underwater dining

c. 1998

As a child I loved to concoct whimsical scenes of underwater life (and of course many other things) and I'd imagine my own kinds of angelfish, sharks, coral - whatever, and all in the brightest, most vibrant colors. I'm most amused by this one because I can still remember which fish of each group I had drawn first just by pinpointing the one that's most carefully drawn. There would have been a second drawing after this one with all the fish inside said 'restaurant', but I guess the urge for that slipped away as the inspiration for other drawings surfaced.

I'll be posting some of these old drawings because I recently found a huge cache of them upstairs and, when I'm in a production slump I like to look at how I've evolved and remember what it was like being carefree and drawing all my afternoons away.

oak

January 26, 2010

I carved this on a 3"x4" piece of linoleum. It is based off of an Ansel Adams photograph of an oak tree. The original photograph is amazing, and I tried to capture the luminous quality of it through the carving. I can't quite say I succeeded, but I am satisfied in the very least with the shadows of the tree.

arowana!

January 18, 2010

The arowana of the freshwater bony fish family Osteoglossidae is one of my favorite fish, because its strange oblong yet thick body, covered with huge armor-like scales makes it look prehistoric. Plus they come in a large array of colors, which I failed to show in this sketch, but instead began to convey with texture.

various ♥s

January 18, 2010

My sister got me into drawing parts of the human anatomy - specifically the skeleton and muscles. Which is much more valuable practice than drawing hearts, but I found an image of many different anatomically-correct hearts that I was compelled to draw.

westie sketches

January 18, 2010

When I want to draw but my creative juices are lacking, I instead sketch to improve my line quality, going off of references rather than my imagination, which I believe is better than sitting there waiting for an idea to come. Today was one of those days, and I worked on quite a bit of these kinds of drawings.

I definitely need to practice rendering fur.

peace on earth

December 23, 2009

A portrait of BB and Max play-fighting that I painted for my stepdad for Christmas. He loved it! Shown with reference photo (taken by my sister) and my workspace.

rover

November 2, 2009

Another thank-you note. Reference photo taken by Tommy. I'm trying (somewhat unsuccessfully) to improve my line quality...

say thank you with westies

September 23, 2009

I am sending someone a thank-you note, and I didn't want it to appear blank. As the recipients are proud dog-owners themselves, I did a sketch of my Westies, I hope they like it!

through a pinhole

September 4, 2009

Pinhole camera studies done for studio.
Shot & developed in darkroom, scanned & inverted in Photoshop.
Haphazard layout in line with the nature of the photos taken.

languishing

But still here.

(hastily scribbled)

July 15, 2009