That's all for now. More sharks soon, probably. And then a cat floating up into space that I started for a past Illustration Friday, if I ever get around to finishing it. ♥
6.05.2014
love & sharks
That's all for now. More sharks soon, probably. And then a cat floating up into space that I started for a past Illustration Friday, if I ever get around to finishing it. ♥
Posted by
Amanda
at
2:19 PM
2
comments
6.19.2013
strummer
Yesterday I signed up for the very exciting new Vegan Cuts Beauty Box, because I am a vegan who loves me some beauty products and also getting packages in the mail. It's a win/win. (My boyfriend already gets us their snack box, because while he is not vegan, he does love snacks and making me happy.)
ANYWAY. The preview video for the first box features Melisser from Cruelty Free Face and her tiny adorable dog named Strummer. I, like the rest of the vegan interwebs, am totally smitten with Strummer. I'm not generally a tiny dog person - I basically want a dog who outweighs me - but there is just something about this little lady that kills me. Anyway, over the course of a a Twitter conversation about the beauty box and how cute Strummer is, I drew this picture of her leaping into the air with unbridled glee re: nail polish. Like you do.
TL;DR: Here is a tiny chihuahua. She is very excited.
Posted by
Amanda
at
10:56 AM
3
comments
6.18.2013
the great chicken caper
2.21.2013
illustration friday: wool
You guys, my vegan is showing.
When this week's (this week's for another 1 hour and 34 minutes, anyway) Illustration Friday prompt - wool - landed in my mailbox, this is the first thing I thought of. Mostly I just wanted to play with hand-drawn type - the sheep is pretty secondary. I think it came out pretty well considering I've never really done this sort of thing before. Looking at it now, as I'm posting it, I'd add change some things (when wouldn't you?), but... overall I like it. I think it ended up having kind of a vintage kid's book vibe, somehow.
Posted by
Amanda
at
10:30 PM
5
comments
Labels: animals, digital, illustration friday
1.18.2013
where have I been? + chamois cat
So it's been a while, right? I haven't updated this blog since July, which is just... wow. I'm sure the two people who were still reading it in October have stopped by now, so maybe I'm just shouting into the void here, but despite all outward appearances I have no intention of letting this blog fade away - so where have I been?
Kind of a long story. I'll just give you the Cliffs Notes version. I think I mentioned on the blog that I was illustrating a series of kids' chapter books last year - my deadline for everything was the end of August. So that's what I was doing until 11:59 pm on August 31st. (I kid. I actually finished a few days early. Also, more on this soon-ish.) It was a busy time. Bee-like. But where'd I go after that?
Oh boy. Let's just say there was some big time medical badness and I almost died. Like for real almost died, not "uggggh I'm so tired I could die." But I didn't! So yay for that. I spent a long time in the hospital (33 days!) and an even longer time recovering. It's been 4 months and I'm still recovering, honestly. Not to get all whatever on the cutesy picture blog but the tail end of
2012 was pretty much the worst of the worst of everything ever and it's going to be a long time until I'm "back to normal." But I'm worlds better now than I was, certainly well enough to draw and update this blog more than twice a year. (Seriously I am the worst.)
So that's where I've been. Living the dream and then living the nightmare. But I'm back from the dead (she jokes) and one of my new year's not-really-resolutions-because-resolutions-are-doomed-to-fail is to draw more regularly for fun, so I'm hoping to post here at least once a week. HOPING. We'll see how that goes.
ANYWAY. Let's move on to something more pleasant, shall we?
Like Chamois Cat! Chamois Cat is something my boyfriend and I made up that is probably amusing to absolutely no one else, but it makes me laugh every time I think about it.
CHAMOIS CAT COMETH. To wash your car. Or dust your hardwood floors. Whatever! Chamois Cat just wants to help.
Posted by
Amanda
at
11:20 AM
5
comments
Labels: animals, digital, finished pieces
6.05.2012
accurate depictions of animals: great white edition
1) Sharks have no internal organs, just more teeth.
2) Since Shark Week took off, all sharks are SUPER rich.
3) Spring Break is like shark Christmas.
4) Sharks are personally offended by water shoes because they are stupid. If you go into the ocean wearing water shoes, you are pretty much asking to have your feet ripped off.
5) Since sharks have no necks, they can't look back. As such they have no regrets, never think of the past, and if you grab onto their tails you can pretty much ride hitch a ride to wherever without them noticing.
6) The sharks vs seals rivalry started when some smartass seals decided to play ring toss with a passing shark fin, which as you may imagine is deeply insulting. Especially since the seals were REALLY bad at it and if there's one thing that sharks, as 100% perfect badass underwater killing machines, cannot tolerate, it's mediocrity.
7) In their dreams, sharks are fighter pilots.
Posted by
Amanda
at
11:27 AM
4
comments
Labels: accurate scientific depictions, animals, digital
5.29.2012
accurate depictions of animals: giraffe edition
Posted by
Amanda
at
8:43 PM
3
comments
Labels: accurate scientific depictions, animals, digital
5.25.2012
accurate depictions of animals: narwhal edition
One of my favorite Internet People - Katie from Don't Eat Off the Sidewalk (whose cute website graphics I maaay have had a hand in), fellow Buffyphile and creator of the tempeh buffalo wings that haunt my dreams - requested the narwhal as the next in the Accurate Depictions of Animals series. WISH GRANTED.
Now let me drop some science on you. A long time ago, unicorns roamed the Earth. It was no big deal, you'd be in the park and just see them running around like squirrels or rabbits. Sometimes one would get into your trash and you'd have to pull punctured soda cans off its horn, which was kind of a pain, but that's the price you pay for living with magic. ANYWAY. Once day some unicorns were at the beach, trying to get a base tan for summer - fun fact: unicorns tan rainbow - and they brought snacks. Unicorns were super fond of Bugles, for reasons I don't think I need to spell out. So they were laying out, eating Bugles, and basically just having such an awesome time that they didn't notice a huge wave heading for shore.
