It's been a busy painting month for me over here. I'm working on a couple new designs for stickers, as well as a few things just for fun.
Above is a finished piece that I started *years* ago. I inked it and liked it too much, and then I was afraid I'd ruin it. I have a tendency to do that a lot, so I'm trying to learn to kill my darlings. My motto lately when I sit down to paint is, "Let's ruin some paper!" I'm always happy that I did. :)
Once I finished the little fox, I remembered I had this piece half-finished as well. I'm embarrassed to admit that I bought this block of expensive, fancy Arches watercolor paper as a present for myself for my birthday two years ago, finally started working on a piece on the first page, and just never finished it.
So I decided to sit down and finish this one, too, and now I have a freed-up block of fancy paper to ruin!
I'm trying to experiment more with my style right now, and a big part of my method for that is drawing from life without any attempt to stylize. It's a good way to gauge where my skills are in various parts of the painting, and it gives me a chance to see where I naturally like to push reality into a style (like the hair in the above portrait).
The portrait with the elf ears is based on a photo of Nya the Fox on Instagram (I didn't even have to add the ears!), and the eyes study above is an amalgam of some photos I found when I did a Pinterest search for eyes.
I like to add graphic elements to these sorts of studies (like the ghosts and the heart), since it gives me a chance to experiment on a basically finished painting that I'm not afraid to ruin.
I've had a few wholesale clients request dog stickers, so I've been playing around with a few different dog breeds. I did a Great Dane and a Corgi a few months ago, and I've had this idea for a six-legged flying Doxie for a while now. It was so fun to bring it to life. I wanted to experiment with unnatural fantasy colors and didn't realize until I was finished that I colored her exactly like my favorite Wuzzle.
And finally, a little study of a bat with a flower. I spend so much of my time drawing cats, I want to get the hang of other animals, too. Bats have a very interesting anatomy, so this was a really fun study to do.