IF: Old Wive's Tales and Legends: A cow's tail in the air means rain is coming!

"Well, at least part of it is true...A raised cow tail means something is coming..."

IF: Plain (w/bonus coverage)

Before she had put herself together in the morning Jane always felt kind of plain...


(click to enlarge)

Every year I do drawings for my kids' schools. This one I did for my daughter Sarah (yes, that's her in the corner with crazy glasses and underwear on her head). I'll detail the process later, but during the rendering I started throwing in IF folks whose work I enjoy...this made the composition a bit busy but such is life at times. Unfortunately I left some people out (actually a lot of people whose work I enjoy) because I couldn't find things in a short period of time that I felt would work okay in the scene.

Two less obvious ones are Amber, but she is super busy and never gets to participate in IF...although it would be great if she would...(aka Jane D'oh)...she's pretty awesome and has a keen wit about her which has always given me a good laugh...I couldn't incorporate the Monkey Peaches she grows in the can beside her microwave so I defaulted to the poi plant thing in the dog's flower box...I understand it is a felony to grow those things in Oregon so please keep her hydroponic lab under wraps.

I also started out to do this in color after planning on graphite, doing the linework and some of the painting, but knew it was going in the wrong direction and kept getting pulled to Detlef's site...who does pretty great graphite work. (check the barratuna site for links to these and others.)

So feel free to snoop around the pic and guess if you choose where some of the images come from...and I apologize for subtle issues due to the scanning and paneling of the work...

To ALL that contribute to IF, thanks for the inspiration and laughs!

LIST OF ITEMS (TO DATE):
Detlef-Rendering Medium
Jane D'Oh-Poi Plants
ValGal-Dog House
Pati-Godo Ball
Elizabeth Tofu Squirrel-Stuffed Animal
Steve Flying Turtle-Umm...The Flying Turtle
Ammon-Apple (from the apple project)
Amy Zaleski-Patterned Rug
Mac McRae-Hair Clips and T-shirt
Ms. Froggie-Seeing her wonderful work incorporating her kids I pushed mine in.

What is REAALLY Great About Being an 'Artist'

Every year about this time I get reminded of one of the greatest things about being able to draw and paint...I get to draw pics for my kids' schools...which is why my latest IF posts aren't the 'best rendered'...short on time and what time I do have goes mostly to them.

But there are moments when you run across another's kid and they ask you to draw them something when they see you doodling. I've been in hospitals in the emergency room waiting areas and had a long time to wait...and you see some poor sick kid or impatient one waiting and you can just doodle something and make their day. One of the defining moments in my life was when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade involving an elementary school teacher on cafeteria duty. I saw him doodling and I asked him if he could draw anything. He said he could draw most things. So immediately I threw out, "Can you draw Garfield? and a dragon? and a horse? and a soldier?" Of course I wasn't intending for him to draw those things but it was just a kid's way of thinking out loud. So he leaned over a cooler near us and I continued on a conversation with my friend not giving the other conversation another thought. Within a matter of 5 minutes Mr. Thomson slipped a piece of paper in front of me with Garfield, and a dragon, and a horse, and a soldier. It really blew my mind.

This drawing was done for a young lady that loved tigers. It didn't take that long and the smiles it got were great...I hope those of us that have such capabilities remember that...it NEVER takes that long...

IF: Stitch

Nurse...I seemed to have misplaced my hammer...

IF: Are you (100 Percent) sure?

"Well...it was kind of dark...and there were an awful lot of pies flying through the air..."