This week’s Illustration Friday topic was a tricky one! I tried to remember what it felt like to taste the most sour thing I’d ever tasted… click the image to enlarge!
Illustration Friday: Fierce
Our little cat used to pounce the big cat all the time. It really confused him, he wasn’t sure what to make of this little monster almost half his size. These days it’s just as likely that he deliberately sits right in front of her twitching his tail like a lure to provoke a wrestling match which he is sure to win. I get far too much entertainment in the morning watching them face off like a pair of wrestlers, paws outstretched, each waiting for the other to make the first move. (Hint, it’s usually the little one!)
This is a super-quick scribble for this week’s Illustration Friday topic. I’m not very happy with it and wish I had something better to post right now (one of those times when I totally failed to capture the pencil sketch in the inks and need to redraw it) but there’s no time: I’m getting ready to go to ICON5 tomorrow! It was very last-minute, so I couldn’t get away from work in time for today’s sketchcrawl, but I’m really looking forward to it. I’ll have some better sketches to post when I get back!
Illustration Friday: Hoard
Ever since we got our second cat, it seems like she always is the one to end up with all the toys… Just another quicky for this week’s Illustration Friday topic, click to enlarge.
The original drawing is fairly small, about 3-by-4 inches. Oddly, I was doodling my sketches when I realized I was drawing a “horde” instead of a “hoard” and I had to go back and check my e-mail to see which was right. But it gave me an idea for another drawing, which is part of the purpose, right?
Forgotten, take 2
So, for last week’s Illustration Friday topic I ended up posting a very lame cell-phone-camera photo of a slightly lame scribble. Well, here it all is a bit cleaned up and looking more like the thing that was in my head when I was drawing it. Click image to enlarge.
Nothing can quite erase the fact that it was a hasty ball-point ink drawing on a rather crumpled piece of paper, but in this case I think it adds to the charm… and the theme.
Illustration Friday: Punchline
Ah, so many possibilities for this week’s Illustration Friday topic. Too bad I’m usually terrible at telling jokes, so I went for the classic standby of slapstick. As usual, click to enlarge.
Yes, this week not only a brand new drawing, but with a background and color too! This one was pretty quick, for me. Gotta love simple patterns sometimes.
Illustration Friday: Forgotten
A very quick scribble for this week’s Illustration Friday topic, drawn with ballpoint on a scrap of paper I had in my purse while I was waiting for someone. Sorry about the really bad picture quality; the scanner’s not hooked up and I’d lent my camera to a friend for the weekend so all I had was the camera on my cell phone. I’ll repost a better image when I can!
UPDATE: I’ve uploaded a better version of this, you can find it here.
Illustration Friday: Baby
A relatively quick drawing for this week’s Illustration Friday topic: a baby elephant! Samson the baby elephant, as a matter of fact. Visitors to my blog may remember a previous subject was our zoo’s pregnant elephant Felix. Well, Felix is now a mommy, and Samson had his public debut a few weeks ago. He’s a real cutie! Click the picture to enlarge.
Pardon any poor image quality; I was a bit rushed so to accommodate a looser style I used paper larger than can fit in my scanner and had to do my best with a photograph. I suspect that one of my first major business purchases will have to be a larger scanner, it’s terribly inconvenient having to outsource that part of it. Unfortunately, decent scanners that can take 11×14 and bigger paper are rather expensive so it’ll have to wait a bit longer.
Illustration Friday: Worry
So, I feel a little bit cheesy about being absent for a month and then uploading another archive piece for this week’s Illustration Friday topic… and yet, that’s what I’m doing! This is just one panel from a short, 7-page story I wrote and illustrated a few years ago titled Feline Dreams. The drawing was particularly rushed in this panel but it definitely embodies “worry” to me when I was drawing it I was really worried about finishing in time!
Here’s the full page this scene is from, click ’em to see ’em larger:
This is one of the series where I really hope my source files are hidden in my CD archives, because they didn’t make the move between my old computer and my current one… As part of my much-needed website redesign I’m planning on making space for this and a couple other more narrative projects I’d done about that time.
As for my long absence, let’s just say that two out-of-state conferences PLUS my big vacation for the summer PLUS coming down with a severe case of the traveler’s plague during the little time I was home this past month pretty much made posting impossible for me. Starting this week I’m getting back into my routine – new artwork next week if it kills me!
Illustration Friday: Primitive
Hey, actual new art for this week’s Illustration Friday topic! It’s always really striking how the things that seem so cutting edge in one decade are considered so archaic in the next. At work I was cleaning up a bit and finally got rid of my Jaz Drive, can’t believe we used to use those things. Then again, the space where my office is used to be a huge data tape storage room not all that long ago. It didn’t help (hurt?) that while I was drawing this I was watching the South Park episode about the Pioneer town re-enactors who refused to ever break character…
I was determined to draw something new before the month was out, even if it’s a little on the sketchy side. Especially since I’m not always at my best when drawing mechanical things. I was VERY tempted to raid the sketchbooks again, because there was a little robot character I used to draw all the time, but it probably would have taken about as long to find it as it did to draw this.
Not sure if I’ll be updating for next week, unless I can finish it over the weekend, and the next week looks unlikely too as I’ll be away at a business trip/vacation. But we’ll see!
Illustration Friday: Fail
Well, it’s hard to post a drawing when I embodied this week’s Illustration Friday topic by failing to draw something new, so you all will just have to suffer with another from the archive:
The Tortoise and the Eagle (Click to enlarge)
This is another by good ol’ Aesop, which seems to cover the topic well enough: the fable of The Tortoise and the Eagle.
A Tortoise, dissatisfied with lowly crawling on the ground, envied the birds who could soar high into the clouds whenever they desired. One day, he offered an Eagle all the treasures in the ocean if she would only teach him how to fly. The Eagle declined the offer at first, but the Tortoise kept insisting and pleading. Fine, I will teach you to fly, said the Eagle and, taking him up in her talons carried him high into the sky. As she let go of him, she said, Now, spread your legs and fly! But before the Tortoise could say one word in reponse, he plunged straight down, hit a rock, and was dashed to pieces.
Moral: Demand your own way, demand your own ruin.
Yeah, he failed. Big time.