Panda and bellerina duet

This was a commissioned piece that left for itd new home last week.

IF - Surprise... oops I meant Secret

Ellie was surprised to find such a willing dance partner in Mr. Fluffington.

This topic gave me the push to try this old sketch out in watercolor. It looks better than it did in its digital incarnation but I am still not 100% happy with it.

Edited to add - I just got some time to look through the other IF entries and realized that the topic this week is not "surprise" but "secret." Oops...  Maybe Ellie and her cat are sharing a secret before their performance?

IF - Hurry!

Hurry Little Elephant or Miss Butterfly is going to be late for her party!

Illustration Friday - Kernel

This chipmunk might have gotten the nut but he will have to work hard to get at the kernel.

A fun topic for Illustration Friday this week :)

Jumping into Mommy's Arms

Mommy's arms are the best and the safest place to be...

There is no new prompt for Illustration Friday today, and I think jumping into mommy's arms fits well with last week's word "Jump" so I am going to submit another entry :)

I appreciate and read each and every comment and would love to hear what you think!

Illustration Friday - Heights

There is nothing like free-falling to experience the true majesty and exhilaration of heights.

I love that I got to relieve a great moment in my life while working on this week's Illustration Friday topic - heights. Unfortunately this was not my most successful effort. I couldn't quite get the feel of height here. In retrospect, maybe I should have made the ground look like a patchwork of squares (thanks to one of my facebook fans for the suggestion!), or place the line of the horizon lower on the page. I also think that I lost something in the final version compared to the original sketch:

The bunny especially has a more carefree, open expression here. I lost it when I tried making the snout (Do bunnies even have snouts? What do they have?) more defined. Oh well. That's how we learn.

Illustration Friday - Puzzled

The bunny was puzzled by acupuncture but trusted her friend the hedgehog and was willing to give it a shot.

Illustration Friday - Return (2)

We will build a plane and soar
Over woodland, sea and shore,
Over woodland, sea and shore,
And return to Mom once more.


Agnia Barto, translated from Russian by I. Zheleznova

I love that this week's IF topic is so open ended. Agnia Barto is one of my absolute favorite Russian children's poets so it was a great opportunity to illustrate one of her nursery rhymes. I have to admit that growing up with her books, the illustrations  become as ingrained in you as the poems themselves so the composition of this piece was heavily influenced by the Russian illustrator Svetlana Borisova.

Illustration Friday - Return

Special Delivery - Returns are NOT accepted.

I am dedicating this to 3 very special moms:

I - who gave birth to her second little boy 11 weeks ago and inspired the original sketch for this.
K - whose little boy is due to arrive in a little over a month
and last but certainly not least
A - whose little boy is celebrating his first birthday today! Happy Birthday M!

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 - 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: