this is a drawing from wendling that i watercolored. i am purely interesting in painting techique.

some thoughts on Claire Wendling:

If you want to learn about drawing animals you go to the best sources.

Claire draws lots of detail--goes from the specific to the general. I'm not too gung ho on the way she simplifies her beautiful complicated drawings. I struggle with simplifying also. When i was at feature, it would blow me away the way the animators could really capture the essense of an emotion or action with a few lines. Most animators i worked with went from the general to the specific.

I will wager she is a leftie. Most of her animals point east. Most of my animals point west, I am a rightie. It is comfortable to draw this way, since that is the direction of the arc of my hand.

She is a thinker. She will draw the same subject over and over again at different angles, different directions, playing the "what if i drew it this way, game", not content with just one solution.

I have been drawing animals from her sketchbook over and over, not to copy her work but to internalize it. I study general surface anatomy--the next step will be a quick sculpt, to really gel those shapes in my head.

the colored lions are done in acrylic, real fast.

check out Tao's new blog!

more work on leoPardine. at the top right corner in color is a drawing made from the movie The new world with colin farrell and Q'orianka Kilcher. his costume, all the costumes, are fabulous and functional, and this scene towards the end of the movie, where the indian is walking in gardens of London, counting the white people, is gorgeous. so these leopardine sketches are inspired from that image. Later, i traveled to the Natural Museum of Science in La, where in the children's discovery room, there were a heap of real animals furs and among them--check this out! a real full bodied skin of a puma! I quickly put in on-the way LeoPardine would wear it--head on my cranium, paws on my shoulders and the feelings transformed me. This is what Leopardine would feel like--i was her in those few minutes. Next time i visit, i will get a picture since i did not have a camera! After i put the skin down, there was a family from Japan who eagerly rushed to put the skin on as i just had--a skin where as no one even knew it was there--and was taking photos of their kids in the skin! Others were lined up behind them! See what i started? hahahaha It just takes one idiot to get people going!

bottom right is a water color sketch of a native from the movie, also. top left column are drawings of my daughter in a pool next to me (in the water)

top:portrait of what LeoPardine could look like. done in acrylic a few months back, forgot to post. i really miss the real randomness and freedom of a real brush loaded with paint.

Just finished this tonight for a designer friend. Had lots of fun with it.

Again, big thanks to John Quinn(now in London, see blog) who emailed me and told me how to link more people up.

This one is dedicated to Dan, who created a character called Kathy on his blog. His comment is On Monday, july 3rd. Dan, I drew these and thought of you. There was this 2 year old who had a real passion for water. When She first got into the pool, she was wearing these floaties which looked enormous on her--plus some floaties in her swim suite--one of these days i'm going to redraw her into a character with all these floaties! It was great inspiration for a character, then she wore her dad's sun visor which also looked enormous on her.

Concept, drawing, digital color for religious toys

this wraps up the WB presentation. I am new at package design and this one is the third one i did. The art director wanted a simple generic package.

detail. For original graphite design, see the very first post, dated March 20, 2006, way at the bottom.

Finally, in color! This was an early drawing of LeoPardine; in the future the pattern on the fur will change. Is it done? I could noodle this for several more days...but it is time to move on...

check back for original drawing, March 2006 at the bottom; the very first entry. thanks!

This one was the other deadline this month. I am supposed to be doing some animations for the fire, golf flag, trees. Won't be able to get to that until I finish the WB presentation. I am not great at perspective; and Greg actually did a lot of drawing here. It is for PGA winner Bob Burns website and will be featured on the Golf Channel when completed. It is my first digital painting for a client. The web site is: tridian.com\hickory.

Finished this morning. More to go...

One of several illustrations I am doing for freelance right now.

On the same note, I forgot to mention I met Wendy Pini, co-creator of the amazing ElfQuest series--here! In Valencia! I had read the original series back in college, and was so blown away, I was so dissatified with reading any other comic. Her stories had such depth and power back then, that even today I remember most scenes like it was yesterday. Helluva read.

Wendy, is without doubt, one of the most kindest people I have met on this planet. She highly encouraged me to keep plugging away with my project. I was on a high all day. She was very inspirational to the young people, telling them they were our future writers of tomorrow and would make herself available to speak publicly in their schools. She wears her heart on her sleeve. You rock, Wendy!

Big thanks for artist John Quinn for driving over to my house on a hot Sunday to help me sort out some blog issues and questions. It has been actually John who encouraged me to blog. Luna, the leopard at the top left (See entry below) is no longer a turquoise blue! John has been most helpful answering questions and surprised me by being a real good teacher; which in my experience, for artists to be good verbal communicators is somewhat unusual. He is also an ambassador of sorts, welcoming art students from the East Coast, and introducing them to the Industry in Ca. Hats off to you, John. You are, like many of us, trying to balance a professional life and family, seemingly, one of the hardest to do in this field.

Check out his blog (see Link) and his refreshing and biting visual observations of the city we live in...

wow, it has been awhile...my mom died in Feb, and this month i have been incredibly busy with 3 freelance projects, 2 which are big and are due at the end of this month. I have actually been working on this composition for some time now, many redrawals. there are so many juicey ways to do this one! LeoPardine's first action scene! Her companions are Luna and Sulee and the big one is a Devil Cat. In order to do this one better, I needed to find reference of big cats in motion. The library books I got were all the big cats laying, resting, posing. I went online and found an amazing website called Randy Miller's Predators in Action, which led me to a film he worked on, 2 brothers. I have been sketching both from website and movie and need to post some of those studies. "Devil Cat" was hatched before finding these treasures, so this drawing does not reflect that work...yet. Devil Cat desperately needs a background, which, i think will be snow in the redwoods. I have also been playing around with some great story ideas. We'll just say that LeoPardine will be about Reincarnation and the Afterlife.
Uh...again, I do not know why Luna turned blue! She is grey in Photoshop!

These were drawn from the Natural History Museum of Science yesterday. Drawing in semi darkness, jostled by kids, parents, my kid running rampad with another kid. I feel anxious, guilty, pressured so the work does not flow. But it is a good exercise on concentration and abbreviated drawings. I look for gesture and shape, how the flesh gathers on the frame or does not. These animal drawings take no more than five minutes, even the ones from books. I learned to draw this way from Paul Wee, at the associates in arts college when I first moved to S. Ca. I had never seen anyone draw the human figure so lyrically as Paul before moving out here and he was a patient teacher as well as very encouraging and inspiring. thanks, Paul, for bringing my skills up several levels. Did you know as a member of the Natural History Museum, I can check out animal specimens from the museum? I can borrow a full size sabor tooth cat skull for two weeks! Maybe next time! Keep practicing!

More from books. I did these a few nights ago and it was pure heaven. Finally, after struggling so many years, drawing, drawing, drawing, i am reaching a level of confidence, so much so that i no longer so much struggle, but enjoy, experiment, have fun. It is effortless, flying without wings. But i am no means where I wish to be at! The next step is a little more practice, then drawing my own cats with LeoPardine.

Drawn from library books. These are very sketchy and are unfinished, yet I am so pressed for time to do other things..practice, practice, practice