picture time~~~

First, pictures of Tigress and Yutou taken this morning:
Tigress, the incredibly friendly (if not somewhat cloying) female calico kind of grimaced at me because I didn't give her any canned food, only dry food. Her favorite is "Chicken of the Sea", the kind we eat, but I only give her that very sparingly, human food in general are not good for cats. She loves canned food for cats too.

She loves rubbing against people she knows well, and is very easy to get along with. She does scowl if the food is not to her liking.

This is Yutou (芋頭). I believe Yutou is a he. Yutou is sweet tempered and shy, I somehow have the hunch that he is the most intelligent of the lot. He has grown up so much since last summer. He loves to lap up icy cold milk. I was hesitant about giving him milk at first because many cats are not lactose tolerant, but Yutou definitely does not have that problem. He sometimes lingers on after finishing his daily canned and dry food, this is his cue that he wants some milk -- his comfort drink. Yutou has become more relaxed around me lately, he lets me scratch his ears and back and message his furry and soft limbs with both hands now. He meows loudly when I approach him with food in my hands.

Now, as mentioned a long long time ago, I said I would post some of my sketches. At this point, I am not capable of drawing (tolerably well) from memory or imagination alone, so all the sketches I did are from photographs (not taken by me). I will try to find the original links to them.
The one to the left is a quick sketch of an Eskimo mother with her baby and a puppy. The original photograph can be found here. (scroll down)

This is actually a failed attempt, because the Eskimo woman in my sketch ends up looking like the baby's grandmother, instead of his mother (=.=). But I decided to post this piece because this was my first experience using Derwent's sketching set.
This is the same Eskimo woman with her son, now sleeping soundly. The original link is the same as the one above. This little sketch was completed on impulse. I wasn't planning to sketch that day, but somehow I saw this photograph and I felt like giving it a try. I used normal printing paper and a very average green color pencil. I think I was in the right drawing mood, it turned out a lot better than I expected.

This is my most recent sketch. I used Derwent's Drawing Pencils for coloring, and Derwent's Sketching set for outline. I absolutely love Derwent's Drawing Pencils. The colors are solid, somewhat subdued, and generally have an earthy tone (in other words, the colors are not too loud or cartoonish). This sketch took about 2 weeks to finish. The old guy's hat took some special effort, it was a pain in the neck to create those crease and folds, shadings and lighter areas. I messed up his mouth actually, in the original photo, the man has a bigger mouth. The original post where I found the photograph is here. The photograph is on one of the pages, but I really don't know which page anymore. The post, by the way, has fantastic photographs and the writing is simply heartrending.

This little caricature of a sketch is for you to laugh at and for my amusement. I am not really a fan of 黑豹(black panther), but I do like their debut album. As you can see, I sketched it from the cassette tape cover. I was sorting my old cassettes the other day, I thought it is about time I get rid of them. But I got into such a nostalgic mood that I ended up keeping most of my old cassettes. I am not even sure this cassette by Black Panther belongs to me. But anyways, I just can't find it in me to throw away BP's debut album.

My drawing tools. I hoarded lots of drawing tools, especially color pencils, ever since I started having this thing for color pencil drawings, and ever since I first set foot in Blick art store. Its a shame I have completed very few sketches but my drawing tools will last probably 50 years. But anyways, this is the 12-piece Derwent's Sketching set, the ones I use the most are HB/2B/4B graphite sketching pencils. The gray play-doh-like eraser is an excellent artist's eraser, you can knead it into any convenient shape of your choice. It erases tough marks. The white pencil-like things are paper stumps used for blending colors. They are INDISPENSABLE, especially if you need to create shading/gradation effects. And of course, you need sandpaper.

This is Derwent's Drawing Pencils. I can't say enough good things about them. They are some of the best drawing pencils you can get.