Parrot

5x7 watercolor pencil drawing in 11x14 mat, $40

I bought myself some watercolor pencils recently. It seemed like the perfect way to unite my love of Prismacolors and my new interest in watercolors. I dabbled a bit tonight on this painting of a parrot (that I photographed at the San Diego Wild Animal Park). I think there's some potential here if they are mixed with other media. Anyone out there have any tips for working with these?

Lately I have been into these quick small paintings. I don't usually have a lot of time to work so it's much more satisfying to be able to complete a project in one sitting. These little 5x7 paintings and drawings are the ticket.

Birds of Marina del Rey

Birds of Marina del Rey, 5" x 7", pen + watercolor

When you take a sailboat out of Marina del Rey, you happen upon a "breaker" of sorts (forgive me for not knowing proper jargon, I'm not a sea-person). This breaker is a mound of rocks COVERED in birds. It's quite a spectacle. So I drew it.

Buy prints of this piece here!

Orange Blossom

This is the illustration I spoke of. This is a special gift for my dear friend Leigh Ann and her husband, Jeff. I don't want to get into the gory details, but I will tell you that the orange blossom is a symbol of fertility, love, and togetherness. The bee is fertilizing the flower. So it's sort of a good luck charm for them.

Geeky Fish

I decided to participate in Illustration Friday for the first time in over a year. Just another excuse to create something in my sketchbook. The topic this week was "Geeky" and it made me think of the benefits of being a non-conformist. After some clever googling, I found an interesting tidbit about male guppies: Most have plain old spots, but some have brilliant color and design to them. These guppies have an advnatage over others: Not only do they attract the females better, but predators seem to overlook them. It's good to be different.

This is pen and gouache in my Moleskin sketchbook. The "geek" glasses were one of those last minute additions... why do we all think "glasses" when we think "geek?" I couldn't resist it.

Iguana

I woke up still feeling ill so I took the day off work. After sleeping most of the day and and consuming some chicken noodle soup, I was feeling well enough to finish my iguana painting. I got a little more bold with the watercolors and ended up with some interesting textures, some good and some bad (what my dad calls "oozles"). I'm definitely learning-by-doing, and it's fun.

By the way, these little watercolor experiments are about 4 1/2" x 7".

The Raven

My Girls Who Draw assignment for "Literature." This is for Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven".

birdies of the 405

Every morning, these birds are posted up on the same section of the wall along the 405. It's like they are there to watch the spectacle that is the Morning Commute in LA. I was going slow enough to take a snapshot as I drove by, then drew from that. This is sort of an old drawing, but I haven't had time to do anything fresh and new and fun because I leave for a cruise TODAY and had a lot to take care of before I left.

That being said, I will not have any posts for a week or so - but hopefully I get lots of good sketches in on my trip!

more class time doodles

a puppy (from one of our practice files in class)


some students and notes.

I learned that I am incredibly interested in typography. I really enjoyed looking at and drawing letterforms. They are so carefully designed... and they end up so tiny in the end.