Scribbles and Scribings

 
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I’m still hard at work on a last “winter” project for the season, a companion piece to the Dragon of Autumn. I posted the scanned ink drawing a few posts ago, and here’s the colored version. My poor hand was a bit cramped after all of these snowflakes! But they’re only one small part of the whole project. I’m currently much further along than this, but I don’t want to post any “spoilers” just yet.

I’ve been really enjoying my new computer… working on the Dragon of Autumn was painfully slow, with files taking up to 20 minutes to save, even with separate elements like the frame and textures in separate files to keep the file sizes as small as possible. Now I’m working on an even larger file and there’s almost no lag at all. Ahhh, so nice! Now the only thing slowing me down is everything else in my schedule! But I hope to finish this one by next week, so I can turn my thoughts to warm, sunny, springtime…

 
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This week’s Illustration Friday is straight from the sketchbook. When I think of something that propagates like mad, I think of rabbits! But that’s not the only reason I’m posting this one.

This week I was going through all of my bunny references trying to brainstorm on fun Easter ideas. I usually try to have some idea of what I want before I start looking for reference material, but when I’m stuck for a concept I just try to find as many images I can and start doodling, hoping that propagating familiarity with the subject matter will spark some greater idea. Occasionally something comes out in this stage that makes it wholesale into the finished illustration, but more often it’s just a seed of an idea and at the very least it’s good practice for the anatomy. Still not sure if I stumbled across a winner yet, I’ll have to keep sketching…

In the meantime, if you want to see one of my finished rabbits, he’s lurking in my online shops:

 Prints, cards and shirts at RedBubble

Ornaments, keepsake, boxes, pillows, water bottles, and more at CafePress

Shirts, magnets, keychains, postage stamps  and more at Zazzle

SALE: Zazzle is having a sale this week: 22% off two or more mug, apparel, or hat items if you use the code TWOTWENTYTWO at checkout, whether you’re buying from me, someone else, or making your own custom items!

 
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This week’s entry for Illustration Friday was a super-quick sketch based on a story concept I had a while back which I have yet to get to. It was drawn on regular-surface bristol paper with a Pitt brush pen, 9×12 inches.

And for the word “adrift” I really had to fight the temptation to do something about all the dang snow around here! I just wasn’t in a punny enough mood this week, I guess.

I’ve been going through my small-size bristol like crazy lately! This was my last sheet of 9×12, although I have some other types of paper in this size. The tip of the brush pen had gotten a little bit loose and blobby, but I thought it worked here since it’s a relatively rough drawing and the paper’s a little rougher than I’ve been using lately too. My wrist needed the change of pace after working on all those snowflakes, which were inked last week and which I’ve been coloring like mad ever since. Update on that little project to come soon!

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Like the rest of the Mid-Atlantic, this week our house was covered in an awful lot of the stuff pictured above. Fortunately, in between a LOT of shoveling and some neglected housework, I still had the energy to get caught up on some of my drawings. I guess there are some good things about being snowed in! The above is some of the artwork that will be used in the next piece in my “Dragons of the Year” series; go ahead, guess what season it’s for.

I’ve actually made a fair bit of progress, and I’ll be posting bits of it over the next couple of weeks until its finished. Right now I can’t wait to start working on “Spring!”

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For this week’s Illustration Friday I went pillaging my photos. I love to go to the zoo and I always take tons and tons of pictures to add to my reference file. When I saw this week’s word was “muddy” I immediately remembered a day where the rhinos were having a grand old time wallowing in their huge mud puddle. (On an unrelated note, I really need to get my files set up in some kind of catalogue that lets me filter on keywords… I’ve just been reluctant to spend the effort committing to a proprietary system that might not be cross-platform. Any suggestions?)

It further fit the theme this week to stick with a pencil drawing instead of breaking out the inks — it takes a fair amount of effort to make technical pens seem “muddy” and I’m still trying to keep these quick. The original was drawn with graphite pencil in my 9×10 inch sketchbook; it seemed appropriate to tint it a bit in Photoshop but it’s otherwise unretouched.

SALE at ZAZZLE: Monday February 8 - Tuesday February 9 at 6pm EST Zazzle is having a discount of 50% off of express shipping on all orders of $25 and up if you use the discount code ILOVEEXPRESS at checkout. Whether you want something from my Critterwings Shop or anything else Zazzle offers, check it out! 

