old National Geographics for background inspiration, just like Carl Barks did.

Blue Rear View

2009-09-29T23:21:00.000-07:00

Another illustration for the same story as yesterday. Harem pants are making a comeback, you know! Just like last time, watercolor over blue sketch. Man, this is a bright orange. I like the way this tiger came out more than the first one.

So Many Raindrops

2009-09-28T23:41:00.000-07:00

The first in a series of four tiny paintings to be done in honor of Banned Books Week. I'm going to do one every day until Thursday. They are all from the same book, to be revealed on Friday. These might be preliminaries for bigger pictures, or I'll finish them and forget about them forever. Yay for setting goals!

This tiger has the biggest head ever! Rain is hard to paint, and the puddles look better in the real painting. I wanted to use my bright crazy orange. This was sketched with blue pencil then painted directly with watercolor on half a sheet in my 7-ish" by 9.5-ish" sketchbook. Oh yeah, umbrellas are also hard to draw.