Category Archives: Scribbles

Drawings and doodles, works in progress and other ephemera

Spring has sprung

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D is for Dafodil H is for Hyacinth A is for Azalea

April has been a busy month! March is supposed to be “in like a lion and out like a lamb” but April has been swinging between summer and winter like crazy. The Daffodils in my yard came out strong but a few days of +80 degree weather toasted them to a nice crisp.

Ta-da, here’s the first installment of my new project! Sort of. These are not finished artwork, just tighter-than-usual sketches practicing for the finished artwork, which will be showing up in my online shops VERY soon. The first lot were part of an artist trading card swap; I haven’t decided what to do with the rest just yet, but they may be showing up for sale. Watch this space for updates, including the rest of the sketches.

Speaking of things for sale, Zazzle is having a sale that ends on Wednesday April 28: Free ground shipping on orders of $25 or more, just in time for Mothers day! Use code MOMDAYGROUND at checkout. Why not check out a few things at the Critterwings shop?

Illlustration Friday: Dip

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Quick Tango

Well, this one was finished in time only on a technicality… thank goodness the Illustration Friday website is on Pacific Standard Time! Another stab at something different… unlike last week, which was all old-school paint-on-acetate, this week it’s all digital, with no “real” media involved!

Every so often I think to myself “hey, I just want to do something really quick, I’ll just draw it right in Photoshop instead of mucking about with the paper and the pens and the scanner and all.” So far, it’s never been the faster way to go. The slippery tablet and inability to turn the paper around to get the right angle both conspire to make what should be nice, simple lines a constant string of do-overs. Oh well, practice makes perfect. I decided to leave my “sketch” layer in the finished drawing, because it seemed to add a nice bit of extra movement and texture, and since I’d ordinarily consider something with this level of detail a study or a sketch rather than a finished drawing.

It’s been spring-cleaning season around here, but in between getting the garden ready for planting and cleaning the house I’ve been hitting the drawing table. I have a few projects that need to be finished in the next few weeks… I’ll be sharing them here when they’re done!

Illustration Friday: Rescue

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Cowboy

I missed out on “expired” for last week’s Illustration Friday, but this week it was actually my day job that came to the “rescue” with this illustration of a cowboy riding to the rescue.   This is a work-in-progress for an event poster which is allowing me a rare bit of illustration fun, and a bit of a digression from my usual style. I hope they keep this design, which will have a retro movie-poster vibe, instead of going with the fall-back, which is a much “safer” but more boring design with pretty landscape photography.

This illustration was based on a stock photo we’d bought, although I had to add in a lot of details, including redrawing the horse’s head, which was at an odd angle. This is the unretouched artwork, which was reverse-painted with acrylic paints on acetate and scanned with a black sheet behind it, about 11×17 inches.

I needed a “rescue” this week, as I spent half the weekend with a sore jaw (aftermath of a root canal) and didn’t get nearly as much done as I’d wanted. But I did have a chance to start researching my next personal project, which I’m looking forward to sharing in the next few months.

MORE snow? Only the good kind.

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 Snowflakes #2
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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…

Illustration Friday: Propagate

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 Bunches of Bunnies sketchbook page
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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:

Year of the Rabbit Small Postage stamp The Year of the Rabbit Mousepad mousepad Year of the Rabbit Beach Tote

 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!

Illustration Friday: Adrift

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 Mouse Adrift
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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!

Snow Days!

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Snowflakes
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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!”

Illustration Friday – Muddy

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Rhino Wallow
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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! 

IF – Focused

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 Focused Feline
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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.

Focused Source Photo

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.

IF – Clumsy

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 Clumsy
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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.