AHHH!!!! A G-G-G-GHOST!!! Naw, it's just a skeleton of a Huia bird. This, along with the other skeletons, were drawn at the Cave Museum in Waitomo, NZ. Waitomo is famous for it's GlowWorm caves, look it up.
This is a Large Bush Moa, a flightless bird which is now extinct. They were huge, like twice the size of an ostrich.
Here's a little lamb, a possum skull, and a cave weta, from which I'm guessing the studio got it's name. They're giant cricket-type insects with long, long legs.
Ah, the famous kiwi. I wasn't aware that there were so many different types of kiwi, but there are. These were stuffed versions at the Te Papa museum in Wellington. It was one of the coolest museums I've ever been to with amazing exhibits, and to top it off it was free! And not like once a month on a Tuesday free, but every day.
These koalas in Australia, despite their appearance, are really alive! They sleep most of the day, and most of the time in funny positions.
A gull-type bird looking for some food.
More birds.
An extinct wren at the museum.
These lions were at a small wildlife park in Rotorua, NZ. It was awesome because there were about ten of them, 2 big males, 2 big females, and the rest young ones, and they were all in this circular open-air enclosure with only a chainlink-electric fence between you and them. When they would come by the fence you were literally right next to them. The best part was the feeding time. A man brought a wheelbarrow filled with meat, guts, hearts, everything. He called each of the lions by name and just chucked the meat over the tall fence. The dominate females got most of the meat. The males weren't eating because the females were in heat and so they would just follow them around. And when the males got too close to one another they would start fighting. Right there in front of me about 10 ft. away to lions swatting at eachother. Unfortunately my digital camera ran out of batteries right before I went to see the lions, so I ran and bought a disposable camera from the gift shop. I'm getting the photos developed as I type, so we'll see how they come out. At one point when most of the people had left, I did witness two of the lions having sex. I ran around the enclosure to get a picture, but by the time I got there it was over. Oh yeah, I also got to pet a cute little lion cub and I got a picture. So once I get that back maybe I'll post it.
Lots of farm animals in NZ. Sheep mainly.
I like these ducks.
Captain Cook's pigs and a deer I believe.
Some awesome sharks from the Sydney Aquarium.
Deep sea creatures in the Te Papa museum.
More sketches from the aquarium in Sydney. An awesome river turtle and a Gippsland Water Dragon.
So you can see I like drawing animals. It's good practice and it's fun! hooray!
So I'd thought I'd take you, the viewing public, through the amazing adventurous process of making a painting. But I've found that even before I start this journey, I've already messed it up. The first step I went through was finding a frame, but I don't have a picture of it because this painting was a Christmas gift for my mom and I gave it to her. So I found a frame that I liked. It was kind of ornate, off-white wood with some sea-green paint strokes scattered about. Since I have the frame in front of me, I know what size the painting needs to be, and thus I sketch at this size. After doing all of these random sketches I decided on a subject, my old cat Oreo who just passed away recently. I don't have any pictures of him, so I sketched him from memory, coming up with a design that I liked, as seen above.
This sketch is what pretty much came directly next. It's weird how sometimes drawings come almost effortlessly. I sketched it in Col-erase fairly clean. The pencil line didn't come until I transfered it to the illustration board, via some graphite paper. Neat-o!
I memory isn't all that great so I wanted to get some photo reference just to be sure. This is the only photo my brother at home could find, so he emailed it to me. Not the greatest shot, but I can pretty much see the correct facial coloration. Plus, it's a cartoon version so who cares, right? I also quickly looked at some old 40s and 50s ads in a book just to get some texture ideas for the pants and shoes.
Next I quickly did a little color comp with some markers. I didn't like the orange, so I changed it to blue. Magic! I knew I wanted to incorporate the same green color that is hinted on the frame, so I sprinkled it throughout the pants, shirt, and lettering.
And finally, here's the guoache painting. And I don't have a photo of the piece inside the frame. Oh well. If I did you'd see that the words fit perfectly and don't look as lopsided as they do here. A fun fact: I use black India Ink instead of black guoache because black guoache flakes off after some time. And yes, my mom loved it! Hooray!
