
I couldn't get this one to post with the others last time. This is my favorite sketch on this page. Three-toed sloth on the left, two-toed sloth on the right. Sloths have such funny faces, and the 2 kinds look so different from each other.




I'll admit, I like looking through the picture books. I've seen some great illustrations, great stories, boring stories, and hideous illustrations. There are so many picture books out there; it must be a very competitive field.

Finally got around to painting a binturong after it was suggested to me last month. This one is playing with a paddleball. I've discovered that dioxazine violet and indigo make good black. I went a bit crazy with the color mixing though. Still experimenting with stylization and different degrees of detail.
This was meant to be a color study for a more realistic painting of the Aesop's fable about the fox and the crane, but I kind of like it this way. I wish I had made the crane more stylized too. The fox looks a bit like it's barfing in the second picture. The fable goes: the fox invited the crane over for dinner. It served some soup in a flat dish, and the crane couldn't eat any. The next day the crane invites the fox over, and serves soup in a long vase, so the fox can't get any. The lesson is, don't eat soup with anyone who has a different shaped mouth than you, I guess.
I asked my friends for a few suggestions of new animals to draw. Here's a batch of them now. We have a blind mole, a genet, a fossa, and a paca. I've only ever drawn a fossa before; one was sleeping in a ball at the zoo, so I only got its nose anyway. This is the entire sketchbook page (those dots on the left is the perforation). I did my best trick of drawing one picture too close to another, so the genet's tail got in the way of the fossa's elbow.

Wow, it's weird to write "08"! The first paintings of the new year. I got a black sketchbook. Boy, I'm out of practice with gouache. Oh well, now I can make many a painting in this book. Here we have Kitsumi playing Guitar Hero, and the littlest fat dragon ever riding on a non-scientifically accurate flying gurnard. Didn't feel like trying to draw with white pencil or anything, so straight to paint it was!
I like drawing with this calligraphy pen! It has nice line variation but a bit more control than a brush pen since the tip isn't as flexible. It's pretty blue too.
I'm pleased with the head feathers on this laughing cockatoo griffiny thing. I can never seem to plan nice flowy lines; they just appear sometimes by themselves. Its little wings are funny too.

