Someone to look up to by Catharine

I'm not sure who is the most focused child or dog, they are both waiting with baited breath for words of wisdom! More on my blog

Snow Dog - sruble

The Snow Dog image and haiku I did a few years ago seem to fit the topic this week:

Here’s the haiku, in case you can’t read it in the image:

Big white puppy dog,

Looks just like a polar bear,

Likes to hide in snow

I’ve always liked this big white puppy dog and polar bears too.

What’s your favorite animal that likes snow?

CAKE

Birthday card for the hungry.

Splash

It may not be the most extreme perspective, but for me, it is a fun perspective.

Scenes with Character

I created four scenes with my characters. I'm pretty happy with the first two, but not too sure about the last two. With the last two, I was working outside of my comfort zone: experimenting with the compositions/vantage points. I had a hard time moving the black paint around on the extreme close-ups of the dog, and I'm not sure the character looks the same as the ones in the first two. But, experimentation is how we learn, isn't it? Overall I'm pleased with this experiment!

I didn't really intend to create a duck character, too - But there he is. Right now I'm just calling them "Duck n Dog" in my head.

Doggy?

I've decided to play with this little guy for my character. Having a little trouble with what to call him, though.

Dear Santa

Helping a buddy out at Christmas time. Digger can't write so what's a gal to do. Happy Holidays.

Let it Snow

I actually got the painting done for Let it Snow ... now for Santa's letter ...

Let it Snow

I'm a little behind, sorry, this time of year gets a little nutty. But here are the B&W's for Let It Snow. I'm going to try to get the painting done in the next few days.

A Puppy and A Wild (Chicken) Thing

When I sat down to paint a child or animal character, this is who showed up.

Happy Puppy!

Does he look familiar? I think he looks a lot like the puppy I did for theFrankenstein prompt and the Halloween character prompt and maybe a little like this puppy too. They are all supposed to be the same kind of dog, so maybe they’re different puppies from the same litter.

For the Wild Thing prompt, I was originally going to do an image of the characters from the book/movie, but then I decided to do something slightly different in the style of Maurice Sendak. It took a lot longer than I thought it would to complete this painting, and honestly I could have spent another week or so on it to make it look the way I wanted it to look. Since I have other projects that I need to get done, I cut a few corners to finish the painting. There are parts I really like and parts I wish I could have spent the time to do right. I think I’ll be using some of the techniques and the palette in future paintings to see what happens. So, here’s my wild (chicken) thing painting.

Wild Chicken Thing and Max

The Skydiving Grannie and her dog Chuck

Grannie McGill always loved adventure. All her life. Even when she was a young girl, no one: not boy, not man, nor beast could out do my Grannie McGill. If Billy Barkley could climb the old hickory tree, Grannie could climb higher. If Susie Detritis could build a sandcastle, Grannie could build a palatial estate equipped with sand servants and sand stable. My Grannie McGill is the most incredible, and most invincible person I've ever known. So, I took it real hard when Grannie got sick back during that skorcher of a summer when I was eight and she was eight-eight.

Mother called it the "sickness." Grannie just called it like it was ... she had cancer; now stop fussing. At eight years old, I didn't know much about cancer, except that a bunch of my friends' grandparents died from it. But they didn't have a grandparent like Grannie McGill. Grannie decided to prove to all of us, and probably to herself too, that no cancer was going to put a damper on her life. She had a lot of life left in her, even at eighty-eight, and she wasn't going to squander it feeling sorry for herself.

Grannie gathered all of us together and told us we were to meet her at Abercrombie's field at 1:00 pm and told us to bring the reporters. It was all very mysterious.

At 1:00 pm, there we all stood. Just about the whole town of Odon was there in the field. We stood there looking at each other wondering what she was up to now, when we heard the rumble of an airplane above and then saw two black specks in the sky. What in tarnation was going on ...

Well, you get the point. The headlines the next day read "The Skydiving Grannie and her dog Chuck."

NOTE: I never had a Grannie McGill. I just thought she would be a cool character, and made her up.

Favorite Halloween Character (Mummy) - sruble

I decided to do a favorite character that I like to draw. I love drawing simple ghosts like these from last week, but for this prompt I decided to do a mummy, which is also fun. This is a more traditional mummy than the ones I usually do, so I played with texture in the background and added the little dog.

Oh No!

Alphabet Letters

I'm still working on this one--the jackel looks like a mule deer and the cow needs help! Did you know that there's no animal starting with "x"? If you know of one, please let me know. For a long time now, I've wanted to work on something with an alphabet...thanks for the challenge, Roberta!

Music Lesson

Mom teaches her almost grown pups to sing loudly & with joy! (mixed media: watercolor & color pencil)

Cave

Who wouldn't love a Great Dane Cave?! The more I work, the more I realize good paper makes a difference! The first image (girl pony-back riding Great Dane) was done on fairly thin hot pressed watercolor paper, and the color isn't working well. This image is on heavier medium-rough watercolor paper, and the color seems to work better. Does anyone else fight with their paper? I'm constantly trying to find just the right paper.

Experiment

I fell in love with a huge spotted Great Dane a week ago at the PAWS Mardi Gras parade! The owner was kind enough to let me take several photos, so I've been playing with using him as a character. His little rider is "experimenting" with a pony ride.

Cave Illustration

This is my watercolor illustration for the week of February 8 - 14th. Theme this week is 'Cave'.
So here is my rendition of 'Cave'. I used my dog as a model. My dog is black, but I thought some spots would lend to some fun colors and play.
I am always saying to my dog, when putting my boys to bed, "get into your cave". One particular night my dog Chandler was waiting, hanging out in his 'cave' waiting for my teen son to come to bed. I took a whole bunch of photos and loved this one best, with his eyes looking up at me.

I then came to this Blog and saw the theme 'Cave' and I thought of this image! I didn't have much time this week slotted out for this exercise. So, this painting was started this morning. There are things in it that I would love to fix. Like the back of the crate. Things aren't lined up the way I would like back there and more detail would be put into the whole piece. But all in all, I like what transpired in just a few hours time. This may lend itself well, for a more finished piece at some point.

Debbie Flood

A few character studies

Hi everyone! I have to apologize for not posting and commenting earlier. This is such a great idea and a great exercise, but I have been a bit overwhelmed with some other things and have not been able to dedicate myself to giving life to these characters.

One thing I learned already: keeping proportions is hard! The characters worked really nicely on that one illustration, but when I try to sketch them in different poses (and I had done a few a while back for IF) the proportions were not right. That's where I tend to lose the consistency...

I'll be sure to visit everyone's posts and comment. Sorry if I don't finish this project. In about a week, I'm going to Brazil to visit my family, and I still feel I have so much to do!

Character sheet

I'm actually working right now on a series of new characters for Forget-Me-Not-Tots, LLC, but I don't believe I can share them online while they're in "production."

Instead I think I'll do some studies based on an illustration I did for Illustration Friday some time ago, and that I really, really like. I'd like to develop the characters a bit more, especially the little boy and the dog at first, so I'll be pasting some pencil studies soon.

Because I also have a full-time job, I'm not sure how much I'll be able to accomplish in terms of final illustrations, but I'll definitely try. If not, at least I hope to get some real good practice playing with these characters.