Whatever Wednesday: Egret

Sketches of an egret wading in one of the ponds at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden - and catching fish! (We get egrets there pretty regularly in the Summer... Lots of ponds, free fish, why not?)

Sketchy SundayMonday: Happy Fun Smile!

No really. There's a band called "Happy Fun Smile". Here they are in all their happy fun glory... They bill themselves as an Okinawan street band, and they were performing at one of the annual Sakura Matsuri events at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Music was only so-so, but they were cute and enthusiastic...

(And yes, Sketchy Sunday is on a Monday this week... I DID say this week would be messed up...)

Figure Friday: Classic Girl

More life drawing from sketch night at the Society of Illustrators... I thought this girl was very classic-looking, very elegant poses...

Whatever Wednesday... on Thursday...

Yep, it's just gonna be like that this week. Greenlight Summit goes on all week, it's mega-distracting (but come on, some of the speakers are soooo cool! Yesterday George Pratt and Jon Foster and Syd Mead and Ron Cobb were in the house, I couldn't possibly miss that...) George Pratt makes me want to drop everything and go make lots of comics. Damn cool stuff.

Anyway, here's a cormorant hanging out in the Japanese garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden... He was perched on the Torii in the pond looking sketchworthy, though I couldn't get a close view without jumping in the pond (this is from last summer? I think?)

Sketchy Sunday - on Monday

Did I forget Sunday? I forgot Sunday. Whoops. Okay, it's Sketchy Monday, then. I'm in the middle of the Greenlight Summit, so things are waaaay discombobulated, haha... Oh drat next speaker is on. Here, have a cockscomb flower...

Figure Friday: Two's Company

From a recent session at the Society of Illustrators... These two girls were doing dual-model poses most of the evening (it wasn't easy to get both of them down, but it made for some neat poses...)

Whatever Wednesday: Big Fat Bullfrog

Bah, late update again! Been increasingly busy lately... But anyway. Here's a random bullfrog from the archives. Because, why not. This was a really big fat old bullfrog at the Echo Center on Lake Champlain, where they have a bunch of lake critters in aquariums... (This guy was easy to sketch, because he didn't move much... Just sat there being a bullfrog.)

Happy Mothers Day! With Large Rodents!

Happy Mothers Day! (Hi Mom!) Dredging through the archives for something mom-related, I found these sketches of Mom Beaver and Baby Beaver. There's a sprawling beaver metropolis close to our place back home, when I visit I like to ramble there. And on one ramble, I found a whole new dam and house, with a family of beavers swimming around. I pretended to be a tree and got to watch mom and baby beaver swimming just a few feet away. Then Mom tried to groom baby, but baby kept squirming and making little "nn! nnn!" noises... Ha, I guess ALL kids are a problem!

Figure Friday: Squirt Guns

Okay, so these are from a rather weird casual life drawing session in the park last summer... The idea was that we would take turns posing and drawing. But somebody brought squirt guns, so what ACTUALLY happened was we ran around chasing each other with squirt guns. Got a couple of drawings of people posing with squirt guns before mayhem broke loose, though...

Whatever Wednesday: Red Tailed Hawk

Red-tailed hawk looking typically aloof. This guy was hanging out in a pine tree in the park, he held still just long enough to catch a quick sketch... (We have a lot of red-tailed hawks, and being city hawks, they don't mind people as much as country hawks. So sometimes they're good for a pose.)

Sketchy Sunday: Jumping Yellow Spiders

(Okay, more Monday than Sunday, but whatever...) This spider was exploring my arm in the park. It was bright yellow and looked like some kind of tiny sci-fi robot tank, and was jumping all over the place. Someday I'd like to turn it into a giant jumping yellow robot-tank-thing. (Don't worry, it was a LOT smaller than it looks in the sketch! Less than a centimeter long, really...)

Figure Friday... on Saturday

WHOOPS. Yeah, haha, I guess Figure Friday comes on a Saturday this week! Yesterday was a bit hectic, blogging got lost in the shuffle... (Things may be kind of discombobulated in terms of updates until the end of next week or thereabouts. Bear with us.) Okay, a quick rummage in the archives unearthed some more noodlings from Michael Alan's "French Revolution" Drawathon... There was this guy in revolutionary duds running around with a head on a pole, he didn't really hold still for very long but he was fun to draw anyway.

Whatever Wednesday: Head of a Heron

Kinda busy, so it's a quick post today (but look, it's not flowers!) Sketch of a heron hanging around in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The good thing about herons is that they STAND STILL. (Until they catch something.) Unfortunately I didn't have my sketchbook handy, so I had to sketch this one on a random piece of scrap paper - the original has words showing through from the back (cropped out here.) Murphy's Law: If you don't have your sketchbook, you're guaranteed to find something cool you absolutely need to sketch.