Armadillo

Pentel Pocket brush pen ink and watercolor on Arches watercolor paper 11×7 inches
(To enlarge, click image, select All Sizes)

The armadillo photo I used as a reference was prominently featured in a PC Magazine ad for a laptop computer. The ad said the computer has “Shock Absorbing Design, Hard Disk Drive Protection and a Spill-Resistant Keyboard, all of which better protect you from the hazards of mobile computing.” From my memories of all the squashed armadillos on the roads the last time I drove across Texas, I didn’t get the impression they were all that protected from the hazards of mobility! It’s been a long time since I drove across the U.S., which I’ve done several times. Maybe now that coast to coast it’s all one long walled-in highway lined with the same fast-food chains and big box stores, you don’t see the variety of squished critters from state to state anymore. I guess that’s one good thing about the interstates.

I drew the armadillo with my Pentel Pocket Brush Pen on a piece of watercolor paper I’d previously prepared for another project with wet-in-wet washes of Permanent Rose, Lemon Yellow and Cobalt Blue. I didn’t end up doing the other project so decided to draw on it tonight. I thought I’d done a decent job with the drawing until I set the painting and drawing side by side and saw that I’d elongated his body by an extra third. I’ll be using this image again in a monoprint project so I’ll get another chance to get the proportions right.