A bear on a bicycle and a hedgehog in the rain.

The bear on a Penny Farthing is finished! The lighting did seem to be the issue, now he is rosy and golden from the morning sunrise he's bicycling his way through.

This morning I walked down to our post office to mail some etsy orders. It was beautiful when I left, bright and sunny. However, I've learned better than to expect more than fifteen minutes of sunshine at a time and so I tucked the packages into my waterproof bag and pulled a hoody on before I walked out the door. It's a good thing I did, one block from the post office the sky opened up like something out of a Monty Python cartoon and the angels just dumped a huge bucket of water on me. Drenched and grumbling I dripped in line, hoisted my packages on the counter, and slop, slop, slopped my soaking shoes back out into the parking lot--where it was gorgeously sunny. I trudged home learning my lesson: umbrellas are not optional in Washington.

One good thing came of it, I finished a painting of a tiny hedgehog timidly peeking out from under an umbrella to test the rain with one bitty paw. This painting turned out better than I expected, actually. It began as just a doodle, something cute that I drew to amuse myself as I ate a peanut butter and honey sandwich for lunch and waited for my hair to dry. I decided to ink it and finish it with paint to see where it would go, as I'd spent the morning completing the bear and working on a collaboration. I felt like my productivity had earned a hedgehog in a rain slicker. I look at it now and I'm really pleased I didn't just set him aside as a sketch to live out his days in pencil, tucked into a sketchbook. 

Tomorrow I hope to start inking two of the collaborations with the gentleman from threadless. We have three designs we've been working on together and two are very close to ink. The third is getting there, it's just a bit more involved. I like these concepts a lot and they're challenging me to draw outside of my box. The perspectives and compositions of two of them are very unlike my usual work. The third is a squirrel, and Sweet Lordy knows I love squirrels. I'll be sharing these paintings closer to when we submit them.