Space, the final front ear?

OK, groan if you want to :P

But a visit here made me realise that I'd posted this on LiveJournal but not on here which is terribly remiss of me.

This is what I've been playing around with lately - trying to get the most out of one picture by playing around with skies. Here's the original, a rainy day sky as I was feeling rather down and I liked the raindrop effect on the water.

This one is where I just added a tiny touch of purple into the clouds and ambient light ...


... and here is where the purple takes over!


I then tried to head back towards reality a bit , a sunset or possibly a distant forest fire.

This last one is where I was wondering how close up I could get before the water started looking too unrealistic - I think maybe I overdid it.

I'll move onto another scene for the next few days, but it's good I've got back into it, it keeps me out of trouble! ;-)

Barnaby

This is Barnaby, the Express Mail stoat. He may just seem to be your average delivery vermin but he has a very important job - he makes sure the mail gets through whenever instant messaging fails and snail mail would just be far too slow!

For once I know exactly where I got the inspiration for this. It was a combination of a silly chat and this BBC video of a stoat playing in the snow. I drew it the day after that video.

Market

It's been a while since I've posted anything and I still haven't got round to scanning in anything recent so I thought I'd post another rat picture from some time ago. I know in the back of my mind I'd like to do a cartoon strip starting from this but the inspiration never quite sees the light of day - at least not yet.

Mugging

At lot has been happening recently and it has left me feeling rather unsettled. So I thought this was the opportunity to post a picture in which I was trying to instill a definite sense of menace. The inspiration for this actually came not from the situation but from the rocks. I was given a book called the Artist's Handbook and in there is a chapter on the technique of crosshatching. I tried it on a rock and then the whole picture poured out of that.

St Treacle's Day

Today is St Treacle's Day, so named in honour of the most wonderful cat that ever lived. She lived with us for 19 years and the 5th March was her birthday. This picture is the only one I ever drew of her so today is the right day to post it, even though it's a picture of me getting exasperated because she keeps walking off.

I've been rummaging again ...

As I'm not ready to post the drawings from the last few weeks and I've been woefully unorganised in preparing Bryce things to post, I went looking in my really old files to find some of the first rats I did. None of them were 'drawn', instead they were done using Flash as they were supposed to be animations. The animations are so utterly awful that nothing will convince me to post them, but the basic pictures are historical evidence I guess!