Shih Tzu with a happy face

When I think of little Maddie, she seems to have this look on her face.

Shih tzu liver or champagne

When I first brought Maddie home, she had dark brown fur.  As she grew and got older, her fur changed from brown to a milky brown.  My breeder said that her fur color was "liver".  It wasn't until Xmas when other people saw Maddie that they said she looked more like champagne.  So instead of saying I have a liver Shih Tzu, I now can say she's a Champagne Shih Tzu.  Even dogs have problems with hair color...go figure!!!

Did you say Birds???

I'll be the first to admit, I can't draw birds, realistic birds.  I never seem to get their body portions right or their feet.  No matter how often I attempt to draw or paint them, I'm never happy with the results.  So I finally said to myself, the hell with it, and just draw birds...so that's what I've done.

Sidewalk cracks Polar bear

This little guy was inspired by cracks in the side walk.  It's been so cold for him, he just had to have a nice red sweater to keep warm.

Take me

This is the look my baby Maddie gives me when she wants something...like a cookie, a walk, or a ride in the car.  The look I was trying to achieve with just markers wasn't working, so I  used a combination of markers and colored pencils to enhance the drawing. 

Girl with the blue eyes ... manga style

I'm really having a lot of fun drawing these girls.  I love the big eye expression..

Manga girl

I've been experimenting with my Copic markers working on shading.  I've also been testing out various papers....Bristol, Copic marker paper,Bee artist marker pad, watercolor paper, and plain printer paper.  Out of all of them I really like the Bee artist marker pad.  The markers go on nicely and blend rather well on the paper.  Also no bleeding.

Markers anyone????

Happy New Year!

It was good to go home for the holidays.  My husband and my four dogs made the journey to Fremont to spend the holiday with my sister and brother-in-law.   A good time was had by all.  Santa was very good to me too!  During my visit, my sister and I drove up to Berkeley to Dick Blick art store.  WOW was I impressed.  The store was so large and there was so much eye candy, that I was overwhelmed.  But once I calmed down, I was able to load up my shopping cart with lots of art supplies.

While at Dick Blick I bought more Copic Sketch Markers to add to my growing collection.  I only need 76 Copic Sketch Markers and I'll have them all.  This year I plan to do portraits and thought

Copic Sketch Markers would be perfect.

I've been watching a lot of YouTube videos on people using copics to draw portraits and Manga characters. Not really familiar with these Japanese Comic characters, but after seeing a lot of YouTube videos I got the general idea of how they were drawn.  

This is my first attempt at a Manga girl.   I went from this to my Manga girl with purple hair.  I really learned a lot about shading of faces and skin.