Green Sloth Travelling Long Distance

Many species of algae flourish in the thick, unruly fur of sloths, giving the creatures a greenish complexion. Perpetual, gravity-forced sloth smiles are a quizzical and engaging feature.
I suspect Dr. Seuss was inspired by sloths when he invented The Grinch.

Willow

This drawing was done on black scratchboard, using a utility knife to scrape and scratch out the white bits. The black ink chips off in specks like finely ground pepper. The result is it sounds like I'm blowing out birthday cake candles (to clear the dust) when I'm working with it. Scratchboard drawings can resemble engravings.

Scratchboard is made from poison ivy leaves and causes frantic itching. Although that last sentence is a fib, it does sound plausible.

Seed Pods

A drawing done for practise of the dried seed pods of Evening Primrose (Oenothera biennis), still attached to the crisp stalk on which they had bloomed. There were still a few cinnamon-brown seeds tucked inside like a delightful postscript at the end of a long, scrumptious letter.

Great Mullein

Great Mullein (Verbascum thapsus) has woolly leaves and many common names. The funniest I've heard is "Tarzan's Toilet Paper."

Fingers Crossed

Drawing practise is important. While drawing I forget about whatever it is I'm looking at, but I do prefer drawing something that is alive or once was … a tree, my hand, a kale leaf, dried seed pods, pine cones, a plant, George-the-Cat (asleep) … I have a bazillion drawings of my left hand.

White Pine — Rough Sketch

This tree is a giant and still growing. My friend Nora and I couldn't touch hands around it. Imagine it's stories.

Old Stone House — Part Two

After the old man died, all of his treasures were removed from the house …

Cross-Country Skiing Chickens

Every chicken has a secret. For some chickens it's eleven different herbs and spices. For cross-country skiing chickens it's double-sided suction cups.
I miss the clap and sigh of skis underfoot, and gliding through forests of slumbering trees. But, Winter is near … I'm working on drawings subcontracted from the North Pole.

Tailpiece Cats

This pair of scribbly cats I drew as the tailpiece for Wendel Messer's smart book, The Sink: The Last Days of Driving. Tailpieces end a book with panache, like fancy peppermint candies at the end of a hearty feast. More books should have them.

Hemlock Cones

The ghost drawings of hemlock cones are showing through from the other side of this flimsy paper.

Today horticultural staff inadvertently locked me in the Bellevue Park Greenhouse. Luckily I had my sketchbook and pencils, and did not have to eat the tiny, caterpillar-green bananas that dangled from one tree. I must resemble a plant. (Green is my favourite colour.)

Hornet Trio

A hornet on a window, waiting-out a rainstorm. It's the same hornet in different poses.

Ambiguous Duck

I met this duck while walking near a pond. It could be a rear view, looking coyly over its shoulder (if ducks have shoulders) as it waddles off, or the duck might be facing forward glancing down.

It snowed! In the dark early hours of morning snowflakes fell, but melted quickly after sunrise. I wore my raspberry-red woollen toque today for the first time this season. I also whisked-up my pet acorn squash from the vegetable patch, fearing it might turn to mush in this cold weather.

Grandma's Dresser

I wish I could rewind the mirror and see her again.

Unicorn

Many contemporary representations of unicorns are as squat, bloated, ponies or extravagantly-maned, improbably-coloured thoroughbreds. It's a ghastly way to treat a mythical creature. I conjured up this unicorn from three sources: the horn is a microscopic Radiolaria shell from the deep seas near Barbados, the body I adapted from a deer found on a fragment of stone in Scotland (reconstructed in George Bain's magnificent book, Celtic Art: The Methods of Construction), and the tail ends with an Aldine leaf, as many good tales do.

Cuke Zeppelins

Years ago when my Aunt Grace sent me a basket of cucumbers from her garden, I couldn't stop laughing. It flummoxed everyone. So, by way of explanation, I made this drawing.

Devil's Paintbrush

Devil's Paintbrush is also called Orange Hawkweed (Hieracium aurantiacum). On sun-warmed afternoons, accompanied by crickets, they are the smell of Summer. It has long irked me to find this wonderful plant described in books as a weed. One book describes Devil's Paintbrush as "a beautiful but pernicious pest," which is something I've long aspired to being. In Spring I saw shelves bulging with pots of them at the Canadian Tire greenhouse. They were tagged at $3 each. I smiled. Conspiratorially.

Wild Apple

Rendered in watercolour pencils, which are fun for sketching, but are not lightfast enough to use for permanent artwork. I ate the model.

Grampa Portrait

Grampa always wore a formal, reserved smile when photographed. I studied how he smiled, and relying on memory and a few stiff snapshots, drew this portrait. He was my Grampa-by-association, and he told stories with panache.

High quality 4B pencils are my favourite, they are soft and glide across the paper, almost drawing by themselves. In pencil-jargon H is hardness, and B is blackness. Except for a trail of dents, 9H pencils don't leave much evidence behind. 9B pencils are so smudgy, they cause more sneezing than ragweed. It was an HB, the regulation, standard-issue, chrome-yellow (to match the school bus) pencil you probably used in elementary school. I've cut through paper with the sharp bits in graphite of junky pencils, so avoid using them. I wield Faber-Castell and Derwent pencils, but there are many excellent brands available. A pencil holder is a clever contraption which attaches to the end of a whittled-down drawing pencil, allowing the artist to draw them down to stubs. I also use an erasing shield (they used to be more associated with drafting supplies), a kneaded eraser, and a Sanford "magic rub" eraser (it vanishes instead of the paper). 

Toad Quartet

A small toad swims in a dish of rainwater. Draggin' toad features the same model. While photographing and drawing the toad I was reminded of Eadweard Muybridge's photographs. Animals In Motion is a book I have frequently inter-library-loaned. Although fascinating, as a gnu striding past is, the book sadly lacks swimming toads.