Great Galloping Groundhogs! How did it get to be the end of the year already? Well, it is, and nothing to be done about it except make a year-end post (or two or three) of some of my favourite pieces of the year. I’ve gone almost all digital lately; the years have been hard on my well-used hands, and drawing on my iPad has become more and more tempting over traditional media. Because I’ve found myself working in three distinct styles (I have styles! Whoo-hoo!), I’m going to focus on them in three separate blog posts.

Today’s group of faves is a selection of digital paintings from the Zooly Art Challenge, both the daily and the weekly. The daily one happens every July (rhymes with Zooly) on a dedicated Facebook page—a different animal prompt every day, and it’s quite intense. The weekly one happens in a Facebook group, which is more of a cozy meet-up among artists, and we have a whole week for each animal prompt.

This style is analogous to the way I work with ink, watercolour, and gouache, with a solid “ink” drawing being the first order of business, and colour going on afterwards on a layer behind the first, and highlights if needed, going on a layer in front of all of them. Think of layers of transparent plastic sheets, and how you could draw or colour on them without affecting the other layers, but still see all of them.

I’ve created all of these in Procreate, an app for iPad, using an Apple Pencil. Now, without further ado, the paintings:

And that’s the first part of the 2023 roundup! Stay tuned for part 2 tomorrow!