Siamese elephants

True to my promise to play with watercolor shapes, I created some shapes ... and I got this:

Isn't this amazing? I had no intention to draw elephants and my previous attempts to such endeveour resulted in terrible sketches... and now here they are .. two of them ... and a shoe!

Added some accents - not sure it made the sketch any better ...

I only have Photoshop Elements - and I don't know much about using it. I cleaned the background a bit and saturated the color of the shoe:

Dancing elephants ... or maybe Cinderella turned into an elephant at midnight ...

Back ...

... from vacation. I spent almost three weeks in Brazil - Rio and Paraty - followed by few days visiting my family in Ottawa.

The trip was great, and the USK Symposium a lot of fun. I met many people, drew more than I ever did and got to know some of the authors I read regularly in the blogosphere.

Th fly in the ointment - I forgot my backpack with two sketchbooks, art supplies and souvenirs in the taxi in Rio ... So I lost all the sketches done at the workshops, as well as those done on my own ...

I am in the process of recreating the sketches - I took pictures of everything I sketched because I wanted to add color later. Needless to say, the process is slow... I have a modified work schedule so that I can also go to university 2 day a week. I will be posting as often as I can.

Meanwhile, here are some creatures I "found" today. I flipped through the sketchbook and this time something caught my attention on the page - the 2 chatty creatures at the bottom right. Then I found the little girl in a tutu and the bird-like creatures on the side.

They are telling a story, just not sure what it is yet ...

Running horse

In the analytical sketching class, we spent some time drawing animals and I was pleased that the results showed improvement. Here is a horse I sketched on a pre-painted background. I recycled this page I did not like. First I attempted to draw a portrait with ballpoint pen - because I saw so much gorgeous sketches made with pen that I decided to try, too. Disaster! But being stubborn. I did not want to rip the page off.
I covered the mishaps with paint and moved on. I do like the horse!

Cats

A page full of layered gesture drawings of cats - first layer Lamy pen EF, second layer Pentel pocket brush.

I like the brush line and the extraterrestrial look of most of the poses.