#213 The Seal

Animalia: Day 148

The Seal

Tomorrow: the sheep

#212 The Sea Turtle

Animalia: Day 147

The Sea Turtle

Bonus turtle:

Tomorrow: the seal

#211 The Sea Scorpion

Animalia: Day 146

The Sea Scorpion

Also known as a Eurypterid, another Ordovician / Cambrian fella.

Tomorrow: the sea turtle

#210 The Seahorse

Animalia: Day 145

The Seahorse

I based this seahorse design on a Dutch 17th century 

ornamental style referred to as the auricular or Kwab style.

The most famous example is this 1614 ewer by Adam van Vianen:

There was an exhibition about Kwab at the Rijksmuseum in 2018,

and an associated symposium, during which I drew the seahorse.

Kwab is very melty and bodily. It's basically 17th century

H.R.Giger w/ a hint of Cronenberg, but prettier.

Still, lots of bodily forms, some pretty sexually charged,

some very sea creature-y, others kind of demonic.

Some examples from the exhibition:

And here are some other doodles from that Kwab symposium:

Tomorrow: the sea scorpion

#209 The Salmon

Animalia: Day 144

The Salmon

I drew this a long while back, but didn't scan it until last week,
along with a batch of other drawings.

Salmon: surprisingly colorful.

Also delicious.

Tomorrow: the Seahorse

#208 The Sailfish

Animalia: Day 143

The Sailfish

And another I drew while on family vacay:

Look up sailfishes! How is this a real animal?!?

Every image you find online looks photoshopped/CGI?

(definitely not) Tomorrow: the Salmon

#197 The Raccoon

Animalia: Day 140

The Raccoon

So as I mentioned yesterday, this is one of a series of three drawings

of forest creatures on different sorts of vessels (plane, submarine, boat).

This was originally going to be a space ship, but I liked it as a sub better

because I could fill it with more animals. But the raccoon is still kind of 

floating in the way he did in my space ship sketches. The More You Know.

I did make one noticeable change in the actual drawing where I moved

the spotlight not he ground so that it lined up better. Cheating happens.

Tomorrow (not really sure what "tomorrow" is, due to time change going from Paris to Ky): the Rhinoceros.

#193 The Pufferfish

Animalia: Day 136

The Pufferfish

Dat smileeee. More texture brush here for the coloring.

Tomorrow: the Quetzalcoatlus

#192 The Pteraspis

Animalia: Day 135

The Pteraspis

Devonian period jawless fish with a hard shell front half.
I'm not really sure how its mouth works.

Also, I rediscovered some texture brushes I used to use,
and so you will be seeing some of those in the next few.
Also, I am pretty proud of the water texture, which was
done with a regular brush at low opacity, and then filtered
with blur and sharpness until it looked as it does here.
Surprisingly successful in its verisimilitude.

Tomorrow: the Pufferfish.

#189 The Porpoise

Animalia: Day 132

The Porpoise

The porpoise. For me, feels like another kind of boring one, but people 

seemed to really like the Porcupine, so maybe folks will like this too.

In any case, the next few days will be filled with ones that I think

are a lot more exciting and fun, so look forward to that!

Tomorrow: the Pronghorn.

#187 The Polar Bear

Animalia: Day 130

The Polar Bear

My first memory of an art museum was going to a museum in

elementary school. I don't remember what or where the museum was

(Lexington? Louisville? Cincy?), but I remember our assignment was

to seek out an artwork we liked and copy it. I picked a drawing (or was it

a print?) of a polar bear. A very simple line drawing. I remember copying

it closely and noting the curvature of the back and the hump where the

shoulder blades protrude. I was very young. But it has stuck with me,

very clearly, for some reason or another. It was not a sitting polar bear.

I can picture it very clearly. In any case, I don't think I have drawn a

polar bear since then. And for some reason the task seemed daunting.

But then I did it. So here's that.

minimal background.

Tomorrow: the Porcupine.

