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!

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...

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.

Merry Monotreme

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

Costume Time

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!

Latest fashion

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

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.

So Many Raindrops

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.

Pushmi-pullyu

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!

See the painting in my blog's header. Gouache on magical brown sketchbook paper; I need to get another of these! They're fun! Gouache works well on this since I can subtract paint and let the brown show through for highlights. The original sketch is in blue pencil. You can see all the leg positions I tried and how I didn't finish drawing the horns.


2 YEARS LATER EDIT: Now that I've changed the header, I've added the pushmi-pullyu painting for easy reference.

Can you caricaturize animals?

A visit to the Comic Con this weekend made me want to do art. So many different styles and weird pictures to inspire, but at the same time make me tired of my own stuff. I got a sketch of me from Mr. John Kricfalusi. I like watching how different artists work. He took off his glasses and looked very intently at his subjects with the most serious expression. Then he suddenly got a huge smile and started drawing really quickly; he must've found what he wanted to exaggerate in the drawing.

I do like Stimpy but he seems to have lost his arms in a horrible accident. At least he's happy to see me! 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!

Since I still have a hard time drawing people, I wondered if animals can be caricatured in the same way. I think of lot of regular caricature has to do with expression, which some animals don't seem to have. Many of them look dignified or majestic all the time, with straight lines for mouths and big dark eyes with no eyebrows. Or they already look funny to us so they seem to be a naturally-occurring caricature.

Animals are turned into cartoons, but that's more of a representation of every member of that species, not a certain individual. Gao Gao is a giant panda at the San Diego Zoo. He's cute like all pandas, but has a tiny ear that I thought might give me something to work with. He also seems to have big paws. Is this a caricature or just a slightly stylized panda? I don't know but at least I made a picture!

First Doodles of the Year

Happy 2009! Here are a few weird drawings since I haven't posted anything for a while. Balinese angel, saddest elephant seal, and a mad pied crow.

Chubbicorn

No other presentable art at the moment, other than this scratchy doodle of a chunky palomino unicorn. I love horses with fluffy feet!

The Living Desert

I visited the Living Desert last weekend. There were many cool animals that were mostly out and about. Sadly, my camera ran out of battery charge right at the beginning. I was able to do a few quick sketches; here are two.

First some black-crowned night herons. There was an unusual walk-in aviary that had vultures, herons, a roadrunner, grackles and a raven. The herons stayed on the ground and didn't move too much. These guys have cool red eyes.

I also drew an addax. They're a highly endangered antelope. And they have cute spiral horns and an x-shaped brown patch on their faces. I was dumb and started painting it close to the edge of the paper so I couldn't give it hindquarters.

Prickly Peccaries

I got some blue lead for my mechanical pencil. It's a change from my usual purple pencil, but it's fun -- a bit harder than I usually work with. This is a sketch of an idea that I've had doodled in my sketchbook for a year or so. Seeing some peccaries at the San Diego Zoo reminded me of it, so I tightened it up. They like eating prickly pear cacti.