when sweet Lady Octopus sleeps

... there's nobody to watch over our city...

I just started doodling, and after pencil, I added some ink, then some colour pencils, then I absolutely needed a touch of the famous gold, and it's acrylic paint, and then some white acrylic too, and it would have all been fine if only I hadn't started (and finished) it all on a piece if simple 80g copy paper... 

migration

Northern Park House flyway runs over Maja's playground. Her friends don't pay much attention to whizzing and flapping noises, but she often gets pretty distracted. Sometimes she howls and yelps, and it sounds so nostalgic. I keep wondering: what does she have to be nostalgic about? This is her first and only house. No house has ever left her, or deserted her, or kicked her out... that long longing look she gives them... where did that come from?

And those houses... migrating every other day, without any order or timetable... so frivolous... why can't they settle down, grow some roots...

Northern Park House flyway

wildlife

I wasn't sure about posting this page from my sketchbook... it's simply too... sketchbooky, and smudgy, and unfinished... but I love the color.
I tried to scan it, but the scanner didn't show how shiny it is. Not even photoshop could save the situation. However, the photo didn't need any tweeking.
Lately, I am crazy about shiny warm golds and coppers...
And rapidographs... I love the fine-fine-black-ink-lines my 0.18mm rapidograph makes. Perfectly precise thin lines combined with rough brush strokes of shiny color...
Oh, yeah... and bears... I keep drawing bears... and I have no idea why. When I sit and draw, a bear staggers onto the paper... maybe it has something to do with my constant daydreaming about running off into a forest to live away from the city, and noise, and people for a while... long while? :)

WildLife

drawing adventure continues

I couldn't resist! 

Here it is!

I wanted to send you everything nice!!!

at once... so you can pick what you like most :)

drawing adventure

weeeee ... it's heeereeeee :)
@Valeriadraws had a lovely idea to start this adventure, and the gem I got in the post today made me SO happy :D

I feel a bit secretive about this, because I was the first one to get the envelop, so ...that's all I'll say for now :)

just another page from my sketchbook

A Strange Wild Song

Lewis Carroll 

He thought he saw an Elephant

That practised on a fife:

He looked again, and found it was

A letter from his wife.

"At length I realize," he said,

"The bitterness of life!"

...

He thought he saw a Banker's Clerk

Descending from the bus:

He looked again, and found it was

A Hippopotamus.

"If this should stay to dine," he said,

"There won't be much for us!"

...

He thought he saw a Coach-and-Four

That stood beside his bed:

He looked again, and found it was

A Bear without a Head.

"Poor thing," he said, "poor silly thing!

It's waiting to be fed!" 

Lady Bear daydreaming

Some of you might have already met Lady Bear.

Unfortunately, she became a victim of my passion for drawing wallpaper.
She just sat there, in her chair, quietly, and waited for me to finish her portrait #2
I think she might have been a bit bored.

She told me she thought of some nice things all along...

hippo on a bike

I was thrilled to see this week's IF topic. I've been drawing bikes for months now, and I've started a project Animals on Bikes. Bikes are So cool, and I couldn't just post any old illustration, I wanted to go a tiny baby step further :D

It all stared with my good old sketchbook, as always:

Then, I played with Photoshop:

And THEN, I went a bit crazy!


It's 4 o'clock in the morning, and I know I could go on tweaking it for the next 3 days or more, but being my first animation ever, I think it turned out pretty well :)

This was FUN! I think I'm hooked!

IF bottled

I was thinking what would be the things that I would love to have bottled, so I can use them any time to make a cocktail that suits my mood. I wanted to bottle my cat and my dog, they always make me happy and giggly, but drawing them in a bottle seemed a bit macabre, so I went for the approach that's a bit more... conceptual.

cat frenzy

I've been drawing cats all day today.

I like best the very first one I drew, of course. 

And the weird things is: I started thinking about dogs very soon after I stared drawing cats. But I didn't let myself get carried away. I continued drawing cats. 

Then!

I wanted to draw raccoons.

I'll be drawing raccoons tomorrow, unless I change my mind, in which case, I might draw bugs, or elephants or armadillos... but one thing is certain... I'll want to draw anything but raccoons less than an hour after I start drawing them.

When I completely commit to doing one single thing, I get amazing (perfectly unrelated) creative ideas, and then all those ideas just go to waste, and leave me thinking I'll never have any new creative thought ever again. 

And then! ........ I get an amazing idea! 

... at about half past 11 (at night)

... and I stay up, happy happy, completely forgetting about time, till everything I see becomes a white smudge created by my lamp light mixing with beautiful colours of sunrise, so I go to bed, get up 3 hours latter, spend all day with metallic taste in my mouth, trying to pretend I had a long night's sleep... and I'm dead at 10 in the evening, and just before I fall asleep, some amazing idea violates my serene tiredness... and I can't do anything, too tired, and I can't sleep... the majestic birth of insomnia.

I hope one day I'll master the skill of writing down those misbehaved ideas, as notes, for future me to criticize them and discover that they weren't really that great.

tagged

I have been tagged by amazing @Heidi M (do visit her blog, it’s lovely)
so that you can learn a little more about me, so here goes.