 
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Cats have this habit of snapping into razor-sharp focus at the drop of a hat, ancient hunters’ instincts always at the ready. It doesn’t matter if the object of that focus is a live mouse or a scrap of paper or random dust motes, because just as quickly they snap back out of it again. This week’s Illustration Friday drawing for “focused” is our cat Tinkerbelle, who has a little kitten face but can be sooooo intense it’s a little unsettling.

Ironically, the primary source I used for reference is incredibly UNfocused.

Why is it that in all of my cats’ photos they either look annoyed or zoned out?   The sketch was drawn with a Pitt brush pen on regular-surface bristol paper, 9×12″

On an unrelated note, there’s a sale at my Zazzle store:  30% off cards, 20% off stickers, and 10% off mugs if you use the code ZAZZLEVDAY10 at checkout. I’ve been adding new items to the Chinese Zodiac line every week; if there’s something missing that you’d like, just let me know!

Make a personalized gift at Zazzle.

 
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Despite years of dancing, a new focus on fitness that includes cardio kickboxing, and a general effort to the contrary, I’m still rather clumsy. My habits of running into inanimate objects and tripping over microscopic bits of dust are not nearly as bothersome as my perpetual case of butterfingers. I try to take care when handling items that are particularly precious and fragile, but I’m not always successful. So I could relate all too well when the Illustration Friday word this week was “clumsy.”

Case in point:  I was cleaning up after we had a simple dinner in our den one night last week. It was a nice stew my husband made, and we were using the pair of lovely Japanese bowls his father had given us a long time ago. As I was approaching the steps I stumbled over a bit of lint and the empty bowls slipped from my hands. One landed safely on our plush carpet, but the other must have hit the edge of the step in just the wrong way because it broke apart, the bright white ceramic forming jagged edges against the glossy black glaze. They were our favorite pair of bowls too, the perfect size and kept the food nice and warm.  (Sorry, dad! There’s a reason why most of our drinking glasses are plastic tumblers…)

This was a quick drawing from life with a Pitt brush pen on regular bristol paper, 9×12 inches.

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One of the things I like about living where I do is that even though we’re near a big city, we’re also just a short drive away from a stroll in the middle of the woods. We’re a day-trip away from pathless forest and parkland, but just a 15-minute drive will take us someplace where we can forget all about the traffic and the city and all the people and wander under the trees for a while.

My sketch for this week’s word for Illustration Friday, “wilderness,” is from a photograph I took in Gunpowder Falls State Park, one of the more easily-accessible parts of of the massive Chesapeake Bay watershed system. I find tree-roots fascinating and these right on the shore of the lake were tangled in a confusing mangle that I spent much longer than I’d planned on puzzling through. (The fox was an addition; we used to get them in our neighborhood regularly but it’s been a few years since I’ve seen one here.)

Drawn with 05 black marker on regular surface bristol paper, 9×12 inches.

No real message today, his pretty much said it all.

Just a quick ink drawing from photo reference with my 03 pen over a pencil sketch (erased) on smooth bristol paper. 6″x9″

 
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I’m hoping this isn’t a bad omen for my return to Illustration Friday: this drawing, “Cat Contained,” was conceived and drawn before I realized I’d mis-read the Illustration Friday word for this week. However, I think it still works, after all, I’d just have to close that flap and…

Just a quick drawing on evening while watching a movie. Both of my cats usually make a beeline for an open box in the middle of the floor, but tonight they decided it was the least interesting thing in the room so I had to wing the cat. This time it’s Tinkerbell, who is generally a far more “contained” cat than Tony, even though he’s the one who’s a fiend for squeezing into small boxes. Original drawing with 0.5 tech pen on 9×12″ smooth bristol, with a light pencil sketch underneath (erased).

However,  what is very much in keeping with the IF word this week is that today was Human Trafficking Awareness Day.  Modern slavery is a truly horrible and growing and largely invisible problem in the developed world, and several of my favorite webcomics artists have teamed up in a fundraiser to support groups trying to help the victims of this criminal practice. If you’d like to help out with this worthy cause, check out the Comic Creator Alliance this week!