Fuzzydragons

And part two of all that I read in July :)   Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness by Bryan Lee O'Malley My rating: 3 of 5 stars more like 3.5, improvement on the last one, but still feels like something is missing or the artist is trying to hard to draw hipsters :p Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together by Bryan Lee O'Malley My rating: 3 of 5 stars meh :p nothing more to say really Scott Pilgrim Vs. the Universe by Bryan Lee O'Malley My rating: 3 of 5 stars ok, at this point I think I am just reading these to finish the series. The story has gotten a bit too silly and seems to drag on Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour by Bryan Lee O'Malley My rating: 2 of 5 stars Such a promising start and then this :/ too cheesy for me and I liked the movie :p Rat Queens, Vol. 2: The Far Reaching Tentacles of N'rygoth by Kurtis J. Wiebe My rating: 4 of 5 stars The story felt a little weaker than the first one but I thought the art made up for that ...

So I don't think I will finish Moby Dick by the end of the day, so here are all of the books I read this month. Managed to read 13 books/graphic novels so will break this up into two parts. And as always, book recommendations are always welcome :) The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin My rating: 4 of 5 stars lots of tech talk, and lots of physics, (which I don't really understand lol) but all that makes for a great read if you make it through all of it :) and aliens, and not the little green men type :p The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde My rating: 3 of 5 stars Beautifully written just felt like it was missing something, more to the plot maybe?. *shrug* The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North My rating: 4 of 5 stars Groundhog Day but in book form? I did enjoy this tho, love books that deal with time, and I found Harry to be a likeable character, just not a lot of common sense for a few lives :p Doomsday Book by Connie Willis My ...

Looks so odd without any shading, but coming along nicely and almost at the stage of the last time I tried this photo before I noticed the crack on the plate. John tempered my etching tool so it should keep a sharp point for longer now between each piece. def. don't want to pick up the wrong end and stab your finger with it, feels like getting scratched by a kitten.

James Horner passed away last week, so thought I would post something he wrote for my favorite movie :)

Putting in the main feathers and then I will add shading to the whole bird. Yes his beak was actually hooked like that, and I liked it enough to keep it in the etching :)

This is one of two etchings I started today, the other being the horses I previously talked about. But with the horses I really want to get more done on it so the art will actually have a horse in it since there is a lot of foreground and background to the horse piece before the horses show up. I have actually already etched this image, but before I finished it, the plate cracked so wanted to try again and with a slightly bigger image.  Might also improve on what I had done before, since practice makes perfect.

I am pretty happy with this :) The fixative made all the darks really pop and darkened the background colours for the better. Drawing this has made me realize I really need practice with fabric. So that is what I am going to do, was going to practice drawing glass, but can try to do both this summer :) Wont be able to do much else after jaw surgery so might as well practice. Now, to etch something :) *edited Added a grey scale image. Could be darker in some areas, but too late now its been sprayed to seal the pencils :)

I think I had  only been using coloured pencils for about a year when I did this at 16, so still learning and it shows lol but we all have to start somewhere.

This weeks colours for The Summer of Color are 2 purples and a yellow and this is what I did with them. Not my favorite colours so really racked my brain trying to think how I could use them and which bird to use. Decided to go with a juvenile Golden Eagle since I don't have any photos of a purple bird :p I think I prefer the black background, the yellow seems to stand out more against it. Which do you prefer?

Seven according to the scan numbers at least. Need to darken the really dark parts of her face again, no where near as black as they should be. Should be as dark as that patch of black on her right side and then finish her neck and its done, yay lol The bandana doesn't look that bad now that I changed the green slightly and it isn't the first thing your eyes go to anymore.

Yeah maybe should put a language warning on these since I tend to swear a bit :p

Rolina said in a previous comment that she doesn't think she has seen a picture of Sky where her tongue is not lolling out lol :). Took awhile to find one since she usually does have her tongue sticking out, except when she is stalking something, whether that is one of us or a ball. Has no interest in sheep, ducks and geese on the other hand she will try to herd into a circle but then gets pissed off when they just go back into the water.

Is adding the green bandana a mistake? Time will tell since it still needs work, but I'm posting this anyway. And the main reason is that it shows that we all make mistakes when it comes to art. It doesn't matter if you have been creating art for a year or 50 years. Everyone will make mistakes, even if they don't admit it and then they are just lying :p And if the bandana still doesn't look right in the end, I can always crop the rest of the image to fit in a mat.

I think I have another one somewhere, and hope that I do or this isn't going to be finished until next week *crosses fingers* Its almost like painting for me on this paper and these pencils, I should probably try actual pastel pencils next on it since that is mainly what it is for. I have a few sitting around so will have to come up with an idea for what is left of the paper. Need to darken the values on this because when you turn the picture grey scale, you can see I need to shade the area around her muzzle more and the shadows on the tongue need to be darkened as well. Handy tool turning your drawing into grey scale, really does help see the parts of a drawing that still need work.

