Girl From India

April Out of the Comfort Zone challenge piece, theme - anthro - suggested by Keydan . However, at the end of the month I found myself mentally exhausted by study/thesis pressure, so I stuck with a familiar animal to me, Blue Peafowl (Pavo cristatus), female for a change.

Indian jewelry is kitschy. The lotus was fun. Not entirely sure about the colouring, came out a bit too "caked" for my taste and way more time consuming than I'd imagine judging the quality of the work. I must indulge more into learning basics if I'm to get anywhere.

In the end I chose to upload the first image to DeviantART.. At first I thought the texture was a good idea, but then realized that it looks cheesy and the image became blurry, too.



Version 2 with texture;

Cheshire Cat is High on Jpop

25k kiriban (on my DeviantART page ) prize for Apofiss . He asked me to draw him a Cheshire Cat and then in the meantime we talked about Asian pop, so that basically explains everything about this piece.

Cheshire Cat should be a clever, noble trickster, but he looks like a 'tard here >__<
Back to the drawing board...

Chasing Cats

Some cat photos I've taken over the last two years, more a reference entry for myself than advice. Speaking of which, the only things I can advise to you are to just hope the cats are moderately tamed and won't immediately run away, look for interesting moments and just keep on shooting.

....
When I'm in a mood for some cats, I usually take a bus to Bolderāja, a district in the north of Riga. While there are other places that are full of cats, too, the environment in Bolderāja somewhat appeals to me the most.



I call this one "grandfather" and haven't seen a cat like that neither before nor after this encounter.






...
Two strays from behind the Central Market in Riga.




...

Relative's cat with a fantastically wild look.




...

My own sleeping on the ironing desk, a friend's and two pictures of a stranger's housecat behind in the window.








..and from around our yard, we had very nice ferals there last year.



Then, where I was living in Bremen last year, we had a few cats on our street that seemed to belong to anyone who would feed them. I don't have a photo of Brandy, "our" cat, but this one came by on one evening when I was about to go out for a little.



And another evening met this very demanding example.





And that's about it for now. I'm hoping for a nice cat-shooting season once some semester duties are done.

Meow :3

Cervantes and the Watermelon

Turtleshelltered's (from DeviantART) original design, my fanart. Gosh, when will this neverending cold end and the will to make something more serious come back to me *violently gnaws desk*

In want a slice of watermelon now :3

My Shoes Are Full of Pine Needles Now

Today I almost managed to step into an anthill, but then common sense urged me to retreat :p

Ferda the Rabbit

1989, fifth year

We scoffed up Ferda, the rabbit
with cream
he didn´t even squeal

a prosaic end of the innocent
flashed through the windowpane

we scoffed up Ferda, the rabbit
with cream
he´s been lying in my stomach
for twenty years

it is my turn now

/Magda Starkova/

..

My friend Magda asked me whether I could do some illustrations for her upcoming poetry release sometime this spring in Czech Republic. In the process I realized that I'm bad, very bad at illustrating vague metaphors, so I settled with painting a rabbit. At some point Magda jokingly typed over Skype that she's planning to dedicate the whole thing to Ferda the rabbit, who was her childhood pet and was, truly, eaten in cream sauce, cooked by her grandmother (Not kidding. Magda's family has serious vileness issues in her father's side of the family).

Currently I'm waiting for Magda's opinion on this sketch. What after that? No idea for now.

The original Ferda, as I heard, had reddish fur. Magda had asked for monochrome illustrations.
In the end I saw this as a practice for trying to make something look interesting while using a single colour (95% Payne's grey, inside of the left ear coloured with diluted black - I won't be able to name the exact tone).