Sly FOX

Picnickers, watch out for your sandwiches! That old sly fox is out and about, ready to pick off whatever you leave around. He's not picky, you know?

I had fun scratching in lines for this in the background. In fact, I started with covering it all in an orange and then scribbling vertical yellow lines from top to bottom to get that feeling of bristle hair. After almost finishing this piece though, I decided it was lacking depth, so added the dark brown to the top and the right where his left shoulder might be. Of course, that meant re-scribbling yellow and now orange lines above it. This was all done at a very frenetic pace with me working fast and furiously, really focusing my passions on each of the 100s, if not 1000s of strokes! I wanted this to be quite impressionistic yet somehow stylized regally, making his nose very long and straight, adding a glorious white mane, if you will, and so on.

Happy with the overall results (although it could always be better), I'm planning to offer this as a 6"x4" card in my shop at some latter point. Oh, and kudos if you can find my signature! (Hint: it's scrawled in red.)

OK, time now to stop skulking about! Grab your goodies and come join me down the fox hole to see who or what else we might discover...

P.S.  It's way past time to do another give-away so be sure to sign up! Don't worry though, I'm keeping track. Reminder: you get one entry per theme entered since last giveaway and, remember, there are other ways to increase your chances too! Maybe you will be that lucky sly fox this time around? :) Check back here later for some details on the prize on hand. Fun! :)

Scribble Picnic's World of JARS

The Obsession of the Peculiar Masons and their Family Name

[Queue Music]
"There is nothing wrong with your [computer screen]. Do not attempt to adjust the picture..."*

...or so goes the intro to The Outer Limits. If you've not seen that classic old TV show, it's much like the original Twilight Zone. That rather unsettling kind of feeling is what I wanted to portray here, not just with the subject matter but employing off-kilter angles and spacing, perspective, etc. This piece began Monday as a stream of consciousness type drawing with no particular end plan other than to show the strange Jar Collector's collection of other jar collectors' photos.

Time now to sign up and enter the world of creative license...

[Queue Music]
"You are moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You're [about to] cross over into... [Scribble Picnic]."**


* Excerpt from "The Outer Limits" TV series' 1961 intro.
** Excerpt from "The Twilgiht Zone" TV series' 1959 intro.

Scribble Picnic and BIRDs

Golden-headed Manakin

I flew in so many different directions in my mind's eye with ideas for the bird theme before settling on this one. Coming across various photos of the golden-headed manakin, however, I just knew I had to do my own imagined tween-aged version of this fuzzy lil' creature. Cute, isn't he?

My initial idea, actually, was to show a family-tree (depicting it as a feather instead) with "Family Flock" for the title below. Coloured circles would have shown the heads of various bizarre looking birds, like the Royal Spoonbill, Shoebill Stork, Potoo, and the Secretary Bird, among others. With time winding down though, necessity as the mother of invention took over and... voila.

So, let's see what the rest of you did. Come join me now in some of our very own bird watching... and do pass the cucumber sandwiches whilst at it. The weather is lovely and the picnic cloth is laid, but for the sake of our feathered friends, we'll skip the curried chicken, shall we?  :)

Scribble Picnic and Letters

With another cold upon me, no doubt from all the travels, I decided to redraw the redhead from a few weeks ago, imagining her this time opening up an envelope and discovering a lil' love note inside.

This picture actually reminds me of the one and only time I ever gave a Valentine card to someone (before adulthood, that is). I quickly learned, however, that this was not copacetic! In fact, not only that, it turned out I was the only one in our little village school who had sent such a card to anyone and to make matters worse, it was to the Headmaster's daughter, no less!

That morning I had carefully drawn a heart on a piece of paper, folded it and declared my 7-year old admiration and "love" to her. While unable to remember now the exact words, I do recall taking my time to write it legibly enough, very much feeling that romantic stir within my buoyant boyish heart whilst scrawling out my note in red crayon. I just wanted her to know that I thought she was sweet, kind-hearted and pretty, to boot... and, of course, signed it with love. Oh dear me.

Waking up a bit earlier, I rushed across the village green to the school, hoping to be the first one in class so to simply drop the note onto this girl's desk and she would never know who sent it. Trouble was, while Catherine White was not there, other school kids were! Quickly, I determined to non-challantly slip the note into her desk while no one was looking. Of course, as soon as the desk table lifted, it creaked, and the girl who sat next to her (who happened to also be her best friend) inquired as to what was I doing? Telling her it was just a little secret and nothing more was not good enough for her though. Rushing over and grabbing it out of the desk, she proceeded to read it aloud to all the other girls there with everyone having a good laugh, pointing their fingers at me, etc. Ha-ha, at this point, I wasn't so put off by the embarrassment as much as distinctly fearing expulsion from the school by her father and then what would my mother do? We had only recently moved to Norfolk (from London) and there were no other schools around in this little village of Briston!

All day long, I tried to avoid the headmaster and just waited for him to call out, "MacVean, come here at once!" Thankfully, nothing happened and later that week I think chicken pox broke out or something so people had other things to worry about. A few weeks later, I do recall that when the boys would try to round up the girls as "prisoners," pulling their hair and so on, it was always me who protested treating them as such and was very much the egalitarian. Catherine would then sometimes wryly smile at me for my chivalry, I suppose, nothing more. :)

OK, well, with that lil' diddly out of the way, it's time to discover what the rest of you conjured up with your picnic mail or letters....