Category Archives: Brushes

Feb9

Challenge Over – Scottie Wins!

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The game is over – boy it was a hard one. Some wonderful ideas, and no duplicates, which proves how creative you all are. 

Linda from ColoradoFarmLife came close, but Scottie from ScottiesToyBox got it correct after reading her guesses, which proves how clever he is!

The pictures are of road dirt or mud on one of the white work vans. I thought it looked rather beautiful and strange. Then I realised that you really couldn’t tell what it was unless you knew, and took the second picture with a bit of tire showing to make it easier. 



I must give credit to my hubby, who took one look and got it right instantly. He then tried to guess the make and model of van (which I at first thought he got wrong), and he got that right, too. Which proves we definitely belong together!

Scottie seems to have played along for the fun of it, but I did offer a prize, such as it is. My ulterior motive is to get myself back drawing, so I offered a digital drawing of whatever the winner wants. I won’t say that I’m terribly talented and there are a lot of things I probably can’t draw.

So, Scottie – please have a look at these old links to past posts, to get an idea of what I can and can’t do – then email me a photo to work from!

Alaska Lady

Rua

Oh Balls

Lokii At Night

Button

Usyaka

Border Collie

Poulnabrone

Red Dog

Penguin and Stegosaurus

Clyde (with original photo, and not my best effort. He was HARD) 

Ivy & Stewie (my favourite)
There are more, but I’m getting bored with links. If you want to waste a lot of time, go to my main page and scroll down to Catergories, Brushes.

Hope to take another mystery shot soon so we can play again!

Mar31

Goodbye, Rua

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My sister’s greyhound, Rua, passed away in his sleep last night. He was a big clumsy goofball, and he will be missed.

I drew this of him back in November 2011, one of my first attempts at digital art.

 

Miss you, big guy! 

Jan6

New…Art?

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It’s been yonks since I did anything creative.

Oh: yonks is Irish slang around here for ‘a long time, probably too long.’

Recently – okay a month ago, or longer – I had the time, and the iPad, and a strange enviro men in which to play. Probably about 15 minutes.

I need to play more often, I miss it.

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Sep5

Cartoon Craziness Challenge – Build a Burger?

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Well, hell, I thought. That’s a tough one. Invent my own hamburger with anything on it? Sheeeeeit.

Once again, Mental Mama and The Indecicisive Eejit have given me food for thought and inspired a titch of creativity. I think this is their last cartoon challenge, however, and for that I’m a bit sad.

Back to Build a Burger. It seemed a difficult concept at first – but my Imagination Goop flowed rather quickly and gave me an Idea. Making the Idea into a work of art was harder. There’s a story, of course!

I recently have had an album on nearly constant rotation on the car CD player. It is by a little-known indie/grunge band called Sugartooth. They only released two albums, and I only have the first one. Back in 1997 a guy at work (who was quite married and practically begged me to let him into my pants – I did say no) gave me a copy. I forget his name (but not his face) and I will be forever in his debt for introducing me to Sugartooth’s music. One of my favourite lyrics inspired my crappy drawing – from a song called Black Queen, “I was hungry, so I ate all the words I could swallow.” Poetry does still show up in rock music. Yes, Sled – I know it isn’t your cuppa whiskey, but you might be surprised. Raucous, yes – but also emotional. I need emotion in my music.

On to the cartoon.

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I knew I could only fit a few words into my sandwich, so I picked four of my favourites. I love them for the way they sound, or they way they feel in my mouth, or the memories I have when I learned the word. ‘Vegetables’ is straight up juicy – it makes me salivate when I say it. ‘Ubiquitous’ is a memory of my father naming annoying children at the next table “ubiquitous” – with a long suffering sigh – and me loving the word but not having a clue what it meant. ‘Serendipity’ – you just have to love it. Luck. I think I read a book when I was a wee child and a dragon-ish Thing was called Serendipity. Also, it is something I’m short on and would gladly eat more of… Sanguine because it is a slippery word in my mind and also is important to me for a bit of fiction I was/am writing.

Hope you bothered to read all this, it was equally fun to do and significant for me to share.

Aug29

Cartoon Craziness Challenge – a Thing, redux

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I’m cheating again. I actually do have an idea for a mythical being, based off the comments on my last blog post, but I’d have to be a hell of a lot drunker than I am now. SuperVagina – yeah, you’d have to be wasted to draw that!

