Category Archives: Scribbles

Drawings and doodles, works in progress and other ephemera

IF – Wilderness

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Wilderness Sketch
click to enlarge

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.

IF – Confined

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 Cat Contained
(click to enlarge)

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!

New Year, New Art

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Resting Deer - sketchbook 2010

Ahhhh, there’s something about sitting down at the drawing table for the first time in a while. At first a bit anxious, but once I picked my subject it felt like everything was right again, everything clicking into place once more. I definitely want to be sure that not a week goes by without having that feeling again. There will be at least one new sketch here every week from now on.

In December all of my art time was digital. While I do enjoy working on the computer, I don’t think I’d ever be able to completely give up my paper, pencil, and pens. This was just a quick drawing from an old photograph of mine, using a #3 Micron pen on a 6″x9″ piece of smooth bristol paper over a light pencil sketch (which was erased).

Thanksgiving wishes

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Happy Thanksgiving! I hope everyone out there (whether or not you live in the US where it’s being formally and nationalistically observed) has a moment this week to spend with their family and/or friends and reflect on all of the good things in their life. I have quite a long list myself, including my wonderful extended family, all of my dear friends (both online and offline) and my dear husband and the life we’ve been building together. I love that I have the freedom to pursue my art and maintain a comfortable life at the same time, and am grateful for all of the blessings, large and small, that have filled my life. I just finished making pies for tomorrow’s dinner with my husband watching goofy old movie serials on our little kitchen TV and you know what? It’s a pretty good way to end the day. Especially taking into account that the rest of the day was spent cleaning the whole house because we’re hosting Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow.

Chinese Zodiac Preview — The Ox and The Pig

I don’t have any more thematic artwork to post at the moment (we’ll see if I get a chance tomorrow, but it seems unlikely) but I thought that regular visitors to my blog would appreciate seeing a little work-in-progress. Yes, I have finished ALL of the ink drawings for my Chinese Zodiac series: The Ox, The Pig, The Dragon, and The Monkey. The Ox is actually a re-drawing of the Ox I did way back at the beginning this year, the first of the series (since this IS the year of the Ox) but I decided it just didn’t hold up to the rest of the drawings I did since then. Two of these are partially colored, and the only one that should take an exceptionally long time is The Dragon — I just can’t help throwing all the bells and whistles into a Dragon, after all. 🙂

Chinese Zodiac Preview — The Dragon and the Monkey

I don’t know about anyone else, but as much fun as I’ve had doing these (and they have been very fun) I will be happy when they’re done. I’m a bit eager to start in on the next project. I’ll be posting shiny new color versions of the whole series everywhere as soon as they’re done… with any luck in the next couple of weeks!

Have a great holiday, those that are having one!

From the sketchbook

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TV Sketches

I haven’t been posting too many actual “scribbles” lately,  so just for a change of pace here’s a little something that emerged when I was supposed to be working on another drawing.

One of my “bad” work habits is having the TV on while I’m drawing.  This is, incidentally, pretty much the only way I watch most TV since it’s one of the few times I’m actually sitting still that I’m not in front of a computer. I make a point of picking shows for this purpose that are mostly dialog driven or aren’t actually all that engrossing, so I don’t have to watch the screen. I was doing this the other day and just happened to glance up when there was a particularly compelling scene, a dark room with dramatic lighting on the actor so that you only saw the very edges of his already pretty dramatic features. I had to hit pause and capture it, right on the page I was already sketching on. Extra points* for anyone who can name the show!

So even though I was “goofing off” with this one, this week I committed the last of the Chinese Zodiac series to paper and scanned it in. I still have to add colors, but they’ll be done soon, which means the whole series will be showing up very soon in my new Critterwings store… you know about the store, right?  I’m slowly adapting my existing artwork into new products — I added a few mugs with Butterfly images to the Critterwings Zazzle shop this weekend — so stop by frequently to see what’s new!

* Note: Points have no value except the warm glow of knowing that you were right.

Work in Progress — the zodiac continues

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Chinese Zodiac Preview — the Dog

Here’s a very rough scan of the next piece off the drawing board! Another dramatic close-up preview, this time of the Chinese Zodiac sign of the Dog. I may still be tweaking the drawing a bit, time will tell.

I’ve been working on this series in batches, which has the advantage of being much more efficient for me, but the disadvantage of not having any more finished work to show for a while longer. I have the next drawing half-finished and then one more before I start final scans on this set. I’ll need to figure out the coloring for this series soon; I keep thinking a looser approach than I usually use would be very fitting….

A sneak peak…

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Chinese Zodiac Preview — the Sheep

… hot off the drawing board! This is just a tiny preview of the next drawing in my Chinese Zodiac series: The Sheep. It was inked almost entirely with a Pitt brush pen, which doesn’t come to as fine a point as the Sakura brush pen but seems to be holding its shape better.

I’ll probably be a while trying to find a good brush pen, because I hate to have to lock the cat out of the room while I draw but I have trouble seeing any other way to keep an open ink jar handy and un-tipped-over. This one had a pretty good feel though, I’ll probably use it on at least a few more drawings to see how it holds up.

More will be on the way soon!

Oh, hai!

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Oh, Hai

Hi there! Sorry about the long absence, it was a rather frantic spring. Between a hectic period at my job, the siren call (although lately it’s been more like frantic screaming) of my much-neglected backyard, and some freelance work and other side projects which I’ll post more about soon, all conspired to keep me away from my blog. I’ll spare you the details, unless someone out there really wants to hear about very amateur gardening and a growing feud with the neighborhood rabbits.

Instead, I promise to start posting regularly again, even if it’s just quick little sketches like the one above, a portrait of one of the other demands on my attention. Even now he wants to know why I insist on sitting at my computer, and keeps tapping me on the face to focus my attention where it truly belongs: on him.

In the meantime, why don’t I leave you with a preview of what’s currently on my drawing table, awaiting inks?

Chinese Zodiac Batch 2 Pencils

Illustration Friday: Poise

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 Dr. Sketchy Atlanta #2
(click images to enlarge them)

Perhaps an unusual choice for this week’s Illustration Friday topic, anyone who can model so unselfconsciously for life drawing strikes me as the epitome of poise. This model in particular managed to look positively serene while wearing french powdered wig in a very crowded and noisy bar while people were staring at her and scribbling frantically.

While I was attending the SWSX conference in March, I had the great fortune to attend an event which included a session of Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School.  There’s more info at the link, but in brief it’s like a life drawing class except instead of in a formal art studio it’s at a bar or club, and instead of a nude model you have a cabaret or burlesque performer in costume.

Dr. Sketchy Atlanta #1

In this particular case, the life drawing was going on in the back of the club, while an actual burlesque show was going on at the main stage. Because it was part of the conference it was packed, but I managed to snag a stool and pad of paper in the drawing area. The performers were lining up to model when they were between sets, they were so excited to participate. It was very cool!

We only did five-minute poses. It has been sooooo long since I did life drawing like this, much less while balancing a pad of paper on my knee sitting on a barstool, but it was great fun.

Dr. Sketchy Atlanta #3

Unfortunately, just as I really felt I was getting warmed up, the rest of my cohorts were ready to move on. But I got several very nice sketches done, and they even managed to survive the night intact.

There are Dr. Sketchy’s clubs scattered all over the country… if this sounds like fun to you, google to see if there’s one near you!