William Heath Robinson- He was an English Cartoonist that lived though 1872-1944. Not only do I enjoy his drawings because of the fun elements that he would bring into them with machines, but I really like his use of line. His use of a single width for his line work and other artists have directly affected my own works. I also really enjoy the flat colors that he uses in his works.
John James Audubon- He was a American- French artist and ornithologist ( study of birds) who lived from 1785-1851. He recorded and painted many species of birds that are native here in America. I love his art. The composition, the colors, the accuracy of the birds is to die for. Huge inspiration when it comes to drawing birds. Recommend studying his art if your interested in bird drawing!
(Also the last bird picture is of a Carolina Parakeet, which was the only parakeet native to the southwest of North America)
(unfortunately it went extinct around the 1900's, which is a shame as it looks like it was such a pretty bird)
He also drew some mammals from America (tbh though some of them look a bit..... odd). This guy looks hella cursed lol
(both bird and racoon pics were from my collection of books based on his art)
Joe Weatherly- He is a California based artist that focuses on animal art. His artworks are very dynamic in nature and I love his use of color in his artworks. He also has done multiple books on drawing animals and of his own art (first picture is of his book Animal Essence). I highly recommend him to anyone interested in learning how to draw animals!
Here's a link his website for anyone interested https://www.joeweatherly.com/
(Images were taken from my own copy of his book Animal Essence)
Group of artworks from Pauline Cherrett's book "Chinese Brush Painting: A Beginner's Guide"
I have always been a fan of brushwork in artworks and have always been inspired by Chinese brush painting and Japanese woodblock art. I've always liked nature and landscapes and flowers which tend to be the main subjects of this type of art and honestly I just really enjoy them ( I mean look at the brushwork its amazing).
(all of these pictures come from my copy of the book)
So this was just a small list of some of the artworks and artist that inspire me and my art. Wanted to write this blog for myself as a sort of reference point and to show others different artists that they may not know of. I also have another blog like this one which I'll link if anyone is interested.
Honestly this was so much fun to write! I mainly write a ton for college and it can be a bit taxing but it's nice to write something for myself and on a topic I really enjoy!
Haven’t seen many in a few years unfortunately since their populations are declining but I remember when there used to be so many when I was a kid. Me and my friends always used to have those bug catcher toys and we would collect them before letting them go. Miss seeing them around in the wild 🐞
"A 2019 sighting by five witnesses indicates that the long-extinct Javan tiger may still be alive, a new study suggests.
A single strand of hair recovered from that encounter is a close genetic match to hair from a Javan tiger pelt from 1930 kept at a museum, the study shows.
“Through this research, we have determined that the Javan tiger still exists in the wild,” says Wirdateti, a government researcher and lead author of the study.
The Javan tiger was believed to have gone extinct in the 1980s but only officially declared as such in 2008...
Ripi Yanuar Fajar and his four friends say they’ll never forget that evening after Indonesia’s Independence Day celebration in 2019 when they encountered a big cat roaming a community plantation in Sukabumi, West Java province.
Immediately after the brief encounter, Ripi, who happens to be a local conservationist, reached out to Kalih Raksasewu, a researcher at the country’s National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN), saying he and his friends had seen either a Javan leopard (Panthera pardus melas), a critically endangered animal, or a Javan tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica), a subspecies believed to have gone extinct in the 1980s but only officially declared so in 2008.
About 10 days later, Kalih visited the site of the encounter with Ripi and his friends. There, Kalih found a strand of hair snagged on a plantation fence that the unknown creature was believed to have jumped over. She also recorded footprints and claw marks that she thought resembled those of a tiger.
Kalih then sent the hair sample and other records to the West Java provincial conservation agency, or BKSDA, for further investigation. She also sent a formal letter to the provincial government to follow up on the investigation request. The matter eventually landed at BRIN, where a team of researchers ran genetic analyses to compare the single strand of hair with known samples of other tiger subspecies, such as the Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) and a nearly century-old Javan tiger pelt kept at a museum in the West Java city of Bogor.
“After going through various process of laboratory tests, the results showed that the hair sample had 97.8% similarities to the Javan tiger,” Wirdateti, a researcher with BRIN’s Biosystemic and Evolutionary Research Center, said at an online discussion hosted by Mongabay Indonesia on March 28.
