I am no longer a “pet” person. I haven’t been for about two years. The concept of keeping an animal in your house – let alone buying special food for it – is so foreign to me now.

For the sake of time, I fused a lot of the bones together, so this isn’t an accurate skeleton. I leveraged my artistic license, like a pro and drew the cool, eye candy elements. The tarp background is sporting a cat tail (or “cotton tails” as my British friend, Grant calls them) pattern. The skull was my primary focus and was originally going to be “Day of the Dead Parrot”, but turned into what you see instead. I left the floral latinesque border but didn’t develop it anymore than just a first-pass sketch.

It’s the small victories in life that mean so much sometimes. I have a spot on my  counter that’s been there since I have remodeled the kitchen five years ago. It’s something I look at pretty much every day of my life. Up until yesterday, I thought it would be there until the day I die. I was waiting for the pot to boil and had a minute to spare. Then, the idea came to me…why not use rubbing alcohol? It worked, and no more spot. A five year old eye sore, gone with a couple of swipes with a paper towel. I have wiped that thing down countless times in the past five years and now it’s a mere memory. I will milk this feeling for at least the rest of the weekend.

If you look at this sketch and think, “aw, how friggin’ cute…” then I have succeeded. I really pushed the perspective here. There is no sky, just more water crashing around these guys. No worries, though, they can’t drown. This sketch will be a prime candidate for painting soon.

In my mind, the airship body is made of the same material that jumpy-castle-thingy’s are, only they are a lot more resilient and won’t pop. How cool would that be? Flying in a giant jumpy-castle-thingy. If I could live in the world of my imagination for a while, I’d do it for sure. I think that’s why we like books like Harry Potter so much, because it allows us to visit J.K.Rowling’s world and see how she thinks. Somehow, we are able to suspend our own reality and accept someone elses as our own. Even if that world has unspeakable evil. I guess that makes the adventure that much more exciting.

Anyhoo, I started this sketch with the scroll work in the bridge. I discontinued the pattern because it seemed to just turn into a complex mess and had no real harmony to it. I then created the ship to the left and that felt more fitting. The way I “bridged” the gap was with a bunch of ivy. It almost gives the illusion that the scroll work is falling away from the ship just after turning into ivy leaves.