A Bird, A Little Cat, and A Big Cat Walk Into a ...(stop me if you've heard this one)

I'll start this week with a drawing that is a favorite among my students.  I was substitute teaching at a middle school (junior high for those unfamiliar with the term), using the between class break to come up with more ideas, when I overheard the phrase "demon chicken" come from a group of kids in the hallway.  That was just the spark I needed. Immediately an image started to form in my head of what this thing would look like.  I decided to alter the concept a bit to be more kid-friendly, so here is my cave chicken.  It has pupil-less eyes much like cave-dwelling fish and amphibians, instead depending echolocation for "sight" in the darkness of the cave.   The standard coat of feathers has evolved away, in favor of layers of fat for warmth in cool, damp cavern environments.

The featureless eyes forced me to move away from my dependence on them for emotional impact, and the fat folds and veins were a fun way to work on shading and modeling. So whether you call it a demon chicken, a cave chicken, or (as a fifth grader more recently deemed it) the ugly bird, here it is in all its... glory?

Here is another case of artist's block.  This time instead of drawing a detailed ficus tree as I showed last week, I drew a very familiar animal with a twist.  I won't go into too much detail describing the drawing, since most people have at least a working knowledge of what a cat looks like.  The change, of course, is the single ear (in place of the normal three). So, out of my boredom and lack of different ideas was born the unicat. The fur didn't turn out as well as I would have liked, but as far as a springboard for creativity it did the trick.

 One of the quirks I have as an artist is the tendency to make animals take on almost human traits.  A great example of that is seen in this tiger. I'm not entirely sure if it's his eyes being larger and more focused than normal, or maybe his more rounded muzzle that does it here. Whether it's one of those traits or another more subtle one, I can't look at him without imagining him speaking some kind words of wisdom. In fact, with his exaggerated striping and semi-smile he could be the (much) more realistic cousin of A.A. Milne's Tigger.
Getting the tigers approximate symmetry right was a bit of a pain. If you recall from previous posts, that aversion to perfect symmetry is also part of the reason I don't draw a lot of cars, buildings, machines.

Okay, so there's this week's post.  I think I'm going to start to limit myself to three drawings/pictures per post for a while. That way I have time to add more to the growing collection and can continue the blog longer. There should continue to be new posts at the beginning and midway through each week so keep watching. 

As always, stay creative.

-AH!