Category Archives: News

Bat Cat Doing Some Self Care

Here is the latest batcat drawing. This piece is 9×12 inches on Strathmore watercolor paper. I’ve been doing these batcats for a few years now, and have shown and sold them at Science Fiction conventions. Those were created in color pencil on small pieces of scrap black mat board, and use the black for most of the image. This is the first one that is done in a different medium. I had posted this on my social media pages, when it was just the batcat, with no background. It now has one, which is based on the front porch of my house. I like it, but I’m not sure if it fits with this image.

I chose this paper because I was planning on coloring the final image with watercolor. It would be penciled, then inked and finally painted. I may leave it as it is now. I haven’t decided. I’ve done a rough digital color study, just to get an idea of what colors to use. Another option I’m considering is to create a new background and print it up using that, or have multiple backgrounds to choose from. There is also a version of this with the background removed, for use as more of a design.

What Do You Call A 12 Foot Tall Flightless New Zealand Bird Grazing In Your Yard?

I like puns, palindromes, similes and all sorts of other wordplay. I’m also interested in extinct animals, like the dodo, passenger pigeon or the aepyornis. So, this image covers both ideas.

I usually attend World Con, the World Science Fiction Convention, for those that don’t know what that is. This year it was scheduled to be in Wellington, New Zealand this summer, but because of the pandemic going on, it became a visual convention, only available online. I often show my artwork there and at other conventions. Here is a link to more info about it: ConZealand. I happened to have some images featuring this New Zealand bird. I’ll post those at a later date.

What I did here is, printed the pencilled drawing onto a sheet of matte photo paper, which I sometimes use to draw on. I then colored the image with black and color inks, to get an idea of what to use, mostly just to play around with colors. I’d seen paintings of moa where the feathers were green or some other color. But from what I’ve read, based on DNA of feather samples, the moa had brown feathers. Below, you’ll find more images showing the process leading up to this.

Like many of my artworks, this started out as a simple sketch, after I’d gotten the phrase into my head. I didn’t spend a lot of time brainstorming for a layout or anything, I just saw something like this image in my mind, so I sketched it out in a sketch pad page.

I then proceeded to transfer that to another sheet of drawing paper to refine the linework a little bit. I took some time looking at this layout. I inked this with a regular writing pen, to get some crisp lines. I took a photograph with my phone and uploaded it to my computer for layout ideas in Photoshop. I didn’t need a really crisp image, since I was going to play around with it digitally. I decided I liked it better flipped horizontally, with the bird on the left, as in the second image.

The moa in the picture was just standing in the yard like a lawn ornament. I got the idea of having it eating the grass, emphasizing the mowing aspect. I came up with this image on a separate paper. It was the first image that I drew and was happy with the way it turned out. I traced it and the background of the previous incarnation, and drew it in pencil. I photographed it and uploaded it to the computer. Then, I added it to the background from before and drew this in pencil. This is what I used for the color version above.

Below is another version that I created in Photoshop with its native brushes. I changed the pitch of the garage part of the house. It seemed a little to steep. I looked at my old house in Mesa, Arizona, on Google maps to better portray the look of this style of house. I’m not sure what else I’m going to do with this. I may do a finish digitally, or print out another sheet and color it with color pencil, watercolor, and/or ink. And there you have: The Lawn Moa.

Another Cthulhu Kitty in the Batcat Series

Drawing of black cat with bat wings and green tentacles coming out of its mouth in place of whiskers.

I’ve been making some monster images lately. Here is another image in the Batcat series. It’s done in watercolor and ink, and measures about 5 by 7 inches, on watercolor paper. I drew this on Strathmore greeting card stock

This one is more of a Cthulhu cat, related to the Batcathulhu I created earlier. This iteration, like many of my pieces, came from a doodle. I was sketching more images based on my original Batcat, and wanted to change the look a little. Rather than it having tentacles in place of legs, I opted to have the tentacles as part of his head, much like the classic depictions of Cthulhu.