Mustachioed Cat Magnets

Whenever I can fit it into my schedule, I volunteer as a photographer at The Vanderburgh Humane Society, photographing everything from dwarf hamsters, to cats and dogs, to major events.

In our community, summers are are a particularly crazy time for the cat population. I spend a lot of my time photographing kittens and cats, many of which I see waiting for their forever homes weeks on end. These are all perfectly good-natured, healthy adoptable cats, but many never find a home.

This breaks my heart. If I could, I'd take them all home. The reality is that I can't or else I'd truly hit crazy cat lady status. I do my best to help get the word out that there are some amazing animals at the VHS waiting for adoption.

Throughout my time at VHS, I've accumulated a large library of animal photographs. One afternoon, I decided to make a few of these into magnets. Obviously my first thought was, "Oh, yeah, better add a mustache to all of these cats!" And thus, cat mustache magnets were born.

I chose a few images that clearly displayed a cat's face and took them into photoshop. There I converted them to black and white to help make the mustaches really POP. I added in the mustaches, sized each head to be a little smaller than one inch and printed out a sheet for cutting. I picked up some crafting glue, magnets, and a 1" round paper cutter at Michael's. I found the glass bits at both Michael's and the Dollar Tree.

My fridge is no stranger to odd and interesting magnets, (I collect them from National Parks, magnets from favorite shows like Adventure Time, dinosaur magnets, bad pun magnets, etc.) but now I have thousands of mustachioed cat faces staring back at me whenever I go to grab myself a snack. Soon, you can too.

Available on Etsy soon (http://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/KeriDuckworth)

Digital Portrait

Earlier this year I was asked to do a digital portrait as an anniversary gift for a best friend's parents. I was given a photo reference, and after several hours in photoshop, this was the result. I was excited to have the opportunity to recall my days of figure drawing and work on a realism piece, as typically I draw things a bit more on the whimsical side. You know, like cats with mustaches.

Wolf Park | a study of anatomy

Wolves, and canines in general, are one of my favorite animals. This is a pretty bold statement seeing as I am a complete and absolute lover of any animal, big or small. Back in 2011 my boyfriend and I visited Wolf Park, which is a "not-for-profit organization dedicated to behavioral research, education and conservation, with the objective of improving the public’s understanding of wolves and the value they provide to our environment." Additionally, Wolf Park offers photography seminars under the guidance of one of my most favored wildlife photographers, Monty Sloan. Alongside Monty and a handful of other photography/wildlife enthusiasts, we spent several hours inside an enclosure with three of Wolf Park's resident wolves. This was one of the best experiences of my life to date. Our visit afforded me not only the opportunity to meet and interact with wolves *insert high-pitched noise of complete and utter joy here*, it gave me once in a lifetime photo opportunities, as well as an entire library of photo references for anatomical study. Above I've provided a sketch of Ruedi, one of Wolf Park's at-the-time Ambassador Wolves. Below is a photograph I took of him during my visit.

This week belongs to Unicorns.

This week belongs to Unicorns.

Watercolor Firefox

Here is another watercolor experiment. I'm keeping things pretty simple for the moment and trying out new styles. It's fun to experiment in new mediums!

Watercolor Deer

Over the weekend I unearthed a couple of gift cards to Blick, so I decided to put them to use. I picked up a new travel set of Winsor & Newton watercolors. I also bought a tube of white gouache to use as an overlay. I haven't used gouache in a few years so I'm hoping to find some of my old tubes and test those out as well. I plan on doing some mixed-media with these watercolors, combining digital lines with watercolor backgrounds. I probably favor watercolors over acrylics or oils due to the fact that I'm used to working quickly in programs like Photoshop. Their fast dry time keeps my patience intact!

"Woodland Creatures" - Pt. 2

The second part of my "Woodland Creatures" series is complete! This one features a cute little forest owl. I am currently working on an illustration for the back of this bookmark, as well as one for "Little Fox", as shown in my previous post. I am also looking into various printing companies and I hope to have these two in production shortly. Enjoy!

Little Foxes

I'm currently creating a handful of products to sell locally and online. These "Little Foxes" will be offered as bookmarks. This particular set consists of an Arctic Fox, a Red Fox and a Fennec Fox. The Red Fox will also be featured in a "Woodland Creatures" set. Additionally, "Little Foxes" will be offered as a print, along with the rest of the "Woodland Creatures" series. I'm excited to share the remaining illustrations!

Jep: Photoshop Lines vs. Illustrator Lines

HEY GUYS! LOOK, A PUPPY! This is Jep, our Shepherd/Chow mix. I have been searching for new line art techniques, so I decided to try converting Photoshop lines to vector in Illustrator. Adobe Photoshop and I have been in a pretty committed relationship ever since I switched over from Jasc Paint Shop Pro back in the early 2000's, but Illustrator has a lot of great qualities that I am really growing to love for traditional art, like the Blob Brush tool. These are great options when you want to resize your graphics at a later date.

Below is a side-by-side comparison of my Photoshop line art vs. Illustrator line art. In this particular case I used Live Trace to convert my lines, and after some tweaking I was pretty happy with the results. I've created smooth, scalable lines with minimal quality loss. That is a success in my book! You have no idea how many hours I wasted scaling my recently vectorized lines up and down, completely in awe of their beauty. (Roughly .003 seconds, but in my mind it was a lot longer.)

A Study of Canine Anatomy

It's no secret that I love animals. If you've spent any time on this blog, that is quite obvious. Dogs hold a special place in my heart. I've always had a dog present in my life in one way or another. I spent much of my childhood exploring the woods behind my house with my childhood dog and best four-legged friend, Bo. He, along with a vast array of other furry creatures instilled within me a deep love for animals that I will never shake.

I've started a personal project to illustrate an assortment of dog breeds. This project is primarily so that I can study anatomy. It's amazing that although they are all canines, the anatomy of a Great Dane is extraordinarily different from that of a Chihuahua. Don't even get me started on facial variations! On one hand, we can have the proud, wolf-life face of the German Shepherd, and then we have the Pug, a comical little dog that looks like he didn't put the breaks on soon enough before plowing into a wall.

Below is the first draft in a series I will be continuing. By the end of this project I hope to have a greater understanding of canine at anatomy and overall physical appearance. Enjoy!