June’s theme was birds! Mainly a bunch of bird portraits. I’ve been developing a new style for animal portraits and this was great practice 🙂
I’ve discovered lately that I LOVE illustrating owls! There’s something about their faces and other details like spotted feathers that makes them so much fun to draw. So quite a few owls turned up in June’s portraits!
Here are some others from the month; click to view larger!
Thanks for viewing!
Sarah
The original goal for May was another landscape series featuring the wandering fox from March. And while I enjoy working on landscape pieces, after a while I started to burn out.
So partway through the month I switched over to ‘free art days’ before eventually settling on Birds as a theme for the rest of May.
I also participated in a fun ‘weapons poses’ art challenge, drawing a fox defending her home (or something equally as dear). Someday I’d like to turn all these ‘adventure critters’ into a story.
Here are some other favorites from the month; click to view larger!
Thanks for viewing!
Sarah
For the first part of April 2022, I went through yet another ABC series. One reason I like alphabet series is that it helps you work on one particular technique or style. There’s an end goal in sight (the letter Z) and still quite a bit of variety along the way (should letter M be moose, mouse, or macaw?). I’ve also learned about quite a few new critters over the past few ABC series, such as the Xeme (a type of seagull) below.
For this particular series, I decided to go with a looser style. I ended up not liking it as much as I pictured in my head, so I’m viewing the project as a whole as art practice. Of the 26 critters I drew, here’s a few favorites:
After the alphabet series came to a close with a Zebra, I used the rest of April as ‘free art days’ with no particular challenges. On one of those days, I decided to continue practicing my pet portrait style with this husky. I’ve been having so much fun with these and hope to offer portrait commissions later this year.
My favorite piece of the month goes to one that wasn’t an official “Daily Drawing”, created alongside the ABC series. The prompt was African Wild Dog and I was so happy with how my stylized portrait turned out!
Thanks for viewing!
Sarah
A few weeks ago I went on my first photo walk in a very long time – it’s been at least a year or two since I brought my old Nikon and simply photographed the beauty along the way.
I used to do Project 365 – taking a photo a day, every day. We lived on a few acres of wooded land, which was perfect for experimenting and exploring. I learned so much through sheer trial and error! This went on from 2010 through sometime in 2016, when our family moved from the ‘old blue house’ to a neighborhood. Since I couldn’t just step outside into our own little park, it became more and more difficult to keep up with the daily photos – and eventually I decided to stop.
I still went out and took artsy photos, just not as often. Photo walks have decreased drastically. So it was wonderful to go out and take some time to admire God’s beautiful spring blossoms!
Here’s a handful of the photos I took during the walk around the old downtown square. Looking forward to going on future photo walks!
Thanks for viewing!
Sarah
For March 2022 I decided to dive into landscapes. These were a lot of fun!
Apart from the first letter (Arctic) and the occasional fog effect, these landscapes were created with my favorite Chalk brush. I’ve been trying to branch out to other brushes, but I keep coming back to this one! 🙂
Each landscape has a critter hidden somewhere, some more obvious than others. The most common critter by far is a little fox who has wandered through a variety of scenes, usually looking dramatically into the distance from some cliff. He appeared in 17 of the 26 letters! I have plans to continue his ‘story’ later this year.
I created a few other landscapes during March that weren’t part of the ABC challenge, like the sea cave above. For someone who usually prefers to draw cute cartoony critters, I found that my enjoyment in creating landscapes was probably just about even with the cute critters. I’m looking forward to more landscape projects in the future.
Below are a few favorites from the month; if you’d like to see the whole alphabet, check out this post over on my IG page.
Thanks for viewing!
Sarah
February had a simple goal: to experiment. Each animal sketch served as the base for four separate drawings in different styles, like this:
This gave me the opportunity (and sometimes the push!) to test brushes and techniques. There were some successes and some failures, but that’s all part of the fun, right? 🙂
Along the way I did discover a favorite “go to” brush, so that’s a big plus!
Here are some favorites from the month. If you want to see all the pieces, check out this post on Instagram.
Thanks for viewing!
Sarah
The Daily Drawing theme for January was another alphabet of semi-stylized animals. One thing I love about working on an ABC project is the repetition: it’s a great way to practice a particular style or tool!
Here are some favorites from the January series. You can find the rest on my Instagram page!
Click to view larger.
Thanks for viewing!