Three names I go by:

Maja (lleft) and Simon (right)

     Tanya, which is an abbreviation of my long name that my parents used to call me only when they were cross. I still cringe when I hear it.
     Meow… my cat insists on calling me that.
     Maja… my dog’s name, people who walk their dogs with me call me that, and that’s cool, because it gives me an excuse to call them by their dogs’ names, so some ladies are called Hogarth, Ben, Sima, Bonny, and some gentlemen Mimi, Peggy, Sofia…

Three places I’ve lived:
     Belgrade full stop... I've always lived here.

Serious mess

Three places I’ve worked:
     a bookstore… I’m addicted to books. I needed a just reason to hang around books all the time and I even miss that job… a little… well… not really, now I enjoy buying books instead :D
     a basement... screen printing... that was FUN!
     home… translating, writing scripts for TV, designing, drawing……..
Three things I love to watch:
     gray sky (it smells sweet)
     my cat and dog doing absolutely anything
     people totally focused on doing something, so much that they completely stop being aware of anything around them… you know that moment .. when you bite your tongue…

Herceg Novi

Three places I’ve been and loved:
     Berlin. I fell in love with that city.
     Barcelona
     Herceg Novi
Three people who email me regularly:
     People I work with… all of them… I don’t like writing e-mails
Three things I love to eat:
     cakes, any homemade cakes, any time
     Grana Padano cheese
     almonds, blanched and toasted
Three things I’m looking forward to:
    change
    drawing
    reading some books
The three people I’m tagging in this meme:
@GenieEspinosa ...blog:  TrouvezLeLapin
@DianaDelosh ...blog: TheHareIllustratere
@BrownPaperBunny ...blog: BrownPaperbunny

unorthodox taste

I gave up on buying
                    fluffy furry toy-mice,
                    or flashing balls,
                    or feathery tails hanging on elastic stings attached to specially customized planks of wood...

This is THE ULTIMATE TOY!

If you are a cat minder (well, a slave, to be more accurate, but a happy happy slave),
I'm sure you know exactly what I'm talking about.
If it was available in toy stores (to buy, not given as a bonus item with anything BIG)
it would probably be called something like:
                   Magic Transforming Exclusive Supersonic lux-Cardboard Cave-Box.

Magic Transforming Exclusive Supersonic lux-Cardboard Cave-Box

portrait of a lady

Lady Badger

Lady Badger saw the Bear Girl portrait, and to my amazement and joy, she liked it and showed interest in having one painted as well. It was wonderfully that she agreed to sit for me patiently for more than an hour, and she didn't hold back words of praise when she saw it finished. She's too kind and supportive. I feel so privileged, and I do hope she really liked it.

a bear girl

Bear Girl

My sketchbook is getting filled up with portraits of members of a family I've never really met... they came there completely uninvited, but they're too adorable, and I can't ask them to leave, but I do hope they'll let me do the the things I planed to do... some time soon.

dream catcher

another doodle from my sketchbook

Dream catcher

city scape

This drawing is my ode to procrastination.
I was supposed to be drawing something completely different!
... that's whyyy... well ...
I pretended I wasn't there.

-Hello! Tanya is not home at the moment. Leave a message, and she'll call you when she grows up and starts acting responsibly.
Until then, you might want to see some other drawings. Thanks for calling, and have a nice day.

And so, just to be consistent in pretending not to be there, I drew something totally out of charter... or so I thought... 

growing up

Barrie was just a little boy, and he was already very unhappy about many things. He wanted to say things, he wanted to be heard, to change the world, but

 ... he was just a little boy!...

and nobody was paying any attention.

So, Barrie did the only thing he could do: he learned by heart bits and parts from well know plays, especially Hamlet because... well... who would dare question or criticize Shakespeare... and it just happened that Shakespeare had already written many things Barrie wanted to say. Then, he set up a stage and performed so well that everyone listened, applauded and nodded their heads recognizing a huge potential in Barrie:

"He is certainly going to become a great actor"

That was the general conclusion. 

Well...
Barrie never became an actor.
He became an author, but he never forgot how powerful the sound of human voice can be.

These days, Barrie writes theater plays and lets other people go on stage to stir up our feelings and carve our thoughts using Barrie's words as tools.

IF stir

terribly late

Where I am, Friday is over, and I am posting last week's IllustrationFriday drawing.
I had this idea in my head ever since I first heard what the topic was, but I didn't have time to actually do it, so ... here it is ...

 IF warning

I'm being pretty obsessed by textures lately, and I keep adding layers over layers. I might try making a collage  and then trying to paint over it. Will let you know how it goes :)

cable car

cable car - to keep #3

I guess all of us need a way to get from one place to another... that is: -if- we want to get from one place to another... but sometimes I forget why do we... wish to do that... and sometimes that's all I want to do...

city biker

city biker - to keep #2

Another illustration made for my beautiful frame, but I've already told you all about it! You know the story of it's resurrection?
I don't think this drawing will get to be there way too long, I already hate it, but I've also thrown away more than a dozen finished drawings these last few days, and that's my quota for the week.

#2 to keep - city biker ... in the frame

Follow my blog with bloglovin