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.

Illustration Friday: Subterranean

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It Starts Underground…
click to enlarge

With such a deeply evocative word for Illustration Friday this week, and feeling bad about missing last week’s word, I spent a little extra time to play with my watercolors. It’s been way too long since I splashed around with real paint…. ahhhhh. I’m also clearly feeling the spring, as the bulbs in my garden are already popping up all over. So much energy goes on underground before we see those tiny green shoots….

I’m not quite sure if I’m completely done with it, but here it is.  Micron pen and watercolor on 140lb Canson watercolor paper, 9×12 inches.

For those who are interested, RedBubble has recently introduced some new products to their lineup: Greeting cards in two sizes, postcards, and the option to print images on the backs of shirts instead of the front… with the promise of more to come.  So far everything I’ve ordered from them has been gorgeous, and they have some of the nicest T-shirts out there. Check out the offerings in my RedBubble Gallery and see if anything catches your eye!

Illustration Friday: Perspective

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Christianna Posed
click to enlarge

This week’s sketch for Illustration Friday is a relatively quick ink drawing based on a photograph generously offered for use by a lovely lady from a RedBubble group devoted to portraits of fellow members.  I chose this particular image because not only is it a very sassy pose, but for the practice in drawing the human figure in extreme perspective — always a challenge! This image can be seen a bit larger in my RedBubble gallery.

Not much else to say this week except to let everyone out there know that Zazzle is having another sale! This week, through March 8, they are offering $4 off all t-shirts and other apparel items — including baby clothes and sweatshirts — with the coupon code 4OFFPATTYTEE

Here are a few suggestions from my Critterwings shop, although you can also customize your very own shirt too. 🙂

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
click to enlarge

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!