Friday Drawing

Theme: Breezy

I didn't have a chance to finish this one, and I don't think I ever will, but I thought I would put it up anyway.

An Illustration-less Friday.

Sorry, peeps. I didn't have time this week to do my IF drawing. But I will share these with you:

random doodles that I do while I'm thinking in bed before I go to sleep:

Illustration Friday

theme: flawed

Illustration Friday

Theme: Climbing

Illustration Friday

Theme: Pale

Illustration Friday

Theme: Contained

Illustration Friday

Theme: Resolve

The Squid and the Birthday Cake

the squid and the birthday cake, originally uploaded by beancollins.

I love cake. And I have a passing fancy for squids. Squids and cakes seemed to be a natural combination to me. Or maybe I was just hungry for cake and calamari.

40,000 Leagues

For those who like to be well informed, a league is a distance of about 3 miles.


When I was in Hainan last year, I was eating in a open air restaurant that had its own aquariums. If you wanted to, you could choose your dinner fresh from the tank. There were these strange shellfish swimming around in one. I thought they were adorable until I realized that I was looking at them the wrong way. And then they weren't cute at all, just another run of the mill arthropod...one without huge, charming eyes.

Anyway, one of these days those imaginary protostomes will make an appearance in my art. Until that day, however, I will have to content myself with drawing giant squid. The next panel (or two) is going to have two giant squid basking in a shallow lake, one with his tentacles wrapped around the hill that the shipwreck survivors are climbing up, and the other will be making sweet, sweet love to a large layer cake with lots of icing.

I'm telling you, eyes are hard to identify on sea creatures. For example, what if the eyes on this vampire squid are those two dark spots near the top of the head (right under the angel wings)? The animal then looks cute and harmless for the most part. But, what if the eye is that menacing pearly blue thing in the middle of that bulge (which it probably is, judging from the top picture)? All of a sudden it's a killer with crazy eyes. Never trust a vampire squid.

From Shipwreck to Salvation

Newest Folding Art Book project

Last year I worked on a large folding art book (meant to be a calligraphy book, but I like to draw connected pictures in it) and it seemed to progress very smoothly. This year I have been working on the same size of book for months longer and don't seem to be getting anywhere. I think the stress of this year wasn't very productive. The stress last year was for some reason, but this year it wasn't a creative stress...it was just the bad kind of stress. But I've done a few pictures and the last two frames satisfy me.