When it hit, there were unicorns and Bugles everywhere, like if someone put a bunch of unicorns and a bunch of Bugles in a snow globe and shook that baby up. When the wave was done slapping people around, the unicorns found themselves strewn across the beach, soaking wet with sand in uncomfortable places (if you know what I mean) and worst of all, totally Bugle-less.They looked out into the water and saw their precious snack horns floating on the waves, bobbing up and down, helpless and uncrunched. Having already had a pretty bad time of it, however, they decided against a rescue effort and got out of there. They could always get more Bugles at VII-XI anyway.
But the Bugles couldn't go home. The Bugles could never go home. They were cast out to sea, abandoned. But Bugles are survivors, so while a few were snapped up by fish and seagulls, most of them did what Bugles do best: like incredibly perverse barnacles with no sense of boundaries, they Bugled their way up into some passing whales and got down to business. The business of Bugling. Somewhere between 3 days and a year later, a pod of narwhals was born. Since they were way better than all the other whales at snacking, stabbing, and stabbing things and stealing their snacks, they established dominance pretty quickly instead of dying off like the cone-headed freaks who put the Bugles in the ocean to begin with - and so began the reign of the clearly mis-named Unicorn of the Sea. I guess maybe Bugles are not great parents?
< / SCIENCE >
Next up: giraffes! Or maybe a shark? Or maybe whatever you suggest? MAYBE THAT. You too could get a completely factual story made up just for you! Or not, it depends if I'm feeling lazy.
Posted by
Amanda
at
4:33 PM
7
comments
Labels: accurate scientific depictions, animals, digital
5.24.2012
accurate depictions of animals: baby hippo edition
Yesterday one of my Twitter friends (hi @BluePlasticJess!) was having a bad day and started posting pictures of baby hippos in an attempt to cheer herself up. I have seen baby hippos before, but for some reason it never really dawned on me that they are JESUS CHRIST SO ADORABLE. Which they are. They basically look like little balls of squishable clay with ears. I want to put them in my mouth. Just, the whole thing. But since I can't (which leads me to question the wisdom of my life choices so far), I just drew one instead. If I were in charge of Doing Science, baby hippos would be classified as one of the following:
Blorpus Stubbularus
Rotundus Blorpulus
Squishablus Rotundus
And they would spend most of their time either nudging things with their little rubbery noses or rehearsing a ballet set to Dance of the Hours.
(These are all solid reasons why I am NOT in charge of Doing Science.)
(Also, I am not sure why I always want hippos to be purple. I wanted to blame it on Fantasia - one of our nation's finest examples of Hippos in Cinema - but when I went back to check it appears they were not purple at all. You're off the hook, Fantasia. THIS TIME.)
ANYWAY. I think I would like to do more of these, they are fun little warm-ups. So if anyone wants to see an Accurate Scientific Depiction of something, let me know. I will do no research whatsoever and probably make it the wrong color. SCIENCE!
Posted by
Amanda
at
9:20 AM
9
comments
Labels: accurate scientific depictions, animals, digital
4.07.2012
Republicats: Lick Santorum
Posted by
Amanda
at
9:55 AM
2
comments
Labels: animals, digital, finished pieces, republicats
4.04.2012
Batbear
Posted by
Amanda
at
11:12 AM
4
comments
Labels: animals, digital, finished pieces
3.29.2012
Republicats: Mew Gingrich
Posted by
Amanda
at
7:18 AM
5
comments
Labels: animals, digital, finished pieces, republicats
3.26.2012
Republicats: Mittens Romney
Posted by
Amanda
at
11:17 PM
8
comments
Labels: animals, digital, finished pieces, republicats
9.03.2010
stop! puppy time
Posted by
Amanda
at
8:32 PM
2
comments
Labels: animals, commissions, digital
7.26.2010
beached whale
Posted by
Amanda
at
10:28 PM
1 comments
1.27.2010
owl girl
Posted by
Amanda
at
8:17 PM
8
comments
Labels: animals, digital, finished pieces, sketches
8.07.2008
poof!

Getting in this week's Illustration Friday just under the wire. The word was, of course, "poof!"
I'll never understand why people insist on stripping dogs of their dignity this way. I mean, what are those hip poof things all about? What is that? They look like earmuffs.
Posted by
Amanda
at
11:15 PM
2
comments
Labels: animals, illustration friday, pen + ink, traditional, watercolor
4.07.2008
melville owl
A character I designed for my Advertising Concepts class. I have a bunch of sketches of him in other poses as well, but I haven't scanned them yet. The assignment was to create a character for the children's section of a hypothetical Borders-esque coffee shop/bookstore's website, hence the literary name. I think he's pretty cute.
Posted by
Amanda
at
9:12 AM
1 comments
Labels: animals, digital, finished pieces
4.02.2008
firebird

The final cut paper piece for my Alt. Illustration book cover assignment. The sketch and color comp are here.
This was a really fun venture into a completely new medium - I love the look of cut paper and really admire the skill and patience that goes into it, but I've never even put a toe in that pond until now. I wouldn't say it's anything fantastic, but I'm pretty happy with it. It's definitely a medium I'd love to do more with in the future.
Posted by
Amanda
at
9:55 PM
0
comments
Labels: animals, cut paper, finished pieces, traditional
3.24.2008
bookopus
Octopuses (it's NOT octopi!) are pretty excellent at multi-tasking. This one goes through books like you don't even know.
Done for my advertising concepts class.
Posted by
Amanda
at
1:09 PM
2
comments
Labels: animals, finished pieces, pen + ink, traditional, watercolor

