White Tailed Deer

This is not my original design but it came from a Classic Disney animator.  Walt Disney once said a great animator would know how to draw a subject and then would know how to draw the essences of the subject through caricature.  This is an excellent idea and part of what ever artist should strive for in their work, to capture the essences of the subject.

Moose

I changed things up and I had tired of monotone pencil drawings so I drew this sketch of a Moose in fall foliage with colored pencils.  The Moose is one of those odd creatures, noble and swift but with the odd long nose.  I do like those large wide spade like horns.  Stay clear of the males in mating season they will chase you and run you up a tree or stomp you.

Giraffe sketch

Tonight's sketch is a Giraffe.  We saw these beautiful animals in the Maasai Mara in Kenya.  They were one of the many animals we saw but these are some of the most graceful and serene of the Earth's creatures.

Wagon Wheel repair

More drawing today, the challenge of art is your desire to produce a piece usually is restricted by your ability.  Sometimes the piece comes together effortlessly, other times it is a struggle.  The answer for the struggle is to loop back to your basic skills and work on them.  So I am practicing my drawing skills and this drawing of a wagon wheel repair stand is a practice piece to work on the drawing.  Painting is drawing with a brush so they dovetail together well.

Water Gourd

Happy Saturday, I worked on this after running errands today.  The Native Americans used gourds for Water and seed storage containers.  This makes for a good drawing practice and good shadow studies.  This one was made by the Cahuilla Indians of California.

Thunderbirds - Design

Design is an important consideration which in the visual arts sometimes takes a back seat to the discussion of composition.  Design gets talked about for furniture, architecture, and models of cities, but not everyone thinks about it in art.  Too often the starting artist tries to copy things exactly as nature presents it, but the secret in drawings and paintings is they need to be designed and simplified.  The Native Americans intuitively knew this and I am always amazed and awed by the great design and simplified representations used to convey ideas.  I have copies some of these designs as in the Thunderbirds above because these simple sketches easily and superbly represent their ideas about the mythical birds which carried the Thunder through the heavens.

Anvil

Another quick sketch from tonight.  This is a practice work and how I relax and de-stress from the day's work.  So enjoy and I will continue to post these for you.