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

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

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