Sarah
Today some of my dinosaur art was featured on the Royal Tyrrell Museum’s Instagram page! As you can probably tell from the name and logo of my site, I’m a fan of dinosaurs 🙂
From the feature:
This week’s featured artist is Kentucky-based illustrator Sarah Brooks! Although her childhood friends grew out of their ‘dinosaur phase,’ Sarah’s fascination became stronger with age. Dinosaurs play a key role as subjects in her art because she takes great joy in drawing them, thanks to their interesting body forms and endless possibilities for colour and patterns. Sarah incorporates bright colours and cute, cheerful critters into her work in the hopes of one day illustrating children’s books. She wishes she could own a baby dinosaur as a pet, so her illustrations are cartoon-based, with happy faces, large eyes, ‘cat-like paws,’ and the occasional wagging tail.
If you could own a pet dinosaur, which would you choose?
@royaltyrrell
Click here to see the feature!
Thanks for viewing!
Sarah
Looking back at 2021! I tried to keep to a theme for each month, with varying degrees of success. Reflections below.
See the original post on Instagram here. These monthly projects are part of my Daily Drawing challenge, which can be viewed on Instagram.
I enjoyed practicing with my favorite brush (the chalk brush by @jingsketch, which remains one of my top brushes and is used in a good majority of my artwork). The repetitiveness of this project was a great help in honing some techniques.
I enjoyed the January ABC series so much that I decided to try another, this time with birds. And I was SO tired of drawing feathers by the end! 🙂 But it let me further develop the techniques from the previous month.
Turned the official prompt list into a little story about a lonely robot named En making a new friend. I doubt I’ll ever again attempt to illustrate what amounted to a 31 page picture book in a month, but I’m glad I had the opportunity. Drawing the same two characters over and over was great practice for future children’s books I plan on illustrating.
After the monumental project that was March of Robots, I was happy to return to the much more steady and familiar pace of drawing another set of ABC animals. This time, cutesy rather than semi-realistic.
I tried hosting two overlapping challenges at once: a plants challenge (with one prompt per week), and a “reMAYk” challenge (taking a older piece of art and recreating it). I learned that hosting two challenges at the same time was way too daunting, and also that I enjoy recreating old pieces (just wait until August).
The month of the 15-minute sketches. We were packing to move cross-country and I also thought I’d be illustrating a huge project which ended up not working out (at least at the time). The time limit on these sketches helped me learn to be ok with mistakes and just loosen up a bit when it came to my art. Because often there wasn’t enough time to go back and fix it! 🙂
To help speed things up a bit since we were still packing, I based July’s drawings on old sketches (saving a bit of time each day since I didn’t have to sketch out that day’s drawing). It was fun giving life to these sketches, especially some that were several years old.
Still in the middle of prepping for the cross-country move. Picking out older pieces to redraw helped speed up each day’s drawing: the composition, colors, etc. were already chosen; I just had to redraw it using newer techniques. It was satisfying to be able to go back and “fix” some older drawings or see what they’d look like with a newer style.
The month of the cross-country move! It was fortunate that it timed out during a month-long sketching challenge. There are some in here that will probably be redrawn someday.
I attempted to create a story based on the official Inktober prompt list, but it ended up becoming too daunting a project (though I still plan on finishing Raven’s tale!). I spent the second half of the month following the prompt list, sometimes in black and white and sometimes in color. Experimented with some brushes.
So many days filled with dinosaurs! (With a username that includes “-saurus”, can you tell that I love this month?). Since the subject remains the same throughout November, this challenge allowed me to experiment with a variety of styles, techniques, and brushes – from cartoony happy dinos to these landscape pieces that were so fun to create!
I’ve been calling December the “Holiday Hybrid” month, since almost every day combines prompts from several holiday and winter prompt lists. For example, this drawing combined “Eurasier,” “Build a Snowman,” “Winter Wonderland,” and “Snowman.” Mixing prompt lists like this was a fun challenge… I’m planning to do the same next December!
Looking forward to seeing where my art journey goes in 2022.
This quote from Anne of Green Gables summarizes my feelings on the
start of a new year perfectly:
I wonder how the road beyond it goes.
L.M. Montgomery
Thanks for all your support!
Sarah
I’ve been calling December the “Holiday Hybrid” month, since almost every day combined prompts from several holiday and winter prompt lists found across Instagram. For example, the illustration above combined the dog breed “Yakutian Laika” with “Candy Cane Forest”. Mixing prompt lists like this was a fun challenge… I’m planning to do the same next December!
Here are some of my favorites from the month. One of the main lists I used was dog-themed… so yes, a lot of these involve dogs! 🙂
Click to view larger.
Thanks for viewing!
Sarah
Glyphasaurus 