#186 The Platypus

Animalia: Day 129

The Platypus

Sketches. 

In retrospect, maybe I shoulda tried one with super long limbs.

Kept colors simple.

Did a big batch of scans so Animalia is back on for a few days.

Tomorrow: the Polar Bear.

#179 The Phronima

Animalia: Day 127

The Phronima

The phronima is a deep sea thing with lots of leggies and things.

They're translucent and small and wiggly so in pictures and videos

it is hard to tell exactly how many legs and thangs they have.

They also eat and hollow out the bodies of salps, or barrel-

shaped plankton, and then use the carcasses as vessels in which 

they lay their young.

Here is a vid of a phronima.

Supposedly the xenomorph in Alien was partly based on them.

Not sure if I believe it, but the head does bear some resemblance 

to the Alien queen.

Reversed the image for the colors, and did them pretty quickly,

but I am rather happy with how it turned out. I don't think I have

done this for any of my other animal drawings, so that's exciting.

Tomorrow: the Pig.

#171 The Otter

Animalia: Day 120

The Otter

Silverpoint on terraskin, again. 

(I tried to capture some Tracy Morgan-ness in the otter at top left.)

And then traced and colored digitally.

Tomorrow (probably actually!): the Oviraptor.

#156 The Opabinia

Animalia: Day 116

The Opabinia

End of Semester = New Post!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Did this while proctoring a final exam for Art and Context: The Cold War.

Not sure how much I like the coloring,

it has grown on me since yesterday.

Anyways, the opabinia was an awesome sea arthropod 

that lived during the Cambrian explosion.

Pretty awesome.

It didn't even look back at the explosion behind it.

ba-dum-chi.

They had five eyes and a prehensile Mario piranha plant mouth.

Anyways, check out the Burgess Shale, it is pretty great.

And it is the source of some of the other animals.

Though, not sure if nautiloids are anachronistic, since they're late Cambrian.

Anyways, spiky guy at bottom is the wiwaxia and the 

guys in the background are anomalocarises. 

Scale is way off, ignore it.

I would add a link to Nausicaa's flying bugs if I could find one.

Anyways, also, found some good burgess shale fan art:

Dapper anomalocaris.

Burgess Buddies.

Sweet Animation.

More Animations.

Enjoy.

Tomorrow(metaphorically): the Opossum.

#153 The Odobenocetops

Animalia: Day 114 

The Odobenocetops

The odobenocetops was a whale kind of thing with big uneven tusks

that grew out of its face and pointed backwards.

It lived a long time ago.

Did the pencil drawing first, and didn't like how boring it was.

Big head small body, we seen it before.

So then I did a little sketch at the bottom of small head big body,

and ended up liking it a lot more.

Colored. Went for a purply blue, 

cause we don't really know what colors they was.

Tomorrow: the Okapi.

#151 The Octopus

Animalia: Day 113

The Octopus

doodles. Octopi are hard to draw satisfactorily.

with Colors.

Hope y'all like it.

Tomorrow: the Odobenocetops.

#149 The Oarfish

Animalia: Day 112

The Oarfish

This one took a long time and I'm not real happy with it.

Trying to figure out shadows.

Mignola has 'em down.

O WELLZ.

At least some animullz is gettin drawn.

Tomorrow (whenever that is) : the Octopus.

#139 The Newt

Animalia: Day 111
The Newt

Hadn't planned on doing another drawing for a while,

but I was doodling during class and got this newt more or less done,

went back and touched up the face while looking at actual pics of Newt.

Still, not a very good likeness, he needed to be frowny,

but I wanted him to be dumbly slack jawed smiling.

Also, he needs a bigger forehead.

Anyways, TOPICAL. Swoop!

Americaaaaaaaaa!!!

Newt spews this all the timeeeeee.

OBAMA!

Blahblahblahblahblah.

Couldn't decide what was a good speech bubble,

so I went ahead and did em all.

Choose yer own adventure!

Tomorrow(nopeeee): the Oarfish.