Illustration Friday: UNICORN

My favorite topic EVER is this week's Illustration Friday theme: UNICORN! Okay, I have quite a few, so I'm going to share them all with you here—and don't forget to check out and 'like' your favorites on my instagram account: mb.illustration!

A gift for a friend… back in the mid-1990s, I drew a lot of unicorns like this.
1999. Colored Pencil & Ink.

The Spanish Unicorn… the one that started me on this project of Unicorns of the World.
1998. Colored Pencil

Detail… I was still 'discovering' colored pencil back then, as you can see, I was having fun.
*didn't have a great scanner or auto-merge in Photoshop back then either… so all my images of this one are fairly poor.

The Caribbean Unicorn (I call them Licorne Caraïbes)
1999. Colored Pencil

Ki-lin, the Chinese Unicorn… or one of them.
1999. Colored Pencil

An African unicorn of the Serengeti (Saamoja Upangatiga).
1999. Colored Pencil

The Volcano Unicorn of the Pacific Rim of Fire… Lae-Hao-Kela
1999. Colored Pencil

The Amazonian Unicorn, Unchifre.
1999. Colored Pencil

  

The Japanese Unicorn: Kirin
1999. Colored Pencil

The Arctic Unicorn, Yksisarvinen.
1999. Colored Pencil

  

Another African Unicorn… the Saharan.
2000. Colored Pencil

One more African Unicorn, the Madagascan Unicorn.
2000. Colored Pencil

  

Inspired by Illustration Friday itself: Smitten
#feartheunicorn

Illustration Friday: ZODIAC

So, this is a bit of a repeat, originally created and posted for Alphabeasts—but totally worth it because I love this piece and it totally applies to this weeks topic. I'm still planning to try do to a new zodiac piece (perhaps a Chinese zodiac, it is the year of the horse!).

Illustration Friday: SPARK

Hey, so there didn't seem to be a new word from the folks at Illustration Friday this week, so I'm totally going to use this edited piece as my submission for SPARK. Ideas can come from the tiniest sparks of inspiration—keep an eye out and you'll see them everywhere!

IF: Entangled

Hey, what?! Two days in a row? No way…

So, this one's a bit of a cheat since it's from a book I worked on last year (The Zoo's Annual Piggyback Race, March 2013 - available from me or the author/publisher)… but it was just so perfect for this #iFri prompt, and it was definitely one of the more challenging pieces from the book.

"The snakes became tangled, around and around"

I actually tangled up two different colored stings for reference, and drew directly from that. Apparently I never took a reference photo of the tangled mess, but I think the result speaks for itself!

(I plan to do a new piece as well, continue with experimenting, etc.)

IF: Moustache

Long time… Yeah, it's just been a long time.
I've been talking about experimenting for over a year now, and I haven't really gotten around to it, so tonight I sat down and forced something out. I don't necessarily like, but I think it's a real start of something.
I'm excited I finally did an iFri too (even if I am getting in about 40 past the deadline). I've been all wrapped up in "stuff", I gotta learn to have fun doing what I do again.

Jack-MustachiO's

*anyone catch my shout-out to Little Pea? LOVE that book!

iFri Afternoon (9/21)

Kind of a whirlwind week here … including fun design projects (super-cute booklets and maps!), quotes and contracts for illustration projects (not as much fun, cough-cough), and diving into the World of WordPress (not unlike some torture devices I've heard of)! AH!
I'm lucky to end each and every week with a scheduled Friday afternoon Illustration Friday session at a local coffee house with my colleagues at Tangerine Café. Although yesterday's #iFri session turned out to be more of a wordpress workshop, I'm not complaining – that stuff will come in handy!
I grabbed a new sketchbook (not moleskin, shocker!) and doodled until I filled a page, testing out some new pen & pencils samples I got last week at a CPSA meeting with Prismacolor Rep, Shelley Minnis. Most of this is stream-of-consciousness / idea generating chicken-scratch – but a solid idea did take root and I hope to keep working on it today at our regularly scheduled monthly CPSA meeting (CPSA-DC219, ABQ).

Sketching for #ifri for a change!!

So, this talking about stuff I'm doing thing, here on the blog – do you like it? Is this stuff even remotely interesting in the least? I've never really used the blog of discussion before, it's always just been a way to share sketches and extras that aren't 'portfolio' work.
After a crazy-busy summer work schedule and ignoring my blog for 3 months, I'm trying to make an effort to post here more often – especially since I discovered I have nearly 40 people subscribed to it!  (thanks folks!) Let me know what you think. ;)