Mad! Anything

We visited the zoo this week...twice!

The snow leopard cub is getting big.  We stared at each other for a while after his mom woke him up from his nap in the sunshine at the top of the hill.  (Actually, I think he was staring at Matthew sitting in the stroller, lol.)

This is the mama before she went to check on him.  I used watercolor markers.

And to my surprise, there was a baby zebra!  He was born late this year, though it looked like he won't be alone for the winter as one of the other zebra looked quite well along herself. These are sketches of the daddy zebra and (I'm pretty sure) pregnant mama.  The herd did look pretty sparse last time I was there; I suppose it had something to do with these developments.

(I did sketch the foal the next day...will post that another time.)

Mad! Fluffy

I really wanted to get color on this, but for the life of me I cannot fight out what is bugging me about this drawing yet. It's something subtle that I'm somehow not catching.  Going to let it sit and will come back to it.  I think the curlers are really throwing me for a loop.  (Haha!)

This is another sketch for the dressers.  :D

Sennelier oil pastel color chart

Here is a color chart of all of my Sennelier oil pastels!

The ones marked are among my favorites, especially for portraiture.

The right side of each color has been blended with white and I scrubbed the lower left a bit with a color shaper, to show a bit of opacity.

My oil pastels

Yesterday Nancy said she got some Sennelier oil pastels.  I was a little tired and thus not mentally charged for much painting, so I decided to do a little color chart of my Senns.  I needed to get my pastels organized, anyway, they've been a mess especially since they fell on the floor months ago.

This is what my box looked like after I took out all of my Senns.

This is all of my (small) Senns.  I have a couple of large sticks that live elsewhere.  It is pretty incredible that I only have this many...

And here is what they look like, newly organized!

And because I had it to show Jessica, here is a box of Mungyo oil pastels that I can't stand to use because they smell so bad, which is a real shame.  But the kids use them, so they are still loved.

Mad! Late

This was supposed to be posed last night...I promise I didn't post it late on purpose! lol

Anyway, Jessica had a brilliant theme this week.  It really got me rolling.

This is a sketch of a pony I'm going to be painting on my girls' new dressers, once I can get around to painting the dressers themselves.  I was excited to be motivated to start these sketches, as there are a lot of dresser drawers!

Pumpkin pie!

There are pie pumpkins in the store!!!!!

Baby Ajax WIP

The Amazing Miss Jessica taught me of the wonders of clear gesso under conte crayon!

This is Ajax as a puppy, circa 5 years ago.

Conte crayon on Mi-Teintes board, 12x16

Face

This is Face.  This is Face at 4 am.

Face has missed his mom.  (Tiger has been in my room but I needed a Big Thing to block the corner.)

(Bonus: Baby Face)

Mad! Value

Somehow, both Jessica and I spaced it on our mad themes for a bit...but here we are again!

She made me pick...*I knew she would*.

I've been working feverishly with fabric lately...though I've none of that to show at the moment.  I was, however, thinking how with fabric it's often much more about the color (hue) than it is about the value of the color, while with painting and drawing, value is so very key and drilled into the consciousness.  The value of anything visual, though, makes a huge difference in the end product.

I went back to the trusty ol' ACEO this week...using a Mystery Paint that I am very excited about it which needs its own post, so you'll have to learn about it later.  As has been the case of most everything I use, it worked great on my Canson Mixed Media XL paper.

(there are *sparklies* in this painting!)