Productive weekend!

I did my first round of life painting ever. It's time to learn about color and stop faking it. 

These were done in acrylics. When I'm comfortable enough I hope to move into other mediums, probably watercolor, but I keep hearing that oils are the business. I'm so scared of oil paint though...

Also, I finished my first sketchbook of the year today. That means 200 pages since November 22nd. I really hope to keep up this kind of pace and not burn out. Not long ago at all I'd have been lucky to complete half a sketchbook in a year.

I'm bent on getting better at what little it seems I do know, and begin practicing on everything I don't know or have backed away from. Anyway, I've been pretty fired up lately and feeling super crazy.

The little creatures to the left of the last page were fun to design today.

The large one is the female. The little male is part of a group of females. He cares for a nest of undeveloped pups, feeding them, moistening them, monitoring their temperature, etc. The pups look like mustached salamanders. The females have large fatty tail-like back sides which secrete a nutritious "dew". The male feeds off this dew and also feeds the pups with it. He gathers the dew with a brush pallet, a set of bristles protruding from the lips.  Females have a more robust brush pallet which they use to browse a mix of foliage and small animals from rocky surfaces. The back of the male is underdeveloped compared to the females, but the bristles are able to fold up and down, this is a visual signal and also aids in dispersing scent.