Alphabet Series - Pt. 2

Here are the remaining sketches for the second half of the alphabet. And today I had a blast picking out some of the fabulous papers that will create the backgrounds, so now it is time to start on the canvases. (As with any art project, this is the scary part - when the loose sketches and ideas begin to take "final" form. But it is only paper, paint and canvas, and I can always get more if I "mess up," so push the fear aside and go for it!)

Day 28

pen and ink, 4" x 9", reference image, ~2 hours

Day 25

Swimming with sharks... somedays it can amaze you and somedays it can scare you.

watercolor, 8" x 8", reference images, ~2 hours

Day 16

A little bit of Texas for spring.

colored pencil, 4" x 9", reference image, ~3.5 hours

Day 13

The closest I have been to giraffes on the savannah is the Animal Kingdom at Disney World or zoos around the world, but they still seem to have a kind of gangly grace.

mixed media (marker & watercolor), 8" x 8", reference image, ~2 hours

Day 8

Sometimes, when I start a piece I have one vision in mind, but by the time it is finished, it has come out quite differently. This is one of those pieces. I originally imagined creating a fox in black and white using patterns, but in the end, it ended up as a contour drawing with a colorful background.

mixed media, 4" x 9", reference image

Day 2

I wasn't sure what I would come up with for Day 2. I worked all day and had to regroup to get in a more creative mode. I turned to one of my stand-by techniques, meditative doodling, which is calming, intuitive and creative all at once. Typically I begin with a square divided into spaces by a sweeping line. In this case I started with a more detailed contour drawing, but all of the patterns are intuitive, though based on owl markings.

pen and ink on paper, 8" x 8", reference image, ~3.5 hours