Navajos on horseback

Here is a 7"x10" watercolor sketch I made based on the cover of a book I read this year called Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West by Hampton Sides. It is a picture of three Navajo Indians on horseback. The book is a very entertaining read about Kit Carson, the U.S. conquest of the West, and the sad fate of the Native Americans.

Do dragons exist in North America?

Our family had a nice Christmas and Santa brought the kids a unicycle, a Ripstick skateboard, and a remote control plane along with several stocking stuffers. My son received a cool book on how to draw dragons. The first drawing in this post is my attempt at a wyvern dragon which is not found in North America. However before Lewis & Clark had completed their famous expedition of the West it was not known what type of flora and fauna existed west of the Mississippi. In fact, I've just started reading a very entertaining book my wife gave me called Undaunted Courage : Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West by Stephen E. Ambrose. The second sketch is based on the painting which appears on the cover of this book.

Is that a cow?

Here is a quick sketch I did in watercolor. The landscape is purely imaginary. I like to include some form of life in my landscape drawings so I placed this cow in a rather barren field. My son thought it was a Gazelle in the African Savannah. I'm not too crazy about the rocks in the foreground. The color, form, and placement is a bit off.

Camels in the desert

I sometimes enjoy sketching pictures I find in magazines. Wildlife calendars are another good source of pictures. I found this picture of two camels in National Geographic KIDS and used a 6B woodless pencil to do a quick sketch. My children like this magazine because it contains a variety of articles on animals, new movies, and fun facts.

A day at the zoo

My son and I enjoyed a beautiful day at the San Francisco Zoo last Sunday. On this trip we walked pretty much the entire zoo seeing all the animals most of which happened to be quite lively except for the lions and tigers (they always seem to be napping). One of my favorite animals are the gorillas. I took a picture of one of the gorillas sitting on a big boulder. He seemed as interested in us as we were in observing him. I took several pictures and when I returned home I sketched the drawing you see here. A few days later I created this painting based on the sketch. I'm trying to pay closer attention to rendering texture with line and using color to create form.

Beginning a journey

The bar-tailed godwit flies from Alaska to New Zealand non-stop covering 7300 miles across the Pacific Ocean in 8 days. This is the longest nonstop flight of any bird. I chose this bird as the subject of my first blog entry because it symbolizes the beginning a long journey as an amateur artist. A couple of weeks before leaving Alaska the bar-tailed godwit gorges on clams and worms. I similarly gorged myself on Turkey last night as part of our family's Thanksgiving feast.

Placing my subject in the lower left implies that the migratory bird is starting its journey. The gentle arch to the horizon indicates the large expanse of ocean the bird must travel to reach its destination. I first did a few thumbnail sketches then used a Pentel Aquabrush to apply watercolor to 140lb 8x5in. watercolor paper and used watercolor pencils for the bar-tailed godwit. The video illustrates my technique.