The discussion centered on a study published March 21 in the journal Oryx in which Wirdateti and colleagues presented their findings that suggested that the long-extinct Javan tiger may somehow — miraculously — still be prowling parts of one of the most densely populated islands on Earth.
Their testing compared the Sukabumi hair sample with hair from the museum specimen collected in 1930, as well as with other tigers, Javan leopards and several sequences from GenBank, a publicly accessible database of genetic sequences overseen by the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
The study noted that the supposed tiger hair had a sequence similarity of 97.06% with Sumatran tigers and 96.87% with Bengal tigers. Wirdateti also conducted additional interviews with Ripi and his friends about the encounter they’d had.
“I wanted to emphasize that this wasn’t just about finding a strand of hair, but an encounter with the Javan tiger in which five people saw it,” Kalih said.
“There’s still a possibility that the Javan tiger is in the Sukabumi forest,” she added. “If it’s coming down to the village or community plantation, it could be because its habitat has been disturbed. In 2019, when the hair was found, the Sukabumi region had been affected by drought for almost a year.” ...
Didik Raharyono, a Javan tiger expert who wasn’t involved in the study but has conducted voluntary expeditions with local wildlife awareness groups since 1997, said the number of previous reported sightings coupled with the new scientific findings must be taken seriously. He called on the environment ministry to draft and issue a policy on measures to find and conserve the Javan tiger.
“What’s most important is the next steps that we take in the future,” Didik said."
what elements of your process are different in traditional vs digital art? i'm mostly a traditional artist and i have tried so many times to switch to digital and it never works out quite the same, so i'm curious!
My process tends to be very similar between traditional and digital. I find digital art to be more flexible than traditional so if I’m not feeling too great about how a drawing came out traditionally I switch to digital for a while and go back and forth between them. For digital I try to find process that lets me make it feel traditional as close as possible.
First I add paper textures to the background to have a paper look and then I use a textured brush that mimics traditional tools. I hoard a ton of brushes and am always looking to find more! I also work on a digital tablet that’s on the desk and I have to look up on the screen while drawing with my hand on the tablet. I like these more then glass because some have more tooth and it makes it feel similar to paper (unless you use it so much and it looses some of the texture ie myself) and glass makes it hard to draw for me even though it closely resembles a more traditional feel.
Digital can be overwhelming since there’s so much to learn and use but it’s very reliable and makes drawing go by much quicker. With traditional I really have to sit down and make sure the sketch is good and that I’ve done color studies and since I draw in mainly watercolor and ink it can be a bit intimidating to start a traditional piece ( I love the challenge tho).
For both traditional and digital I use the same colors ( I found a color pack that closely resembles traditional artist colors such as burnt umber and payne’s grey so both colors digitally and traditionally are relatively the same).
Hopefully I have not made this too long but hope this helps and try to practice digitally and traditionally as much as possible as your skills will translate over to both methods and both are just really fun.
Here's the quick mini tutorial @totally-not-jackie !
Here's some more about my process: I don't really spend too much time on the sketch but I do try to take into account the different shapes that I can make and try to push my shape language a bit more. I try not to make the sketch too detailed since it makes the drawing be more suspectable to becoming stiff in the inking phase. I also do not want to copy the reference exactly so I end up making it more expressive and lively.
Most of the rendering takes place in the inking stage. I love inking so its the most fun part for me and I tend to ink with brushes that mimic traditional tools as I love texture. For the colors I try to apply color theory such as if the reference has grey and orange like this one does I make the grey on the bluer side since both blue and orange are complementary colors and adding some in the grey really helps.
I really recommend learning the fundamentals of art especially color theory and learning how to do different inking methods.
Hope this helps you or anyone else!
Also included a timelapse since I'm not the best at making image tutorials and would rather just show my process and talk about it.
This was definitely an experimental drawing. I usually use very muted colors and lean more on the naturalistic side so more nature based colors but I wanted to try something more colorful. This was so much fun to draw and I love his expression.
His power comes from the chicken nuggets he has acquired.
Have been wanting to experiment more with movement and action in my art and while I feel I could have pushed the action more I like how this guy came out overall!🐆