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.
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.
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'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!
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
The pushmi-pullyu is an antelopey creature with two heads on opposite sides of its body. I made mine a blackbuck because I like their coloring and twisty horns. I enjoy drawing ungulates a lot. It's fun to make hooves and horns and skinny legs, and many of them have such cool coats. I will be painting more hoofstock soon!
At the feed store that I used to go to almost every week to stare at the puppies and baby chicks and things, there was a "shop dog" -- a black chow named Woo. He was really laid back, mostly lounging around in the store somewhere. I'd call his name and he'd put his head up, trot over and let me pet him a while, then walk away again to go sleep somewhere else.
His pictures were all so funny, and I'm impressed by the speed and artistic confidence (all done with Sharpie, with no timid sketchiness or pencil underdrawings.) I also got an adorable sketch from Kali Fontecchio; look how cute I am with my favorite duck friend! 
Wow, it's been quite a while! I'm so uninspired these days. I want to do art but I don't know what to make. However, I did make this doodle which I feel is my best work ever. It took like 10 seconds but I just like it.
I wish I had exaggerated the head and big ears even more, actually. I was going to make the bear holding something but couldn't decide on what, so now it's making some kind of weird bear hand sign.
