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Tuesday, March 28, 2017

art fun with idioms, mimes, birds and cows

This past week has been filled with art and idioms.

To celebrate the first day of spring, I wondered what would happen if the early worm got the bird, and decided that would probably be big news:



The season might be only a week old, but the idiom art keeps coming.

For Colour Collective on Friday, the color was Blue Bell (like the flowers). That doesn't have anything to do with idioms, or mimes, but I decided to use both of those as inspiration for my image:

Read Between The Mimes! (I had to do it. Once I thought of the idea, it cracked me up.)

After the worm and the mimes, the word for Illustration Friday this week is umbrella (which makes sense, because it's spring and it keeps raining). I thought about drawing a rain filled umbrella scene, but then the idiom, "When it rains, it pours!" came into my head, which of course got changed into, "When it rains, cows soar!" And then I thought of Mary Poppins, and well, this happened:


It's a whole herd of the rare Mooey Poppins cows! (with apologies to Mary Poppins)

This will also be my art for Colour Collective this week (the color is Burnt Sienna, which I used on half of the umbrellas - the color looks a lot more red in the Colour Collective swatch than it does when I get it out of a tube of paint - was a perfect color for the umbrellas though).

Here's a close up of a few of the umbrella flying cows:


I've got a feeling it might be an idiom filled season. ;)

There were a couple of non-idiom art pieces this week too. I did two quick sketches for "holidays." (Note: there are holidays that are just a little odd and nobody really knows why they are holidays, but they're usually fun to celebrate and draw pictures for, so yay? these two images are for those type of holidays).

Holiday #1 National Poultry Day - a quick sketch of a character from a WIP:


Still working on her look. Will not be using these markers for the final art (I always forget I don't like these evil markers* until after I've used them - won't happen again ... until the next time I forget)!

Holiday #2 National Puppy Day - another quick sketch (but this time not with the evil markers*)



Happy Spring Everyone!

What's your favorite idiom?

* the markers aren't really evil - I just keep forgetting they don't work like paint, even though they have a brush tip - or maybe I just keep hoping that the markers will magically work like paint if I let them sit for a while - I am optimistic (though not about the markers)

Friday, March 17, 2017

rain during a blizzard and art challenges

This has been an art filled week!

We had a blizzard on Tuesday. You may have seen something about it on the news, or wondered why everyone was talking about Stella (that's what they named the blizzard). We got hit by the blizzard, and then it shifted and we got rain, and then snow, and then rain and snow together, and then snow again. Yay! (Ugh!)

So I made some art:


I even made an avatar out of the image (because it's a bit of a self portrait and shows how I feel about snow, and rain-snow). Check it out on the sidebar.

After the blizzard, it was National Panda Day on Thursday. (Yay pandas!) So of course I had to make some art for that too. (BTW, did you know pandas are hard to draw? They are!) When I was done with the line drawing, I realized some grasses would make a great background. As a bonus, it could be my Colour Collective image (the color is clover green this week):


I had so much fun making the green grasses with my brush markers that decided to make more art with them. It did not turn out well (there's a reason I don't use those markers very often). There was a lot of clover green though, so I scanned it to use as a second Colour Collective image. After scanning, it looked even worse, so I painted over it in Photoshop. It looks much better now:


Today I looked on the  Illustration Friday site and saw that the prompt this week is snail. And then this happened (and luckily it has clover green in it, so it can be a third image Colour Collective image):


That's the end of my art filled week. It started off with winter and ended up with spring ;).

Wishing you all a creative art filled weekend (whatever kind of art you want to make or enjoy, whether it's visual, written story, music or something else)!

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

a pie loving bear coloring page for pi day

Happy Pi Day! (a.k.a. Pie Day) Here's a pie eating bear coloring page to celebrate (+ 5 more new coloring pages too, including - a cat and mouse, a lost sock train, pigs on a combine, kids playing in the sun, and smart alligators):


Ready to color? Click here!

Friday, March 10, 2017

punk rock toddlers and a tiny mermaid waving hello

The Colour Collective color for this week is: Amaranth. I played around with a few ideas and ended up drawing a trio of toddlers rocking out. Unfortunately, one of them was a complete drawing failure and got inked out. I had just enough room on the paper I was using to create a new character to round out the trio.

Since everyone posts their images for Colour Collective at the same time on Friday afternoons (19:30 GMT), that gave me time to check out the Illustration Friday prompt for this week. Luckily, the prompt ties in with the image I created for Colour Collective. The Illustration Friday prompt is: punk.

My little rockin' toddlers love punk music! A coincidence? Probably, but still true. Here they are with their newest member (the one in the middle) and their new song:


The toddler on the left is my new avatar. She is not impressed with the singing talent of their newest punk rocker.

In other news, apparently it's winter again. If you'd rather think about warm tropical weather, or just need a friendly bit of happy today, this tiny mermaid is waving hello to you:


I like the tiny mermaid, but my favorite character is actually the octopus with an attitude:


Also, in case you didn't notice, there's a shark hiding in the picture too.

Whether you're rocking out, dreaming of warm weather, making art, or plotting your next book while shoveling snow, I hope you have an awesome weekend! (Even if you're not doing any of those things, I hope you have an awesome weekend doing whatever it is that you're doing!)

Saturday, March 4, 2017

scoop for an underwater reporter, a leaping sheep, and a snowman

The Illustration Friday prompt this week is: scoop. My first thought when I saw the topic yesterday was a reporter getting a news scoop. And then I wondered what it would look like if that reporter were a shark. A real live shark in the ocean, trying to interview an elusive subject. (Creativity is strange sometimes, or maybe it's just my creativity that's strange.)

Here's the underwater news report, and the moment that my shark reporter gets the scoop:


After drawing this, I realized that scoop could also refer to a scoop of ice cream. So of course I wondered if the octopus would hide as a cherry on the top of an ice cream sundae to avoid the shark reporter. Might have to draw that later! Until then, here's a close up of the Ocean News, in case you want to know the scoop!



When I went to post this today, I realized I hadn't posted my leaping sheep pictures from last month. The first one below was for Valentine's Day, the second one was for my first Colour Collective image (the color that week was Opal Grey). It's basically the same image, but with a few differences that make a big difference in the final look:

Sheep In Love:


Leaping Sheep:


Can't decide which one I like better. They're both fun for different reasons. Which one do you like better?

Finally, here's a snowman to brighten your day. I drew it for my aunt Thelma, who loved snowmen, but was not fond of winter: