Recent Greeting Cards

Two cards I've drawn lately, for a birthday and a secret santa gift.  Usually I draw things large and then print them out onto cards, but drawing directly onto the card is very satisfying as well.  I really enjoyed making the minimalist/etched dog drawing; I may have to try out more of those.  The dinosaurs are essentially a coloring book page I drew and then colored in myself (forgetting to scan in the original outline, so I cannot make more! silly mistake).  I ended up taking this photo and pulling the original line drawing out of it through a process I like to call "erasing a lot of stuff."  Hoping to get to do more art this winter!

Great Cow Burden

Interchangeable burden

Running and Dogs and Cats

Another T-shirt drawing that never got used.  It's supposed to be a dog, a person, and a cat lined up to start a race, but the cat is not paying attention.  Apparently it's a bit inscrutable. 

Banana Runner

Time flies like an arrow, fruit runs like a banana with a broken arm.  T-shirt design that didn't end up being used, but was quite fun to draw!

Wine Cork Succulent Garden

Wine Cork Succulent Garden

This fall I found myself with quite an abundance of tiny jade plants thanks to my experiments this summer learning how easy it is to propagate jade plants.  Fortunately, The Culinary Capers had a suggestion on what I should do: Make tiny cork succulent gardens.  There are a number of websites describing this out there, but it is an extremely simple idea:  Take a cork, drill or dig a hole in it, plant a tiny succulent in it (don't forget to water it!).  There are a million things you can do with such a tiny garden; put a magnet on it and slap in on the fridge, put a suction cup on it and stick it on the window, put a pin on it and attach it to your hat, the possibilities are endless.

I don't predict these to have very long life spans (the fingernail full of dirt that they are in will be used up pretty quick) but they are adorable.  I used a chopstick to help push the dirt and roots into the hole.

Update: Two months later it appears to still be alive! At the very least this could be an amusing way to transport tiny jade plants. 

Update: June and it's still alive (over seven months later!).  I'm planting it back into a regular pot to see if it is still viable. 
   

Halloween Dinosaur Skull Pumpkin

Happy Halloween!

Quick Last Minute Halloween Super Hero Shirt: Marvel's Wolverine

Need a last-minute idea for Halloween? So did I!  I was fresh out of ideas for Halloween after what has been a series of very fun and rather elaborate Halloween costumes.  This year I went simple and straight-forward: T-shirt + markers.

Supplies:
Solid print T-shirt
Permanent markers (or better yet, fabric markers)

Find a hero you like.  See how they make their costume.  Convert to a T-shirt.  Very simple, very satisfying.
I did Wolverine from Marvel's X-Men.  If you have to draw a lot, make sure you have a few markers available as you can run through them quickly.  Also, permanent marker, despite its name, does run if you wash the shirt.  Wash by hand to avoid too much running (and to keep other clothes from getting markered), or better yet do not wash the shirt until after Halloween.  

If you are looking for more elaborate costume ideas, see all the posts here

drawing 3D in 2D

 http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2012/06/3d-illusion-sketchbook-drawings-by-nagai-hideyuki/

Saw this on This Is Colossal and wanted to try it out.  So far have just done a couple quick doodles, but it's really fun!

Here you can see I have done two doodles in slightly different planes, so when one looks 'right' the other is slightly skewed.  The bricks in the wall are drawn normally, because the plane of the paper is the right plane for the wall, so the skewing occurs on its own!

If you use the side of the vertical side of the paper as a wall, you can just draw normally on it, and it will skew itself properly.  If anything protrudes from the wall, however, it has to be skewed in the drawing to look correct.  The fire hydrant top is very skewed if you look at it from straight on because it is drawn to look as if it is in front of the vertical plane of paper.  On the right is looking at the paper from the other side, to show how odd the paper looks if you don't have just the right angle.  It is quite frustrating to draw these without any sort of form to keep the paper bent properly, I need to find a good cardboard box or something to make a bent easel.

For another way to draw 3D in 2D, click here

Facebook Graffiti: Food

Some food I've drawn using the Graffiti app on Facebook.  A fun program to use, though admittedly the only computer drawing I've really ever done.  Would probably be a lot easier with a tablet and pen than a mouse, but if you're patient you can make some really nice color blending.  I frequently get bored drawing them before they are finished because of the limitations of trying to use a mouse to draw, but the times I can stick it out they look pretty nice. 

Emu

Emu: Cardstock and Ink.  Bird on the right is showing extra contrast.