There is an explanation for why this happened that I think would take away from the glory. Or the horror, depending on how you interpret this. Anyway, I will just let it stand without editorial comment.

As for how it happened, I spent my coffee break very hastily putting this together in Illustrator and ImageReady in response to a brief exchange I had this morning on twitter. I make no apologies.

Prance, pretty unicorn. Prance the day away!

Tags: animation, black unicorn, doodles, girl comics, pink, silliness, sparkly, twitter, unicorn, vector, weirdness

Sat down after dinner tonight with no real plan, so I opened up a blank Photoshop file and started scribbling. I thought I was drawing a bird until I started seeing the hat. I’m looking for a hat kind of out of season- it’s wool-ish and kind of like a pageboy cap only maybe a little baggier, but every time I find such a cap in a catalogue it’s Just Not Right. This happens to me a lot with certain items like coats or bags; I’ll get it in my head that I want such a thing, and proceed to quest after the One. The Hat to End all Hats.

Tags: doodles, hat

Just a quickie today- something to prove I’m alive and working on stuff other than just SnoogleZoo (which is going pretty well, by the way. Have you had a look lately?) I got a haircut, so that coupled with the new (non-purple) uke I got for my birthday, I decided it was time to draw up a new profile picture for Facebook, and show that off here.

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I’ve been filling up plenty of pages in my regular sketchbook, as well as this other grid-lined notebook I’m using for journal-comicking. I haven’t decided whether or not I’m going to post the gridline comics- I kind of like having one project that’s just for me; it frees me up and lets me explore in a way that the imaginary audience looking over my shoulder might not be able to appreciate. Some of it is kind of dumb, or too private for the internets, or too  sloppy to publish. But I’m having fun with it, and I suppose some (actually readable) images from there might end up on here.

Tags: comics, doodles, journal comic, ukulele

So, yeah…about Holidailies. Didn’t get around to finishing that. Eh, there’s always next year. While I haven’t been posting, I have been doing a heck of a lot of drawing.

Started the year off with this fine specimen.It was 11:30 at night on January 1st and I was determined to start the year off on a good note by drawing something. I also found a mini-marathon of Star Trek: TNG, and got a little distracted. So I put the two together.

I did a bunch of animals, and played with ink washes and brushes:

A day or two later I got stuck. It happens to me a lot, because I get hung up on Working on My Career instead of just Drawing Pictures, which is sort of mission-critical for, y’know, working on my career. I had this funny little image of a cat in a flying sailboat that I kept putting off drawing because I didn’t know precisely what a sailboat looks like.

I let go of the precision I thought I wanted and got the idea down, just so I could move on to something else. Which is pretty much exactly what happened. I don’t know why it still surprises me that it works like that.

Plus,  I decided I liked the awkwardness of my little sailboat, and didn’t try to refine it when I went back and did a full painting based on my doodle a week or two later:

So that was last night. I’ve been wanting to work on my watercolor skills, so I went through the pages looking for something to paint (ohhhh, is that what sketchbooks are for? How novel!). I didn’t mean to finish it all in one go- I want to work on not rushing through projects and being able to finish things that I leave for more than one sitting, but I got carried away. It turned out pretty cute. There will probably be more flying sailboats this year.

But tonight I was going through my Drawer O’ Art Junk, and found an unused block of Master Carve. So I made a print block featuring my little buddy:

The speech bubble is empty on the block, so I can make the owl say anything by writing or typing into the speech bubble. I was thinking of using it as a personal bookplate.

So, stuff. The holidays were stressful at work and I spent a lot of my free time recovering. Then the new year got off to kind of a rough start- lots of sadness for a lot of my friends’ pets (in total, we lost two dogs, a cat, and a hamster within about two days of each other), then my dog got herself injured and needed stitches. Then we had a rather large earthquake here in Eureka. So it was just one thing after another that kept me away from the ol’ blog. But I kept drawing, so I had to share.

Tags: art, being blocked, cats, doodles, drawing, ink wash, linoleum, musk ox, owls, painting, pets, print, watercolor

I got a tip from some of my pals who are recently parents over the Thanksgiving holiday- the kids dig penguins.

I’m told it’s because of a Facebook-like site designed for kids called Club Penguin, which I checked out breifly, but I don’t really know much about it. What I do know is that I am lacking in penguin-related designs in my Zazzle shop, so I made one for my morning doodle today and did a few different colors.

I like these little graphical designs of animals in candy colors. One of these days I might compile them all into a pattern, or maybe just do a series with one pattern for each animal.

Tags: animals, art, doodles, penguin, vector