Mindless March!

There are times when I sketch, I do so with no incentive to achieve anything other than to scribble in a sketchbook. When I do this, ninety percent of these mindless doodles go nowhere and are not what I would consider worth anything. However sometimes, a doodle comes up that is worth pursuing and I will take it, clean it up and colour it in.
There is one of those little semi-precious stones amongst the rubble that I have attached with this blog post.
Can you guess which one I'm going to take further?

Tuesday, March Ninth, Two Thousand and Ten!

While I was working at the library this afternoon, I looked up from my laptop to look out the window and watch a three crows chase another crow around the library's back garden. They were flying so fast and weaving around the conifers so quickly that I thought to my self the one being chased is going to fly into one of the library windows.
So, as soon as I thought that, sure enough, that crow bashed head first into one of the windows! Fortunately, the crow only received ruffled feathers and probably hurt corvidae pride because it flew away.
And I will try not to premonish while watching birds in flight! :o

One more thing! Even though this happened on the weekend, I am now an official member of CTN! It's a great site full to the brim with magnificent artists! So please, pop on over there and check out Creative Talent Network dot com!!

The King and his Advisor.

Well so far, I would say this one is finished. Perhaps someday, I'll take a look at this one and decide to add colour, but for now I'm going to enjoy the simple tones caused by the dodge and burn tool from Photoshop!

BTW: the background was a creative commons image found here at Creative Closeup.

Happy St.Valentine's Day to all my ShadowBird Fans!

Doodles, Pencil Work and a Wee Test

Being in-between gigs can give me great opportunities to push the boundaries of my skills. Some of you may already know that I go bonkers over beautiful artwork where colour comes secondary to drawing's elegance. However, if the colour looks poorly planned, it can upstage line and ruin the whole message.

I apply this philosophy to my own work and doing so keeps me on my toes with constant improvement.

Right now I'm intrigued by combining coloured pencil with odorless mineral spirits and using that technique with limited watercolour. I have already worked up a wee test doodle using coloured pencil, odorless mineral spirits and felt tip pen(the little bird above), but I want to try it with pencil under a light watercolour wash. So I doodled up the two below for a second and a third test and if this works, I'll use this technique with the finished drawing at the bottom!

So wish me luck!!!!

~p~

New Look, New Attitude!!!!!

For the last couple of years, I have been navigating the world wide web without control. I see something online that I think I should be apart of (or a something suggested by someone), I jump aboard without plans! I have this thought that whatever site or blog that I create or join, doing so will help me network the ShadowBird/Sagawood idea. Not to mention my commercial art career.

Well, all this has done, is keep me from the things I love to do such as visual story writing, painting and just being plain creative! I was spending too much time mucking about online and not accomplishing much in reality. Thinking that spreading oneself all over the online artworld is a good idea is certainly........ Not a good idea!

So I'm cutting back! Keeping this blog up to date will be my focus for the time being. Once that has become a habit, I'll head on over to some of the other sites that I have signed with and un-sign myself. Not all of them but the ones that really don't relate to what I do or to the people who are interested.

Now here are some sketchbook and work in progress drawings fresh from the scanner!

Ciao Bellas and Bellos!

Oh yeah! I changed the look of my blog! It's more me! Flowery and faded (only in a vintage sort of way).

Let's get the Imagination Nurons Connecting!

For this year's Christmas Card, I decided to create an illustration that might make one ask why is there a unicorn with it's horn lopped off and pitched in the snow?
Well, if you do think that, perhaps you could share what you think the story's all about here in the comments!
Have fun!

Wishing everyone the best for the holidays!!
~Pat Ann~