Grasshopper

Inktober Challenge, Day 3. This little guy was camped out on a nearby chair while the cat and I enjoyed the early fall sunshine on the patio this afternoon. The photo I snapped was pretty poor quality so I did a lot of guessing. I just googled it and see that I missed his mouth parts completely. Woops. Left off an antenna too. Then I ran out of ink. Done.

Pensive Cowboy

Inktober Challenge, day 2. Cringing inwardly as I post this, but I do want to post whatever daily sketch I come up with on this challenge, good bad or ugly. A perfect sketch isn’t really the point. So, here goes. On this day, we awoke to the gut wrenching news that a deranged shooter murdered 59 people in Las Vegas and injured another 527. I wanted my drawing to reflect the somberness of the day. The attitude in this old cowboy speaks of reflection and heavy thoughts to me.

Birthday Pirate

Today is day 1 of the Inktober Challenge, which I'll try to do, but no promises to myself or anyone else. It coincides with my brother's birthday and since I had dug out a picture of him from small kid time to tease him on Facebook, I decided to try a quick sketch of it. Such a goofball, sitting on our old kitchen counter in his homemade pirate regalia. The skull and crossbones flag and the torn, raggedy jeans were a nice touch but I really love the mustache and sideburn, penciled in with Mom's eyebrow pencil. He has a grandchild about this age now. Hard to believe how quickly the years have passed. He may be a grampa, but he's still the same ol' goofball.

At the Falls

The photo for this painting was taken earlier this summer and is of my daughter at her favorite waterfalls located in the Eagle Creek vicinity.  Not long after it was taken, a wildfire devastated the area, burning close to 50,000 acres (and still less than 50% contained).  It will be some time before we can get back to her falls to see what remains but in the meantime, I made this small painting to remind her of happier times.

Wild Thing

It's Saturday, so I'm playing. This was supposed to be a fox but I messed up his nose. So I chopped it off! Now he kind of looks like a bear to me.

Cape Florida Lighthouse

This was fun. The screenshot from Google streetview had lots of contrast but not much color so I drew on recent memories of colorful skies due to the Gorge fires to spark my imagination.

Front Row Seats

Time does fly when you're having a good time. Maybe with summer coming to a close, I'll find more time to paint. Here's a beach scene for this month's Virtual Paintout in Florida. May its natural beauty be soon restored and life return quickly to normalcy for those effected by the hurricane.