Category: Illustration Friday

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Colored pencil art Drawing Illustration Friday Sketchbook Pages

Captured: Illustration Friday

Captured by TV

Little TV screens were recently installed in the elevators where I work. The company that programs them has their name proudly displayed: “Captivate TV”. I call it “Captive TV.” The programming includes snippets of news, bits of celebrity gossip, and advertising for stockbrokers and lawyers.

I always liked elevators as a place to have a few moments of peaceful empty time. I also enjoyed observing the interesting ways people behave socially (or anti-socially) on elevators. Sometimes I like to start a conversation and briefly get to know other humans who work in the giant hive called the Kaiser Building in Oakland. Now everyone stupidly stares at Captive TV.

What really irks me is that half the screen has the supposed news and the other half has advertising which always has something bouncing, moving, flashing. It’s almost impossible not to look at it. If you try to ionly read the news, it stays on the screen so long that you naturally continue to your right to read the blinking ad. So I try not to look at the screen at all. Now instead of peacefully taking a few quiet breaths as I transition from one part of my day to another, I spend my elevator time annoyed.

This was drawn on Canson Extra Heavy Vidalon tracing paper. I started with pencil first since I was composing an idea from my head and wasn’t quite sure what I was doing. I inked it with a Micron Pigma and erased the pencil. Some of the ink came off and smeared so I decided to color it with colored pencil to hide the slight smears. My watercolor pencils were handy so I used those. Then I tried adding water. Ooops. This paper isn’t designed for water. When I was done I realized I should have scanned the drawing and colored it in Photoshop. Oh well. Still no sign of stopping at 75% finished. There’s always the next drawing.

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Drawing Every Day Matters Illustration Friday Watercolor

Clean & Cold (IF & EDM)

Cold-wet-dog

This week’s Illustration Friday cue is CLEAN and the Every Day Matters’ challenge is COLD. I wanted to tie the two concepts together to make one picture. It worked (I think) when I remembered how cold and wet I used to get when cleaning my old dog with the hose after she’d rolled in something nasty and smelly. No matter how cold it was outside, I wasn’t bringing that stinky pooch in the house for her bath. I cleaned her with the hose and she showered me right back.

My thinking went like this: dog’s nose (cold, but not necessarily clean), floating ice cubes in bath water (clean AND cold but a waste of water to fill the tub), a towel turbanned self-portrait after a shower (clean, but not too attractive), a root beer float (cold) and an emptied glass (clean but I’d have to go out and buy ice cream…and eat it!)…and on and on until I came up with getting cold cleaning a dog.

Ink and watercolor (a bit of opaque white on the hose spray) on Arches watercolor paper.

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Drawing Illustration Friday Watercolor

IF: Opposites – Heads and Tails

Cats Head Tail Opposite

This week’s Illustration Friday cue is “Opposites” so here are the opposite ends of Busby and Fiona. I was teasing them with a kitty treat to get them to pose for photos in the first picture, and they were standing up to look out an open window in the second. I wonder if I need to put in a background so you can tell they’re standing on their hind legs.

I started with pencil on 8 x 11 Arches watercolor paper, then added a little ink with a Micron Pigma and then painted with watercolor.

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Drawing Illustration Friday Watercolor

Illustration Friday: Sacrifice

Sacrifice Sheep Lambs

Who understands sacrifice better than mothers? Or lambs?

But No, No, No, the mom is NOT about to sacrifice the baby for the stew pot! I hope nobody thinks I meant that. It’s supposed to be a scene of motherly love and sacrifice but I guess it could look like one of those Britney Spears or Michael Jackson child-endangerment moments. But really, Mom’s not endangering her baby–she’s just trying to cook while holding it. Really, moms are always standing at stoves holding their babies on one hip. I think that’s why my hips are a little crooked. Too many years of holding tots on my hip while I cooked, vacuumed, did laundry, etc.

Ink & watercolor on Arches watercolor paper.

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Drawing Illustration Friday Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Illustration Friday: Skyline (Sky “line”)

Skyline
This week’s Illustration Friday challenge is “Skyline.”
Did you get it? Is it too silly? In case it only makes sense to me, the idea is:
Corny pickup LINE…in the SKY…ergo, SKYLINE.
Ink and watercolor in my sketchbook.

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Illustration Friday Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Illustration Friday: Sticky

Sticky

This week’s Illustration Friday challenge is “Sticky” and I thought of lots of things less icky than this, but I couldn’t resist. Sorry. Ink and watercolor in sketchbook.

 

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Illustration Friday Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Illustration Friday: RAIN

Frogs wc
Drawn in ink and painted in watercolor.

Tree Frogs PS
Drawn in ink; scanned/colored in Photoshop.

When I was in Hawaii (Kauai–the wettest place on earth) many years ago, it was raining tiny tree frogs as I walked under a tree. I thought RAIN was a strange topic for June until I remembered that even though it almost never rains in the summer in California, it does everywhere else.

I tried coloring in the line drawing with Photoshop (first time I tried that) and with watercolor. Which do you like better?

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Drawing Illustration Friday Life in general Watercolor

Illustration Friday: Dance (for the polar bears)

Polar Bears Dancing

Polar Bears: Dancing on Thin Ice

Polar Bears are at risk of extinction due to global warming-related starvation (they can’t get to their food all spring and summer as the ice retreats). If the current rate of ice shrinkage and related weight loss continues, bears may become so thin by 2012 (SIX YEARS FROM NOW!) that they may no longer be able to reproduce. “Once the population stops reproducing, that’s pretty much the end of it,” said Dr. Lara Hansen, chief scientist, World Wildlife Fund. Click here for some surprisingly easy and simple things that individuals can do to make a difference (on the “Inconvenient Truth” Climate Crisis website). Let’s do what we can before it’s too late!

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Drawing Illustration Friday Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Illustration Friday: Jungle

Leaf Cutter Ants

Leafcutters-at-work
When I was in the rainforest in Costa Rica several years ago I saw what looked like a long green ribbon trailing through the jungle. It turned out to be leaf cutter ants that chew off and carry pieces of leaf that weigh at least 20 times their own body weight–like a human carrying a tractor. Leaf-cutter ants don't eat the leaves–they use the leaves to feed fungus that they cultivate and eat (yum). They live in colonies with three to eight million ant buddies. A friend of mine who lived in a small town in Guatemala for a year had problems with leaf cutter ants coming into their little house and stealing their vegetables piece by piece. Since the jungle had been cleared in their area, the ants had learned to shop for their greens in people's kitchens–made easier since there were no refrigerators and the produce was sitting out on the table. And I thought I had an ant problem! (Ink and watercolor in Moleskine watercolor notebook.)

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Drawing Illustration Friday Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Illustration Friday: Portrait

I did this today while I was sitting under the hair dryer at Circle Salon in Kensington waiting for my hair to turn bright copper red. Julie said my picture makes me look much older than I really am, but that's because I got so interested in all the lines and wrinkles when I was drawing. Then she got annoyed because she was ready to wash the dye out of my hair and move on to her next client but I wasn't finished with my drawing. So she took away the mirror I was using. I love drawing! I love my red hair too!

Portrait-Hair-Dye

Here's the photo I took of myself under the dryer. I guess the good news is I don't look as bad as the painting, but the bad news is the painting doesn't look as good as the photo.

Hairdye real photo