I did a quick cowgirl job for another client this week. Here is a rough drawing of the cowgirl, done without picture reference. I like the rough the best because it really has a nice flow. The final drawing was done after some picture reference and the concept pose was provided to me by the client. It will be placed on a young child's t-shirt.

I digitally inked about 42 characters for Cartoon Network this spring. That and being a stay at home Mom prevents me from really getting serious about painting. I am currently back on the religious toy figurines again.

Ellie the Elephant

I was helping Greg design some plush and started drawing this character. Once I started, i could not stop. I don't usually draw this style and thought I never could. A lot of the concepts are from our 6 year old daughter.

"Wrecks" is based on our neighbor's dog, whom we walk almost every night. The "real" Rex is somewhat a terror, a Jack russell "terror", who, in the same day, picked a fight with another dog who was on a walk, pooped all over the field where he was running, and bit our daughter and gave her a big bruise on her fore-arm. He loves Greg and wants to live at our house.

Another warm and cool exercise; same image as the tiger down below.

Warm and cool color sketch exercises. Acrylic on canvas paper.

Tiger, acrylic on canvas paper.

I painted my sketch. (Compare to drawing below) Acrylic on canvas.

Meet Disney Consumer Products Artists and talk to them about their gallery work and blogs: Vince, John, Jeff, Ryan, and Rich, in Costa Mesa this weekend.

At it again: What makes a big cat look like a big cat? Studies for general surface anatomy and shapes.

Just cranked this out. I went back into the archives, found this previous little thumbnail, worked it up, using my favorite prismacolor pencil: tuscan red. It has such a soft, buttery line. I was going thru some old drawings; drawings i meant to plus out but ran out of time. Compare the old cat drawings to this one. What a world of difference! It pays to practice!

I returned to an eohippus sketch (see blog archives) i did a while back and painted it for an exercise. I imagined a dark red brown creature who could easily slip into the dappled shadows in a mist filled forest. This is acrylic on canvas paper with several layers of gloss medium inbetween the paint.

Experimenting with paint: I'm at the end of a freelance deadline and for some reason, my head started hurting today. I have been on the computer a lot, inking and this has never happened before. I took a painting break and finished this one. I have been working back and forth with paint layers and gloss layers. Nothing beats the fun of pushing real tools around.

If something looks familiar, I did steal the pose of the photo of the real liger at the bottom. I tried to paint it, but the head on pose looked awful; so I repainted over the face by using my notes from my sketchbook and made it into a 3/4 head portrait.

Paintings of the past. I love painting small mini-portraits, especially people of color. Homeless is done on canvas board with acrylic, and the grouping is done with acrylic on board. It is a small piece.

Oscar Grillo, you were right. I looked up Ligers and this is what it had to say: The drive-through wildlife park, (Wild Animal Safari in Pine Mountain, Georgia), is believed to have the country's largest concentration of ligers, housing ten of the massive cats.

Since 1999 the park has bred its male lion and female tiger many times, producing about 24 cubs.

Not all of them have been healthy, though.

"We've had 3 out of 24 that, for all practical purposes, were normal but developed as they grew older some kind of neurological disorder," Hutcherson said.

Autopsies didn't reveal what caused the cubs to develop "head shakes," so park staff "chalked it up to a genetic defect," Hutcherson said.

Pictured here is a liger, Patrick, who came from a zoo in Illinois. He is now at Shambala Preserve near Acton. Ligers were brought to the public's attention after they were mentioned in the movie, "Napoleon Dynamite."

Again, thanks for your thoughtful and humane comment, Oscar.

Some paintings done a few years ago; different styles. The monochromatic one was done when I was learning to paint; hence the stiff photographic style. The only part I really like was when I loosened up with her collar. The other is one of my very favorite paintings because of the lush colors and looseness of the brush--something that was foreign to me at the time.

wow. I finally just got blogger to work again. Back to the big cats again. I've done this one before, but i played with the brushstrokes more and "loosened" up. I like this one much better. Very limited palette; burnt umber, naples yellow, burnt sienna (for the redder tones), titanium white and raw umber in everything. A limited palette will help me establish values.

Some old paintings I did in the past. Alanis was actually painted in my sketchbook.

Found these on the internet. These are
"ligers" a mix between a male lion and female tiger and claims to be the largest cat in the world, up to 800 pounds. I just could not get over the size of these animals. And to think La Brea boasted of having even larger big cats in the pits, and Asia and Europe, some of the largest in the world. These photos give me a feeling of the size, power, awe of the big cats of the past. To think they came even larger than this...!

Found this page in an old sketchbook. This was done about a year ago at a friend's house. Horses were the first thing I learned how to draw when I could hold a pencil.

Some roughs I sent to MGA. Apparently they now want an inteview. Since I have a very active 5 year old daughter and sketch her a lot, these drawings came out naturally. I have several fun sketches of Sienna and her friends that I have done over the last couple of years. My sketch books are chock full off'm.