There was this video that came to my attention earlier this week about an unusual little bird from Peru. The Spatuletail Hummingbird is this tiny little creature (endangered, of course) with only four tail feathers. In the males, two of those four tail feathers grow long and have these dark blue-violet paddles at the end (the spatules). Imagine a peacock’s tail, how huge and beautiful and totally, impractically unweildy it is. Now imagine that on an itty bitty hummingbird. The males don’t fly much, and when they do, it’s only for a few seconds, and it’s just to impress a lady (of course!).

I love hummingbirds, and I’ve been playing around with ink and watercolor in this little spiral-bound watercolor book lately, and the spatuletail hummingbird kind of captured my imagination, so I had to have one for myself. I wish I hadn’t done the leaves- it would’ve been a stronger composition- so if I do it again on nice paper I’ll take them out. But go watch the video, because they are really amazing.

Tags: art, bbc, doodles, hummingbird, ink, painting, power animals, spatule hummingbird, spatuletail hummingbird, watercolor

I originally planned on starting my 24 hour comic tonight, but I’m going to sleep and start closer to dawn. I like the idea of seeing two sunrises during this process- something kind of symbolically appropriate for the project, since I’m doing this to initiate myself into a life of making art constantly.

Tags: 24-hour comic, comics, ink, journal comic, pen, pencils, timing

I’m doing a little series of portraits of the women of Oz, starting with Ozma. It’s an exercise to give me something to draw, and to practice some new materials. I like the way she came out, but I had a funny little mishap:

So I’m working on my inks and things are going well. The paper’s not great for the croquil pen I’m using- it tends to bleed a little and the nib scratches it up, but I’m proud of the control I seem to have. I’m starting to get distracted by the idea that I could sell the series on Etsy, when suddenly, BLUT! My hand skips and I drop a huge perfectly round circle of ink right on the edge of Ozma’s eye!

You know that sound you make when you burn your hand on the stove? That kind of inwardly-drawn scream? That’s the sound I made.

You can actually still see the blob in this picture- I covered it up with gouache, but it’s still somewhat transparent. I meant to take a picture of the damage because I was immediately aware of the lesson the universe just dropped on me, but I decided to refocus and just finish inking instead, which was the original purpose of the whole thing. So I did. And I’m still happy with it.

I set out to do this set as practice. Not to sell it, not to make Deathless Art, but to work on a particular skill set. So I worked on it, in spite of the mishaps. I feel good about that. I won’t be painting this one in real media- I’ll do it on the computer because the gouache will interfere with the watercolor I had originally planned to use.

Tags: croquil, dip pens, drawing, ink, oz, ozma, practice, works in progress