Illustration Friday "Wrinkles"

I do so like this Illustration Friday theme.  I kinda like wrinkles.  They show abundance!  Abundance of skin, life, fabric, etc.  Since wrinkles show abundance, I decided to draw an abundance of wrinkly animals.  We have an elephant, rhino, walrus, basset hound, pug, naked mole rat, and uh.. raisins.

Raisins are pretty much the apex of wrinkly-ness.  Click on the image to view full.

I did learn that most animals are actually pretty wrinkly under their fur.  It gives them more ease of motion.  I'll keep that in mind when I see women wearing ultra tight winter coats.

I especially like the wrinkles that a dog's stomach has when they're curled up into a little ball.  That's the best.  Let botox never come near them!

Illustration Friday "Primitive"

I am totally willing to admit this quick sketch is probably the silliest thing I've ever drawn.  And that's up against some pretty stiff competition.

This is another entry for Illustration Friday.  This week's theme is "Primitive."  First I started thinking about women who look like Venus figures, then I moved on to cavemen, and wound up with "Primitivism."

I find those art terms to generally be very funny because they're so undescriptive.   Paul Gauguin a was a leading figure in that area and I started to think about where it could (not so) logically go.  The painting is Two Tahitian Women.

Voila!  Hope you enjoy it!  It makes me giggle anyway.  Please view full for maximum silliness.

Illustration Friday "Fail" Paper Collage

This week's Illustration Friday's theme is "Fail."

I immediately thought about stuff like getting bad marks at school, losing races (done that plenty!), letting other people down, etc.

Then my mind started to drift towards worse failure and the cruelty that is Natural Selection. African elephants have hard lives. Many don't survive the yearly trek to the wetter regions. I thought about the strange elephant burial grounds. They are areas where many African elephants who have become too weak or injured limp off to die; frequently where other elephants have died before. The ground is littered with the gigantic bones of these amazing creatures.

Mammoths are, of course, extinct. I suppose extinction is the ultimate failure.

This is a collage of paper bones on dirt. The bones are cut entirely free hand (no tracing or outlines drawn before they're cut) and there's a little trilobite in the corner for interest. Please view full for maximum detail.

Thanks for checking it out and don't forget to look at the other nifty entries!

Illustration Friday "Save" Paper Doll Collage

This week at Illustration Friday the theme is "Save."

Maybe it's tax season, but I wasn't thinking about superheroes or baby kittens (okay, I was, but I always think about superheroes and baby kittens.  Or the two combined: Super Baby Kitten!) 

Instead the dim specter of my stern raised-in-the-Depression Grandma rose and admonished me about spending more than four dollars on temporary tattoos last week.  *shiver*

I've always really liked cutting paper dolls and these are on green copy paper snitched from work.  Some scissor work and some with a crappy little box cutter I keep in my desk.  I think the little Lincolns turned out rather well.  I especially like how his expression changes from coin to coin.  

Normally, I would have scanned it and tidied it in Photoshop, I but I really liked it as a raw collage.  Please view full for extra goofiness.

Illustration Friday "Homage" Top Hat Bunny

This is a piece that my husband, Knut Sjurseth, and I both worked on. I think I drew the original outline, he polished it, I objected that she looked too tarty, I redrew the face, he fixed something else, and then I colored it in Photoshop. The objective? To make amusing t-shirts!

We were imagining a world where the bunny gets to be more than just a prop. An assistant! In a sparkly costume!

This sexy bunny girl is definitely a homage to the pin up girls of the 40s and 50s. My husband and are crazy about those illustrations (for a jaw achingly good time visit James Lilek's Art Frahm site. He specialized in ladies, with celery and small dogs, who have undie malfunctions). There's something about the cheer and fun in the girls' faces that really separates them from the calendar girls of today.

Anyone who happens on this blog by chance, please do visit the Illustration Friday site. Too much good stuff to miss!

Pet Peeves-- Illustration Friday

This is my first ever illustration for IllustrationFriday.com Please view full size.

The theme this week is "Pet Peeves," which was just too good to resist. I started thinking about all the minor silly things that annoy me (and pretty much everyone else, probably) and these hideous little children just sort of materialized like deformed Charlie Browns. They are kind of cute, though. Maybe I should give droolers, spitters, and nose pickers another chance :)

Enjoy! And please check out the other artists. Lots of amazing work!