Art from 1997 and another dragon :) Its not a Pitt pen, looks like its too hard and scratchy looking, maybe a Micron pen? This was when I took the time to draw belly scales on dragons, now I'm too lazy :p Has "Fantasy Theme 10 pts"  written on the back, I'm thinking it was to do with a list of drawings we had to do with different themes on them for school and we had to finish them all for a grade.

This looks so odd at the moment with the big tongue. Her tongue is actually so big it doesn't fit in her mouth and she tends to bite it when she catches a ball :/ Can't scan this until I spray it with fixative and let it dry, and its hard to get a decent photo of this time of night. This is def. one I am going to have to frame and put on the wall to protect it from smudging even after being sprayed.

So for Summer of Colour Week #2 , the pallete given was 2 pinks and an orange :) So of course with pink being the main colour, I needed to do flamingos :p People have been asking me how I make these. I use Adobe Illustrator and its not that hard, just tedious if there are a lot of little sections to colour and change. And I probably don't do it the "proper" way you are supposed to but it works for me and I will probably get shown the "proper" way in Uni since I am taking Graphics :p

For being the first time I did an etching of a cat, its not bad. Try, try, try again :) It looks fluffy so thats good and there is some differently shaded fur to the coat pattern.

So I am going to try to participate in the Summer of Colour 5 and decided to focus on digital work and take the opportunity to learn more skills in Illustrator and Painter. You have 3 colours you can use and thats pretty much the only restriction I think. So this is my first work for it and of course its a bird :p

Well you win some and you lose some :p I will finish this, just to see if I can improve it any, but obviously I need to work on felines more. The only thing is that I don't have that many reference photos of felines to work from that I took and with etching I really prefer using my own photos or drawings for them. Will have to make sure when we go to the zoo to try to get some shots of the cats there so I can practice.

For Sale Yes its early but posting it early to give people enough time to order a print if they want :p I did a lot of Canadian based art at Uni, so there will probably be more posted  lol

Must have been going through an emo phase in 2003 :p

Aged 10 or 11 here, and says Ontario Place on the back.  Why I picked a bathing suit with a zipper on the front I have no idea :p

Need to round the inside of the ear but at least it looks like a cat. Not sure if it will be a calico one when finished, but one step at a time.

This is either going to turn out all right, or be a complete mess lol I haven't done a feline etching/engraving before, and its a calico as well so no idea if this will work. Of course I couldn't have picked a cat of one colour, no I had to go and find one with 3 colours to try to recreate. Need to fix the left eye, make it more 3D and then on to all of the fur :p

Need to fix the highlights on the right eye, at the moment her eyes look lopsided even tho they aren't :p Glad I have more black and white pencils as this paper eats them up like they are candy. Really hoping tho that I don't run out of Cloud Blue coloursoft since no one around here sells them in open stock and I refuse to order one pencil online since shipping would probably be as much as the pencil lol

Yay finished this little guy, I think he/she looks fuzzy enough :) (and sorry for the watermarks on things lately, its mostly so if I post something to pinterest , the post has an artist name to go with it) I saw someone posting on a linocut group on Facebook, they were using an old mangle to print linocuts. I think it would work to print these with a little modification, but of course there are none for sale around here and they are not something people still keep around. But I will keep looking until we get the bottlejack press built.   For sale I've been going through the prints I have left and listing them in my Etsy store to see if I can get them sold, if not, they will probably end up on the walls in the house, but much rather have someone else buy them of course. I only have one of the eagle heads above for sale. The plate melted after we tried cleaning it with carb cleaner, so don't do that lol So no more will be printed ever because the plate was des...

Because of the size of the plate, its a little hard to get all the detail I want, so really have to pick and choose the most importants parts to etch so the plate doesn't end up one solid black print :p Still needs some shading and to finish the lower right, but then this is done and on to the next. Saw maxillofacial about my left jaw joint, and it needs to go, so its getting replaced as well...yay...:p Told me it should be done this summer, so I hope the weather is good so I can sit in the back/front and spend the time reading, or maybe drawing But this does now mean I need to start working on our summer project which includes reading a book of our choice and designing a poster for it. Need to really get started on that in case I don't feel like working on it after surgery.

Says 1985, London, (Ontario,  not the UK) on the back of this photo. My sister on the left, my dad's brother in the middle and then me. Dad's brother broke his neck and ended up paralyzed and in a wheelchair, not 100% sure how he broke his neck because I get different stories from anyone I ask. But anyway, he ended up doing a lot actually and living a lot longer than the doctors thought he would. Still painted with a paintbrush on his forehead. John found an article awhile ago that mentioned him and what he had done, but can't seem to find it, will keep looking. This is obvs. the same place as the last photo, dad's mom's place since we are wearing the same outfits and I still have pigtails. Which I still do a lot these days :p