fiddlesticks

Fiddler crab, suggested by my good friend Tris. I've always loved these guys since I was a kid, definitely one of the most charming crab species out there. I really liked the colours on this one so I used that to choose a colour scheme. This one's a super quick Photoshop painting because I am having to prepare for a hurricane.



I'd love to draw more arthropods in the future, they've always intimidated me with their complex exoskeletons and I'd like to find a nice balance between realistic and cartoony for them. We'll see how that goes...

have you ever seen a cephalopod fly?

Second entry in my Friday's Beast project, the aptly-named Dumbo Octopus, one of the most adorable molluscs in the world even by normal-people-that-don't-think-molluscs-are-cute standards:



Those "ear" fins aren't just for decoration of course - they help the octopus move around in the water. I'm assuming they can change colour like most cephalopods, since the images I found of them varied hugely in colour. I really liked the colouring this guy and this guy had, so I went with that for inspiration. Check out this video of one and you can really see why they picked the name. Adorable!


Not much is known about these creatures, like most deep-sea animals, but I hope that will change in the future. Deep-sea creatures are awesomely weird and I'll definitely be drawing more in the weeks to come!

silky anteater

Fridays are now Draw An Unfamiliar Animal day, and for my first outing I've picked the Silky Anteater. Love these guys:



They hail from South America and are the world's smallest species of anteater - one can fit in your hand (so naturally I had to draw one with a Giant Anteater which is about the size of a large-ish dog, and also an Unfamiliar Animal so forgive its quick-n-dirty quality). They're nocturnal and arboreal (live in trees, you can tell by those feet and the prehensile tail and how tiny they are). They also supposedly camouflage themselves by living in silk-cotton trees and looking like the seedpods, because as their name suggests they're pretty fuzzy.

I love their little weird claw-hands! Here is a photo of one being cute (or not, depending on what you find cute. I find certain insects and baby Aliens cute over labrador puppies, so I'm willing to accept that my tastes might be a little weird). You can really see why one of their other names is 'two-toed anteater'.

I think my favourite drawings are the two on the bottom right corner, I think those capture the look of the animal best while still being a little stylized. I'm getting better at 'getting' an animal from references, though - the key thing for me is not to get too bogged down in details and try to get the shapes and proportions right first, as well as how the anatomy works - which is key for drawing different poses. Video reference would be the best thing for that, but that's hard to find for these guys since they're rarely seen as it is. :[

Anyway, I would very much like to finish a full image and make some better drawings of silky anteaters soon, but for now enjoy this quick sketchdump :)