Bunnies with colour

Doodles for today

By the light of the harvest moon

I've never used half-tone in Photoshop. I like the manual half-tone feel...not too sure about this one.

A Vegan Christmas

Richard prepared a lovely Christmas dinner for us yesterday. Vegetable goodness and savoury Tofurky! Today we can make Tofurky sandwiches...yummy!


We made some condensation critters on the window too:

Strawman

A little more tweaking is in order.

Winter Wonderland

Winter wonderland, Vancouver. Apparently this much snow fall is rare--20 years in fact. I'm used to lots of snow being born and raised in Toronto...but boy it sure is a treat to admire nature when the snow is still white and fluffy after a full day (less people, no gravel and salt or snow plows). Maybe 'life under cloud cover' ain't so bad after all!

Animal Contract #5 Preying Mantis

I don't like people today

Drawn with tablet straight into Photoshop.

Victorian scrap copy

I drew this, scanned into Illustrator, traced and live paint bucketed.

Yummy sweets

Mummer, mummers, mumming

Children were visited by mummers or "inquisitors" on New Years Day. Adults knew who the strangely costumed adults were, but the frightened children did not know the inquisitors' identity, whom were needling them to confess their misdeeds. Certainly this custom forced 'bad' children to rethink their behaviour for the coming year. The children who were good, were sometimes given gifts.

Snow, some say it is rare in Vancouver...and lithops

Before the snow I bought some lithops. I tried to keep lithops in the past but I killed them. I spoke to a knowledgeable lady at Wanted who told me it sounded like I had watered them to much--which I did, they only need about half or one tablespoon of water a month.

Lithops are amazing succulents, see how they split to reproduce. In their natural environment they do not grow above the soil as much, just their caps show to simulate stones (hence the name lithop). I first saw lithops in Dublin's Botanical Garden in 2004. I looked at the display and thought, well...what am I looking at?, it must be an unfinished display; but then I read the identification cards and started to see through their amazing camouflage.

Animal Contract #4 Swine

I'll clean up those pigs some day.

Animal Contract #3 Frog

Red shows up badly in blogs. I drew this, scanned, lightened in Photoshop, transferred to Illustrator-traced and paint bucketed.

This past week I've had a shot of inspiration, or at least the desire to practice, practice...not too sure what has come over me.

I used to draw, then stopped for 3 years, was very rusty earlier this year when I picked it up again, but I'm getting better.

I've also been working on a painting, but it has been sitting around for the past 3 months waiting for something to happen.

Does a leaf fly?

Jean Ignace Isidore Gerard aka J. J. Grandville

Jean Ignace Isidore Gerard (13 Sept. 1803 - 17 March 1847 [died from a septic throat ailment], French caricaturist, known by the pseudonym J. J. Grandville. Probably my favourite artist. All images are from the Dover publication, and the last image is from this website. Grandville's first wife used the drawings which she deemed inadequate as curl papers for her hair. Imagine that! This may explain his drawings of a woman disguising her demon or skeletal figure behind a mask. The first image is a self-portrait. Unfortunately, Grandville's life was tinged with tragedy. He was melancholic and known to stoop at 40 as though he was 90.

Chipmunk and violin

Lighthouse #1

Hopscotch gal

A little shoddy...but what the hay! Drawn and coloured in Photoshop.

Cat and Bass

The previous post 'Bats and Birds' was drawn using a Wacom tablet straight into Photoshop (the circle and rectangle around the bat was done in Illustrator)...weird experience. This picture was drawn using the tablet too, in Photoshop. And then copy and paste into Illustrator to trace finer lines: I'm really wobbly and weird with the tablet pen.

With this drawing I used my memory of an example of the popular Victorian practice of silhouette-making...for some reason I like drawing or painting cats with instruments. I also like the solid colour afforded with Illustrator, I like flat 2-D artwork, and marvel at artist's who are good at perspective, like my friend, Judd Brucke.

Note: I don't think technical skill is what defines an artist; an artist uncovers and reveals the truth of a thing or person graphically. However, good art, perhaps, is a combination of both, which is rare indeed. While I'm on the subject, a good friend gave me a good book about 10 years ago by the painter John Sloan, called Gist of Art.

bats and birds

Think, think, thinking

Hope you had a nice day