Little Owls finished

Here is our little owl family. Morning is coming and after a long night of watch and play, the sweet chicks are ready to go to bed (and mommy too), but they are waiting for daddy to come home. Hey. there he is! Let's say "have a good day" to everybody and snuggle in our cozy shelter until sunset.

 

Now, one might ask, how healthy is it for a squirrel to live next door to an owl? But this is a friendly fantastic forest where rodents are buddies not food...;)

See you soon!

Dormi Dormi for the Topipittori game

The beginning of the year is when I get excited about contests and games. I participated to two, almost submitted an entry for a third, and thinking I should maybe run for a forth one...

This little piece here, Dormi Dormi, was a quick drawing I made for a game (not a contest, a game) by the italian editor Topipittori. The participants were supposed to draw the pajama of their dreams. I made one for my Bella to wear. Of the 78 entries, 20 were selected and published. The public will choose the winner.You can see (and vote for) the selected entries here.
Unfortunately, my piece was not chosen, but it goes straight to Bella's room...after all for my family, I am always a winner! ;)

 The quality of the picture is actually pretty bad...I think I should take a new photo with more light (or buy a new scanner...) and update my sites in a few days.

How is this new one?

Night Flight Complete

As promised, here is the finished version of Night Flight!

Night Flight WIP

I am about to finish the second panel for Pit's theater. If  "The secret of the forest" could be considered the beginning  of the three young heroes' magical journey, this second piece, "Night flight" represents its ending. After many adventures, challenges, and discoveries, it's time to get back to the warm safety of home. Within the castle a portal will open that will return the children to their world. A few friends met along their winding road will accompany them to the threshold between the two universes.

This one took quite a while...May was a very busy month with work and spring related activities. But I am glad I'll be able to finish this in time for Pit's B-day.
Here is the WIP for this piece. Tomorrow I'll show you the finished version.

Here is the initial pencil drawing. It took me quite a while to draw all the tiny little houses on the shore. I am not very strong with horses, so I had to try several time before coming up with a decent Pegasus..still I suppose that my equine anatomy could use some improvement...;)

Of course this is the inking. I rather enjoyed this process, although the tip of my Microliner was at the end of its days and I had to change it half way through....so the thickness of the lines is rather unequal, but thankfully, once colored this is almost unnoticeable...;)

Here I started putting down some greys to define the shadowed areas and create a base that should keep my colors from going to bright and garish....(always fighting that battle...)

So, at this point I was regretting not leaving everything in black and white, as the sea seemed to overwhelm everything else. As I draw, I always get to a panic paralysis point. This was it in this case. I tried to downplay the sea adding tons of grey to the waves, which improved things a bit.

Getting there...the sky was fun...now the sea seems less predominant. Still there are a few details to complete. Hopefully, tomorrow "Night Flight" will be completed!