Bunnies

Happy New Year, everyone!

I'm looking forward to Spring more than ever this year.  And when I think of Spring (and Summer), I think of bunnies!  Oh, who am I kidding?  I'm always thinking of bunnies.

Bunnies are surprisingly hard to draw if you don't want to draw "real" bunnies but you don't want to draw cartoons, either.  I've been working on a way to draw bunnies I think are just right.  This set comes pretty close for me.  But aside from the style of bunny faces, the motivation for this set was that I really wanted to paint cute bunny outfits with watercolors.  :)

These are all drawn with crow quill pen (Hunt nib 102) and Higgins Black Magic ink.  The watercolors are a mix of Grumbacher and Winsor & Newton.  The paper is Strathmore.

These are all ACEOs (ACEO stands for "Art Cards, Editions and Originals"), so they measure 2.5" x 3.5".  They are available in my Etsy shop here.

Illustration Friday: "Peace"

This piece is graphite on Bristol and in a slightly different style than I usually use.  But I loved drawing this.  Working on the details and shading while listening to my current music favorites was very relaxing!

New Work

Every week I hope that some of the work I've been doing for fun and creativity will fit with the Illustration Friday weekly theme, but lately nothing fits!  And I just keep doing whatever I want, so I haven't had anything to post for IF.  But I want to share what I've been doing!  So here's a collection of ACEOs and sketches that have come off my drawing table in the last few weeks.

"Little Red Heart", ACEO, ink and watercolor

"Blueberry Pie", ACEO, ink and watercolor

"Hello, Rabbit!", ACEO, ink and watercolor

"Marianne Dashwood", ACEO, colored ink

"After the Ball", a romantic sketch

"Moon and Sun", ballpoint drawing

Illustration Friday: "Egg"

A Few Doodles

Hi everyone!  I've been busy with life things and haven't been working on anything I thought was worth posting, but I have been doing little drawings in my sketchbook.  I wanted to check in here and say "hello", so I'll go ahead and post a few sketches.  These are all drawn quickly in ballpoint. I'm liking ballpoint more and more!  No smudging, no sharpening, no stopping to dip a pen!

Illustration Friday: "Whisper" (With Process)

Mother Nature whispered, "It will be all right, little one."

I really wanted to do an optimistic sort of illustration this week.  This is a crow quill drawing on Canson bristol board.  The piece went through several sketches and line work practice studies, so I saved my scans and stages as I went along for a long-overdue process post.

Thumbnail sketch, approx. 2"x3"

Traced and revised from enlargement of thumbnail

Revisions in Photoshop

Digital line study over final sketch

Further work on the digital line study

Trying out a border

Final illustration

Illustration Friday: "Whiskers"

I've been working on this just for fun over the last few days and was excited to see it would work for Illustration Friday's prompt this week!  It's dedicated to all those, including me, who are trying to get a little exercise over the holiday season.  Good luck to us all!! 

Available as an art print, cards, t-shirts and more here.

Illustration Friday: "Book"

Bunny's back, and this time all he wanted to do was relax with a good book.  Poor Bunny!

Illustration Friday: "Crooked"

Just in time with a last-minute post.  I drew this with graphite, scanned it, and then had fun with  textures and Photoshop filters.  The graphite I like best these days is cheap #2 pencils!  They're great and come with their own erasers!

This illustration is available as a print, an iPhone case and notecards here.

Illustration Friday: "Brigade"

And...more bunnies

What always happens to me is that I'll get an idea for an illustration, do a sketch I like, and then not be able to decide how I really want to finish it. After finishing the Illustration Friday "silent" bunny from this week I still wanted to try it a couple of different ways.  Here they are:

The first one was drawn with brush pen on paper from an old Arches watercolor block.  The paper has a lot of texture to it and the brush pen really picked that up.  I think I like this one better than the one I posted for Illustration Friday!

The black and white version was drawn on watercolor paper too because I was planning to color it.  I have a thing for black and white art though, so the color never happened.  The paper is smoother than the other one, Canson Aquarelle, and I used both the brush pen and my crow quill and ink.

Funny isn't it, how different styles of finishing a sketch can have such an effect of the feel of it?  I haven't decided if I'm done with this yet.  If I try anything else I'll post it here!

Illustration Friday: "Silent"

This week's topic made me remember the sweet, silent baby bunnies we had in our yard at the end of this summer.  They were so still that I had to put leaves and sticks next to them so I could hope to find them again in the grass!  I drew this little interpretation with pen and ink and colored it with watercolor.  My watercolor skills are a little rusty but I'll keep working on them!  The posts with bunny photos are here and here.

Added 11/17/2011:  two new versions of the bunny!  Check them out here.

Bunnies...the next morning

I was worried about the bunnies so I went out this morning to check on them and found them all curled up in the old nest spot!  I could only see 3 of them so I hope the 4th one is safe on his own or underneath these cuties.  I don't think any lawn mowing is going to happen in our backyard for several days!  These little guys could be anywhere!  The stick in the picture is one that I stuck in the ground so I could find the nest.

Backyard bunnies!

The bunnies in our backyard nest came out this morning!  So cute.  It's really wet outside after Hurricane Irene and it's still raining so I'm worried about them.  The mom just left them out in the grass (clover patches)!  I guess they'll know what to do.

There are four of them but I only took pictures of three because I was afraid I'd step on somebody as I was trying to get closer.

I hope rain will keep the hawks away until these little sweeties can get themselves hidden!

Bunny 1

Bunny 2

Bunny 3