I know, I know, it’s Friday and I should be celebrating it! But I’m just too exhausted. So – cheater’s version of the Challenge!

Here’s a Thing I drew a while back, instead of SuperV.

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Aug14

Cartoon Craziness Challenge – Memories of a Childhood Vacation

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I have a funny vacation memory! Yay! Well, it’s not exactly funny. It’s something that probably should not have happened – it shouldn’t have been possible and it wasn’t technically legal – but it did teach me that my dad’s word was as good as gold.

We lived on the Gulf Coast of Florida, so we went to the mountains in North Carolina a couple years in a row on holiday vacation (back then a ‘holiday’ to me was a real one like Christmas). We rented a cabin on the lower slope of a mountain, and just chilled out. I loved it – the people who ran the cabin rentals lived at the bottom and had goats and sheep and let me interact with them. There were rocks and trees and giddy little rivers, and panning for gemstones. The panning was most likely seeded with stones, but it was fun for me anyway. I still have a chunk of flaky mica I found all on my own, too.

I was, I’m going to guess, between 9 and 11. So we’ll say I was 10 when this occurred. Not sure if it was raining out or what, but we were all inside the cabin. I also don’t know who came up with the idea, but I’m assuming it was me: I bet my dad that I could hold my eyes open without blinking for one whole hour, if I could have one whole can of beer all to myself! I always did like beer…

Dad agreed and timed me and made sure I didn’t blink. I wouldn’t have cheated, either – I wanted to see if I could do it.

Of course my eyes welled up and streamed tears. But after a good while, they tapered off. They got used to it. My eyes felt dry, but I didn’t have the urge to blink anymore.

I made it the whole hour. Mom might have protested a bit, maybe, but dad didn’t hesitate and popped the top on a can just for me. I can’t remember if I managed to drink the entire can of beer, but I can guess that I was just as stubborn about finishing it as I was at winning it. I do recall a sense of satisfaction at being able to kick back with a beer of my own, with my family. Maybe I was just a happy drunk!

So here is my cartoon – and it sure did need that explanation or you wouldn’t have a clue what it is meant to be.

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Jul12

A Little bit of Button

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Babies are hard to draw! They are missing all the wrinkles and lines that us auld folk have, and so a picture can only be a few simple lines that gives the faintest suggestion of who they are. Maybe that’s on purpose – at just a few weeks old, a baby is not yet who it will be.

Another reason to be proud of our lines; they tell a story of personality and experience. There are our crooked smiles, our frowns. A lifetime of physical efforts writ upon our faces, our hands, and even our knees.

Or maybe I’m just making excuses for why I haven’t put up any drawings of Button yet! I’ve been working on one for a while. I wanted to do something that just wasn’t working. The joy of digital art is that I can save and share what I have now, and play with it again at any time. Just in case I figure out how to do what I see in my head, of course.

So, this is, indeed, simple. Just a few lines and a little shading. Socks took a photo when her Super Lady was just a few days old, and I loved it so much I had to create something from it.

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Sorry about the HUGE watermark. I get a lot of Google Image searches and I don’t like the idea that my work is being stolen. If you really like this, I’d be glad to email a copy without the watermark.

And of course, Socks will get an extra-special version 🙂

Feb12

Perhaps it is time to get serious…

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First, let me swear on whatever you find worthy of swearing upon that I have not ever clicked on my own blog link after doing a search for ’11/22/63 art.’ (Proof: it isn’t purple in my browser!) I only ever looked because I kept seeing it pop up in my stats, along with ‘Siamese cat drawing.’ So, being curious, I wanted to see where I ranked. The last time I looked, I ranked just below the official Stephen King website. Today, I rank above it.

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WTF WTF WTF.

I actually feel a bit ill seeing this. It scares me. What if King finds me? I might have my first-ever panic attack… and then invite him to Ireland to drive around Mayo on a rented Harley with me (on my own bike, of course). I know better than to ask him to the pub.

What if the publisher sees it, or the person who did the book jacket, and says I’ve infringed on copyright by reproducing the first page? I want to do more of these, and I even started one for ‘IT’ but the movie’s images kept getting in my way. I’ll have to read it again (oh darn, the hardship) and find a good image to use. So right now my idea is to do a couple more, then go ask the publisher if I’m in trouble and need to stop…