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

Tags: doodles, hat

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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

Fun Fact: I am using the same ink-and-brush combo to ink my comics as I am to paint my birds. If anybody tries to tell me that comics aren’t hard, I have a portfolio full of wobbly-lined comic pages and sharply detailed birds that prove otherwise.

I’m lending Scruffy MacRuffin my birds for his field notebooks, so I thought I’d include a closeup of that panel here. Anyway, new page is up, and it’s glorious! Why not go check it out?

Tags: comic, comics, snooglezoo

I also did a bunch of drawing for SnoogleZoo today.  I have a one-off, and part of a longer story arc in development, and I just need to get them out on paper. It’s hard starting over, but I’ve missed those little guys and I only ever stopped because I set the bar a little too high to begin with. So I’m taking more of a quality-over-quantity approach this time, which means I probably won’t manage a regular update schedule for a while, but at least each strip will be something I can be proud of. I’m working on drawing everybody consistently, and trying out a couple of different ways of inking- I think it’d be neat to ink SnoogleZoo with a brush because it seems like all the fur on the characters would work well with a fluid line, but then there are small details like the little round eyes that I’m worried I won’t be able to pull off with a brush. Plus, technical pens are just so darn comfortable. But really, how am I supposed to get comfortable with a new tool without using it?

I have to be careful about letting all this noodling get in the way of my actually moving forward with the project. I can keep practicing forever and never get a strip together If I’m not careful. So I’m aiming to at least start posting little paintings, if not a proper strip, by May 3rd. Yep, that’s  a week from tomorrow! I’m going to be pretty busy this week making that happen.

Tags: art, comics, doodles, drawing, owls, polymer clay, snooglezoo, works in progress

You wouldn’t know it by looking at this blog, but I’ve been drawing and doodling an awful lot lately. I finished this Stellar’s Jay this morning. I’m not thrilled with how it came out- it’s not bad, but it got away from me in the watercolor portions again. It’s easier to see in person than it is in this crappy camera phone pic. Right now I think I’d rather post to the blog more often with doodles and camphone pics than fuss with scanning and uploading things that aren’t exactly worth the time to deal with that way. Plus, my scanner isn’t scanning clearly anymore, so there’s not as much of an incentive for me to bother with it.

What do you think? Would you rather see more, even if it’s not as clear?

Tags: art, birds, drawing, ink, watercolor, works in progress

It’s too bad- I really liked the pencils for this, but I pretty much lost control of it as soon as I started to apply the color. I had really gotten used to the way I was doing the inks, and watercolor is just not going to behave the same way.

Well, whatever. It was actually kind of freeing to just mess with it without worrying about ruining the painting after I had already ruined it.  This one, I think, didn’t really stand a chance of turning out well- I started working on it pretty late at night, for one thing. For another thing I don’t have the slightest idea how to paint iridescent feathers with watercolor.

However, I’ve noticed that I’m finding ways to avoid sitting down to start another after I finish one, especially if it turned out well. I had been wanting to do a bird all day (look at my Twitter for Sunday to see how early I intended to start working on this), so by 10:30 at night I sat down and said “Damnit, I’m going to do a bird, and I give myself permission to do it badly if I have to!”

And I did. But at least I sat down and did it! And now I’m clearer about a few of the issues I’ll have when I come to do colorful, iridescent birds again.

Tags: art, being blocked, birds, painting, rufous hummingbird, watercolor, works in progress

I know, right? It’s been over a month since I last put up a post. I’ve had the winter blahs- I’m doing work,  but I haven’t been inclined to put it up. I took a week off work this week, and I have some stuff to show, like this little 6×6 of a black phoebe that I did yesterday.  And I have a few more days to work on a few other things. I feel like I’ve been creatively hibernating through the winter, but it’s time to wake up and get cracking on some projects. Like these birds. There will be a bunch more birds like this.

Tags: animals, art, birds, birdwatching, black phoebe, drawing, I'm alive!, ink

Tags: animation, birthday, efram, flash, snooglezoo, tori

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