Hello! I’ve been drawing up some more animal mama and babies, and they are from the deeps of the wild! Here are the two newest members to my animal kingdom:
“Bison,” 8 x 10 inches, pen and ink (inspired by the American Bison, to be specific)
“Zebra,” 8 x 10 inches pen and ink
I have to say, nature surely knows what she’s doing and makes such beautiful variations and perfect imperfect-ness! I drew and redrew the zebra stripes, and still didn’t nail them. It’s always interesting to have to look closely at something you’ve seen a million times, but never really seen. Zebra stripes are definitely something I have never really seen until I had to sit down and draw them. It’s incredibly interesting how they go horizontally on the rear part of the zebra’s body and then turn vertically, and how many of the zebras have a V-shaped stripe around the middle of their backs. Also, their manes are striped—I ended up leaving this detail out to give a little visual break, but I was so amazed and intrigued to realize that a real zebra has an even crazier pattern than I could have imagined.
This whole series of animals brings up something that I have often explored in my art-work—what is the most basic visual description of a thing that will convey that particular thing to our brains? I love to simplify things that we see all the time and figure out what is the defining characteristic that will help us to recognize it. Drawing just the outline of an animal is an interesting exercise in this—you have to nail some particular defining aspect of the animal in order for it to be recognizable. Again, this is forcing me to really look closely at these animals, and when you look closely, there is always a most beautiful, graceful line. And then the patterns (zebra, giraffe) just make me look with awe at the wildness—the patterns may serve a good camouflage function for their wearers, but I think the universe was also just having a bit of fun! Happy wild day to you!
All of my animal drawings are available as prints in this section of my shop.
blue bicicletta 
NICOLE THESE ARE AWESOME. I had to type that in all caps to convey the appropriate level of enthusiasm. Seriously, you are constantly amazing me. I hope you are also constantly finding yourself in awe of your own awesomeness!
Right back at you Marianne! I hope you are constantly finding yourself in awe of your awesomeness! I am constantly in awe of the awesomeness of art and art-making!
These are beautiful! They make me smile. I love them so much!
Love this new series and I also love the simplicity in things. I think when you boil it down to the parts…you can really appreciate the beauty…without distraction!
I love these animal drawings! So beautiful! And the zebra stripes look perfect :)
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Do you do newsletters? Can not find it.