Dappled Light Study

I sketched out a  horse head trying to practice dappled light effects. It's very subtle in the pencil drawing but in the painting I'm working on it will be enhanced by the colors in the painting. I'm pretty excited.. I'm getting closer to starting the actual painting! =) I'll post a thumbnail of the sketch for the painting later on.

I'm having so much fun drawing horses.. I think perhaps I'll do a few finished pieces with hroses and see if I can really study their anatomy and get it right.

 I did some experiments of birds. A mockingbird and a cardinal. There are some real problems with the anatomy of the  mockingbird, but I think the Cardinal came out okay.

The color seems to be okay, as always it's hard for my to come up with backgrounds that are simple but interesting.

This cake is no lie

I made this awesome cake the other day. It was two yellow cake layers with homemade butter cream frosting and strawberries layered inside and out. Yummm. It was wicked good. It only lasted 2 days in my house. I wanted to post it here because I made the cake to have fun decorating it and I think it came out alright! Maybe next I'll Zentangle^® a cake.. =) Mmm, I'm thinking chocolate swirls.

New Opportunity

I followed my boyfriend to a local small-scale pet shop the other day. They have all sorts of interesting animals; lizards, snakes, fish - some small and some very large, birds, small mammals, aligators, etc. He was looking for a volunteer opportunity, I was hoping they'd let me stick around and draw the animals. When I asked to hang around while my boyfriend volunteered the co-owner was surprisingly excited. He offered space on the wall for selling prints on consignment, he even offered to let me set up a pet portrait booth! I don't think I'm good enough to do pet portraits on the fly, but maybe I'll get there. For now I'd love to get the opportunity to paint the birds and sketch the lizards.

The painting above is one I did of Amber, the Red Tailed Hawk. I painted it a couple years ago when we had live birds in our classroom and I think it's time I revisit bird portraits.

Zoological Illustration

I love painting animals. It hasn't been my focus persay, but I really do enjoy it. I found an illustrator today, Evan Barbour, today who does beautiful animal illustrations. His birds are phenomenal! About those blue jays... =) He says he started with watercolors but has since introduced other materials as his technique has evolved. You can see his website here:  http://evanbarbour.com/

His website is also an inspiration. It's always good to see websites that really work just as well as the art.