I’m drawing whippets over and over again until I get the expression just right for final art.
Sometimes, when I’ve drawn the dog several times over in the ‘pose’ (for want of a better word) required for the illustration, I still can’t get it right. Low growl.
Then I sometimes draw the dog (or cat, or person) in another way entirely and it gets my brain out of the gridlock.
Here’s Lucy telling me to play ball and chill out sister.
Ball anyone?
Our old boy, who sleeps with his tongue hanging out now. (But not with his eyes open…)
Pencil sketch with digital wash.
Time for a 2 minute Big Blob. Not on watercolour paper, and hence no fuzzy edges.
These are some little skunky fellows sketched for somebody’s skunk-loving child. I drew these while we were watching (or in my case semi-watching) Disney’s Frozen on DVD last night.
It seems as though Disney’s latest favourite animation trick is to make all the hoofed animals into pretend dogs, tapping into all the most recognisable and well-loved behavioural characteristics of man’s most popular pet. I’m not saying this is a bad thing. The characters are fantastic. The brilliant white horse in Tangled, was really a horse-shaped hound. (Completely hilarious.) In Frozen, the minor horse character is treated in a similar way, but also the reindeer Sven. Having said that, one of his most endearing moves is to cavort through the icy danglies in the forest in a stiff-legged, pouncy, playful way and getting his antlers all tangled up. I have seen playful cattle make this same move on many occasions so that may well be a uniquely ungulate urge :-)
Do people realise fully grown cattle can be playful?
Well that was a bit of a side-track… No wonder my skunky sketches ended up being stuck in the spiral binding. I clearly had my mind on other things….
A little pick-me-up / warm-up session this morning for Tania McCartney’s 52 Week Illustration Challenge.
(funny how sometimes my post headings don’t show up… It could be just at my end. Who knows? Now that I have typed the heading into the body of the post, no doubt it will come up as a double heading. Oh well :-)Just a simple one. This is for another teacher who loves dogs. (Imagine that!!)
Run! Christmas is coming!
A cutaway book with temptingly delicious stick buried within!
Update: more mud added! (It was much too neat and tidy for such a muddy topic.)
This book has just flown to Italy to live with David and Fran who own the lovely Jack.
Okay, so hopefully your café waiter is enriching your life with insightful children’s book recommendations by now. (See my earlier post here)
But is your vet into book illustration? If not, change to this one. My vet sends me photos of endearing beasts from her surgery. All illustrators need this service.
Here is a Spoodle with very talented whiskers. His name is Charlie and he looks a little glum because he is sleepy after his pre-med. I have heard that he likes to lick feet (and sometimes dig up veggie patches after they have been covered in Blood & Bone;-)
If you can’t see how talented his whiskers are in that photo, try this one.
If you still can’t see, then you must use your imagination. I did.
Stage One… the whiskered wolf
But it wasn’t enough. I mean, really… was it?
Stage 2… some further growth
In for a penny, in for a pound. Might as well have a bit more fun…
I like the irish terrier. If only she were a standard poodle instead, she would make a fine, proud mother for a doodled spoodle.
It has been interesting to spend time making meaning progressively more tenebrous rather than aiming for clarity as would be more usual in my paid work! It’s rather like creating a very elaborate and wandering daydream on paper.
I wonder whether this imbroglio represents the state of my mind lately :-)
My husband Scott is going through his Pencil Period. For the last several months he has been researching famous and infamous pencils on the web and buying samples. This is good because I get through a lot of pencils, and it’s nice to have good ones to use.
So far, my favourite has been the Palomino Blackwing although he assures me this particular pencil is not lauded as the greatest of pencils; it’s only a celebrity pencil… courtesy of indirect (and disputed) links with Frank Lloyd Wright, Bob Dylan, John Steinbeck, Steven Sondheim, Chuck Jones (illustrator of Bugs Bunny) and Igor Stravinsky.
The pencils I am supposed to be wowed by are the Mitsubishi Hi-Uni and the Tombow Mono 100. There are several others too that just look pretty darned gorgeous, like the Mitsubishi Hi-uni HB lacquer pencil. If you’re into pencils you might like to go here for a list of those at the ‘pinnacle of pencil making’. (Alliteration in the service of pencils)
Actually, they all just seem good to me. But I try to helpfully doodle with whichever one he puts in my hand. And the thing most commonly to hand for doodling is Dexter, my ageing Staffordshire Bull Terrier. Last night, when I was required to test 4 pencils, Dexter was in the middle of his nightly anxiety attack brought on without fail by the sound of the bathroom tap being turned on and off as the kids brush their teeth… It squeaks. So naturally Dexter the Lion-hearted turns on his instant-whole-body-shiver and lurks near my legs looking very soppy.
His instant-whole-body-shiver can be turned off as rapidly as the devilish tap in question at the emergence of a tennis ball. Amazing stuff.
Hence, my somewhat facetious images of Dexter, each with the name of the appropriate pencil used to render it.
Stage 1: Tombow 8900 2B – a cheap everyday pencil. This comes in a lovely box.
Stage 2: the illustrious Tombow mono 100 2B (introduced in 1967, reportedly favoured by animators)
Stage 3: the illustrious mitsubishi hi-uni
Stage 4: my favourite – the Palomino Blackwing with a handy eraser on the end. Yaay!
If you want to buy any of these pencils you could go here or here or here. There are other retailers in Australia as well.
Judy Watson 