IF - Obsession

This week's Illustration Friday topic gave me a good excuse to start a sketch for a painting I've been wanting to create for a while. When I was in elementary school, I was quite obsessed with unicorns. Unicorns were the end all be all for me. I collected them, had my room decorated in all things unicorn, and of course, drew them. I had gathered up a number of my old unicorn drawings a few years ago while putting together a presentation and thought how much fun it would be to take one of those drawings and re-illustrate it today in my current style and technique. I imagine I'll add more detail in the final painting, but for now, here's today's sketch:
And here's the drawing on which it's loosely based - probably over 25 years old now:
As you can see, in my childhood fantasy world, rabbits could fly which is why in my new sketch we find a lop rabbit sitting in a tree. According to a small note at the top of the old drawing the unicorn in the picture's name is "Pollen," whose acquaintance I'd imagine no one suffering from seasonal allergies would ever desire to make.

Another illustration on the topic - if you've ever visited my Etsy store then you've probably already seen this painting, but since I'm on the subject I thought I'd post it here too:
This is an ancient painting from my art school days. Nearing the end of my time in college, I realized I hadn't yet revisited my favorite subject of old, so I did this painting for a class assignment. The little girl riding the unicorn is more or less my childhood self, complete with great big glasses and a school uniform. This little painting's for sale here.

IF - Perennial

For this week's Illustration Friday topic, I decided to play with watercolors and created this little painting of one of my favorite flowers - poppies (which I think are a perennial flower, but I could be wrong).
This painting is cobbled together from several photos I'd taken when we lived in Los Angeles. This type of poppy (Alpine poppy?) was a popular garden flower in California. I remember seeing sizeable beds of them at my husband's office and we had some smaller collections of them at our little apartment complex. I always looked forward to their blooming every spring!

This painting is for sale - here - at my Etsy shop.

The Garden Witch

This little character popped into my head the other day, so I made a rough painting of her over the course of a few morning sessions:
I don't know why her hat is so tall or how exactly it stands up as well as it does. Maybe she stores something under it - perhaps flower seeds or some such, although that seems highly impractical. I probably won't get to it for a while, but I do eventually want to do a full-scale painting of her in her garden:
I'm not sure what to do with the background yet. Maybe some dynamic clouds or possibly some tall silhouetted pine-y trees to give contrast between a dark background and the sunlit, brightly colored garden. I'll have to give it some more thought....

Springtime Planting Final

I finished up this one a while ago, but just came back to it this week to add a couple minor finishing touches. It seems like it always helps to step away from a painting for a while and come back to it later with a fresh eye.

I wanted to have red punctuating the green wall of leaves, so for a while it was a toss up between tomatoes and scarlet runner pole beans. I can't say why, but the pole beans won out this round. Tomatoes will still have their day, I'm sure.

IF: Remedy

I thought I'd revisit the squirrels for this week's Illustration Friday topic in this rough sketch, wherein the remedy is hot chocolate:I did a second sketch on the topic. This is me. Sort of...

Probably not a very well-proportioned me, but who can tell with the blanket, right? I've developed a bit of a reputation for being cold all the time. My family likes to tease me about it. Blankets are common Christmas presents for me - which is not a bad thing at all since, as you can see, I like them. They're both decorative and functional after all. My husband likes to ponder the reasons for my chronic coldness. Current theories revolve around my having poor circulation or quite possibly "a small, cold heart." It couldn't simply be that when I'm cold it's because it's just plain cold outside, could it?