Sketchy Sunday: Falcon and Goshawk

Quick (late) update... More raptor sketches from the same batch as last week, this time a bunch of tiny doodles of a northern goshawk and a peregrine falcon. (Sketched at a raptor rescue center quite a while ago.) Personally I think falcons are among the coolest birds ever.

Sketchy Sunday: Restarting With More Doggies

I'm back. The big deadlines and heat waves of Summer are cleared away, so I guess I'll try reviving this blog... Of course there are now Autumn deadlines to contend with (and, apparently, another heat wave, what the hell?) so I think I'll try for twice-a-week updates for now to keep it manageable. Sundays and Wednesdays, approximately. Let's kick it off with more dog doodles, shall we? I've got a ton of those, accumulated over many Summer days of hanging out in the park. See cute doggie, sketch cute doggie, that's me!

Sketchy Sunday: Rough-Legged Hawk

Okay, quickie (late) post and then I gotta send out my taxes (why do I always get my taxes out at the extreme last minute...) And with taxes out of the way hopefully I can scan some more stuff and get back to regular posts. Now that the weather's warming up I've got a mess of hanging-out-in-the-park sketches accumulating...

Meanwhile, some doodles from the archives: this is a rough-legged hawk sketched at a raptor rescue center.

Sketchy Sunday: Samurai Silliness

Super quick live-action doodles from a performance of the "Samurai Sword Soul" improv group at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (Yes, I have a ton of sketches of that troupe. They're incredibly goofy but also incredibly sketchable.) Here's a bunch of samurai doing their samurai thing... (More sketches from the same performance here.)

Life studies for the Calendar of Tales

Here's a batch of life studies I did for the soldier dude in my crazy January illustration for Neil Gaiman's Calendar of Tales project... (The second illustration here.) Mostly I was trying to sort out the hands and foreshortening and lighting, since you can't see most of the figure in the final. (And, yeah, that's basically me in a leather jacket trying to look badass with a deadly remote control.)

Oh, and while I was doing these a bird landed on the fire escape outside, so of course I had to stop and doodle the bird in the margin...

Sketchy Sunday: Samurai Sword Soul Goofiness

Doodles from a performance by the exceedingly silly improv troupe "Samurai Sword Soul" at one of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Sakura Matsuri events... I have no idea what this guy thinks he's doing. General cavorting, soon cut off by a sword-wielding samurai, by the looks of it.

Sketchy Sunday: Snowy Owl

Whee, it's snowing in time for Christmas! So sketches of snowy owls might be appropriate, no? This guy was stalking around on big fuzzy feet on a log at a raptor rescue center. I think he was somewhat outside the usual range for snowy owls. (These were done in the same session as the owl series I posted earlier... So yeah, sketched several years ago. Still cute, though.)

Sketchy Sunday: Lake Frogs

Frogs! In a lake! Sketched from a kayak... (Sunday, Monday, whatever... It's Labor Day weekend, it doesn't matter.)

Sketchy Monday: Bird on a waterfall

Bah, late update again! But I have an excuse... I was trying to finish a painting Sunday and I was ON A ROLL, man, couldn't stop to post updates. (Now I see a dozen things I need to tweak in said painting... But progress was made!) Anyway, here's a random doodle from the archives for Sketchy Monday. An unidentified little bird sitting right in the middle of a waterfall at the Botanic Garden.

Now I guess I should make more progress on this app I'm supposed to be working on...

Sketchy Sunday: Ninja Doodles

Ninja doodles from my massive archive of Sakura Matsuri sketches... (They have this festival at the Botanic garden every year, and I've sketched it most years. This stuff piles up.) These are from an extremely goofy performance by "Samurai Sword Soul"... How to even describe this group, I don't know. It's sort of slapstick improv Japanese theater in bad English with samurai sword fights. A LOT of samurai sword fights. Which are immensely fun to sketch. Anyway, here's a bunch of ninjas leaping around in flowing robes (I love those guys,) and an evil lady swaggering around and trying to kill people. There will be more Samurai Sword Soul Doodles, because I have a ton of these.

Sketchy Sunday: Random Fish Doodles

Some random fish doodles from the archives, sketched at the Echo Wildlife Center on Lake Champlain, where there are many local fish in tanks. The first one is a gar, I'm not at all sure what the others are...

Sketchy Sunday: Tiny Upside-Down Bird

These are tiny doodles of a tiny bird that was hopping around in the vines and branches over a pond in the park. It might have been a kingfisher, but I'm not sure. It liked hanging upside-down and nibbling berries, so maybe not a kingfisher. (Okay, still on some kind of delayed Summer schedule here... Sunday, Monday, whatever... )

Happy Fourth of July!

Happy Fourth! Figured I should find something appropriate to post, so I went rummaging through the archives and eventually dug up some old sketches of bald eagles... The larger ones are reeeeally old sketches from a raptor rescue center, the one with the pine tree is from a pond in Maine where a pair of eagles was sitting in a pine, and the tiny doodle is from somewhere on the banks of Lake Champlain where we spotted an eagle hanging out on a dead tree. The wild eagles were mostly drawn from too far away with binoculars... Someday I'd like to draw some wild eagles up close, that would be awesome. Sometimes I can do that with hawks, but never with eagles so far.

Sketchy Sunday: Hunting Hawk

Back on schedule, I think... Here's a few sketches of a hawk hunting for small rodents in dense ground cover, sketched in the Botanic Garden (last year or the year before.) First he flew down and apparently missed whatever he was after; then he wandered around in the ivy with his wings spread out, trying to find his prey; finally he tried to pounce on something and flew back to his perch. I think he was a young hawk and fairly inexperienced, he didn't seem to be very good at this hunting business yet. (Also included is a doodle of a random slouching squirrel that was on the same page.)