Hindsight

This is the piece I’ve donated to the ABFE silent auction, which is this Tuesday at BEA (for those unfamiliar with the acronyms, the auction  benefits the anti-censorship group American Booksellers for Free Expression, and is part of Book Expo America).

It’s the first time I’ve done a new original piece for the auction (as opposed to donating a piece of art from one of my books), and I’m hoping people will dig it. I also recently drew a fox on my Mom’s birthday card because I gave her Jane the Fox and Me, and I’ve discovered that foxes are a lot of fun to draw 🙂

I went to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival last weekend, with some friends and a sketchbook. Sheep and sheepdogs are a lot of fun to draw 😉

I recently came across these in a sketchbook and realized I hadn’t posted them. Mind you, there’s a ton of stuff I forget, or don’t have time, to post — but these I had definitely meant to, so here you go.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Alison and I love dogs. But there are lots of reasons why we can’t have one right now. So we were delighted to discover recently that Fresh Pond has not only a lovely walking path, but a little auxiliary pond in which dogs are allowed to swim. And boy do they! So now one of our favorite things to do on a sunny weekend is to go sit by the pond for an hour watching the dogs play, and occasionally making new friends (of either the two- or four-legged variety).

Here are some recent sketches, some from last week, some from yesterday.

Last week:

Yesterday:

I forgot how neat the Harvard Museum of Natural History is. Or to be more precise, I forgot how FULL it is. I remembered the awesome glass plant collection, the mineral room, and some cool fossils. But the collection of animals is MUCH bigger than I remembered. It’s a shame that a few of the large mammals are literally coming apart at the seams, but they have some really awesome dinosaur skeletons. Here’s one example, the Glyptodont.

(ink + Photoshop)

Here are some studies I did in preparation for carving a bird stamp.

This drawing is of a kitsune, a Japanese fox spirit with magical powers. Colored pencil, with a little digital touch-up.

In my quest to improve my horse drawings, I thought it might be a good idea to try a little animation. This is pretty rough, and it’s basically just a copy from Eadweard Muybridge‘s Animals in Motion, but it made me practice drawing the proportion and structure of the horse quickly, and it was also a chance to play with Photoshop’s animation capabilities. Did you know Photoshop has animation capabilities? I just discovered this a few weeks ago, and I really like the possibilities for animating with painterly tools (of the sort you won’t find in Flash).

I’m trying to work on some of my weaknesses, one of which is drawing horses. I can draw them fine from reference, but it’s not always easy to find the correct pose and angle, and the mental model I have of their anatomical structure isn’t very good. Here are a few practice studies, and I’ll probably be doing more in the coming weeks.