Merry Christmas to you all from me and my family!

Birthday girl

We are celebrating Adriana's birthday this week and this is a little illustration I did for her party invitations. I had an animals-picnic-in-woodland type of thing ready to print but then she wanted a drawing of her as a pirate, so here's my little pirate girl. Just for the record, it's a lot easier to draw invitations for a 4 year old than it is to organize the actual party.

Those kids ...

I did this for my daughter a couple of weeks ago. Not that I am specially happy with how the colors turned out but my little bossy girl gave me a lecture on how bad it is because “Mom, a bear does not sit in a chair and girls DO NOT sit with bears to drink tea! This is so wrong!" and yes, this is the same girl that tried to convince me this morning about flies who like spicy food or the one that every single day fills the backseat of my car with stones “because they are magical!!" Talk about encouragement!

You can buy a print of this illustration at at pizublic.etsy.com or sending me a message.

Entry for TDAC illustrated recipe party

Here is my entry  for the TDAC party recipe and I hope the first of many sent to the website. Be sure to check them out, they also have a twin site dedicated to travel illustration, They draw and travel .

More pencils

Two little illustrations I forgot to upload in my previous post about color pencils

Color pencils

I've been using color pencils for the last month after uhmm ... more than a decade, and I must admit I'm astounded by the results, especially on toned paper.
I'm having some problems with the shadows when working on regular white paper but I' like it. I'm using Faber Castell Polychromos, the same I used back in college. I hated them because I'll always ended with a dirty piece of paper and because nobody told me how to use them and obviously you have to be really careful not to push too hard( at least if you are a newcomer like me) and that's something I failed miserably  with my first tin box of pencils.

COFFEE? ANYONE?

BIFF THE DOG

Quick Sketch

Practicing some figure drawing with my daughter while she was playing. Not a very quiet model but I’m very happy how this turned out. I’m more on the “slow” side when it comes to drawing so I tried something different this time. Click on the image to view more pictures.

Sketchbook Skool

I just joined Sketchbook Skool today. I am very excited about it as it is the first time Danny Gregory has an online course available to us, mortals, which can’t be but good news. He will be teaching among other 5 illustrators. I don’t know them except for Koosje Koene, whose illustrations I love (You can check her site here, with very useful weekly video-tips on drawing and tools) so I need to check their work in the next days.

I’m really not sure what to expect and I must confess I joined without giving it a second thought because online courses can be a bit of an unorganized mess sometimes but this part on the FAQ section got me hooked:

” You went to art school, and were so intimidated by your drawing teacher that you just stuck to the computer and became a designer or an architect and have been so afraid to make anything of your own that you cross the street rather than pass by an art supply store”

At least it’s a good excuse to force myself into drawing daily during a couple of weeks while learning something new on the way! Check it out here: Sketchbook Skool