Ballet Partners

My sketches tend to turn out a lot better than my finished pieces. Somehow I always manage to lose the movement and the depth somewhere between the sketch and the final color version regardless of the color medium I choose to work with. I am particularly happy with both the idea for this piece and the way the sketch turned out so I wanted to post it here before I went ahead and ruined it. Practice makes perfect and I will post the final version when I am done even if doesn't live up to the sketch's potential.

Tiny Ballerinas

Life inspires art and my little girls inspire me :-)

The paper is a too big for my scanner and I feel the original had a bit more air on the left making for a better composition. I might try to rescan tomorrow but it's going on midnight here and I don't want to risk waking up my muses.

Illustration Friday - Swamp

The Dragonfly fairy made the swamp her home. Every morning she chose a new leaf from the most beautiful plant in the swamp to serve as her wand. Froggy was her trusted companion and had magical powers of his own - he could sing all the baby animals that lived in the swamp to sleep. The momma animals loved the Dragonfly fairy and Froggy and always made special treats for them: Water Lilly nectar for the fairy and mosquito pops for Froggy.

I have to admit that this week's Illustration Friday prompt gave me pause. The first thing that popped into my mind is the Swamp Creature but I just couldn't visualize it in my mind. I wanted to do Swamped in the Swamp with the Swamp thing holding a little swamp baby and with another baby and household items floating around her. The problem was the swamp thing kept coming out looking like me except with a greenish tint which didn't do my complexion any favors. So I decided to call on the help of the Dragon Fairy to come and rescue me and as a thank you painted her portrait. I hope she likes it and I hope you do too.

Once upon a time...

There was a lovely couple and they were my baby brother and his beautiful fiancee.

Mr Pig enjoying the rain

I feel like I've really been on an umbrella kick lately. It's been raining off and on here so that might explain it. This pig seems to be enjoying himself though...

Illustration Friday - Shades

This penguin escaped the cold, put on his shades, and is enjoying the sun from the shade of his umbrella.

There once lived a bunny...

And he had a wooden "izbushka".

There is a lovely Russian folk tale about a bunny who lived in a wooden cabin, and a fox that lived in an ice one and what happened when winter ended. This is the bunny snug and happy in his cabin.

Illustration Friday - Yield

Who will yield first?

More from the archives

As I am cleaning out my garage, I am finding more sketches done at least a decade ago:

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Other than childhood doodles, this is my first ever drawing of myself. I was trying to capture the essence of how I see myself rather than going for full on realism and I am pretty happy with how it turned *I* turned out :)

A blast from the past

I found a stack of my high school notebooks. I went to an Orthodox Jewish high school and so in one of the notebooks I found this portrait of one of our Rabbis during prayer. I think it's pretty good considering I was about 14 when I sketched it.

Illustration Friday - Intention

This is a sketch I actually did yesterday for a little story my daughter came up with. When I saw the Illustration Friday topic this morning, I was struck with how well the sketch fit and so decided to enter it.

This puppy has full intention of taking flight.