Capybara Motivation

Needed something to distract me from my actual work plan, so I messed around with my capybara drawing and Affinity photo and voila! Meet the Capybara queen Brenda 🙂

Now back to work…

2401 Capyking_capybara ink drawing _Melanie Franz

Return of the Honey Badger

It’s been a while since I drew a honey badger. After what feels like days of sleep deprivation, I feel like drinking coffee is not enough anymore… Give me that bucket!

Watching your back

That’s me, waddling out into the snow today. We are back to winter wonderland after 2 days of snowfall and no one who cleaned the roads…

Happy Sunday everyone!

311018-inktober-moon-Melanie Franz

New Capybaras coming your way!

My notebook of ideas is filling up. Since the beginning of the year I had a million creative ideas in addition to the ones that have been piling up for years. The only issue is lack of time. So I have been utilizing every free minute this past week to work on the current project but also start new ones… I really need to get better at focusing.

Anyway, I just wanted to do a warm up sketch today before getting started on my book illustrations, but then ended up doing capybaras, as I missed their entertaining pokerfaces. Here is a behind the scenes.

What situation would you like to see the capybara in?

Snow snow snow

And it didn´t even snow that much overnight. But with the lack of total winter service in Reykjavik, people drive like they have never seen snow before and everything turns into a challenge. Quite remarkable.

Different winter, same story…

snowstorm_dog_snow shovel_Melanie Franz

Dogs dogs dogs

For all the dog people out there, I have been drawing dogs all weekend. Well, actually the same dog over an over again. Character design for my new book! I will be giving you a sneak peak soon, so watch this space.

Meanwhile I am still enjoying these two. The sun came finally back to Reykjavik but so came the wind and it feels like – 24 degrees Celsius out there…

Return of the Capybaras

I have been going through my old capybara drawings and I still really like them. The one below and another capybara lemon picture are actually hanging framed in our living room.

I went through my old drawings as I am in the process of putting products together for an Etsy shop. And I think this should be part of it. I actually would like to include a series of my When Life gives you Lemons Capybaras. What do you think? Would you put this up on your wall?

C is for Civet

Let’s start off the new year with another digital drawing attempt. I am kind off having fun with it in between actual ink drawings. And I am actually learning a lot of new things which is great and after the initial struggles I feel like the learning curve is getting easier. One of the project ideas I had in my head over the last year is an African animal ABC book in collaboration with a Kenyan friend. 

So civets are the ones that eat and poop out coffee beans and make them taste delicious in the process… I worked once in a coffee roastery, amazing job. Before that I thought coffee just had to be black to qualify as coffee. I learned better. The most expensive coffee I tried was the Galapagos coffee.

ABC BOOK_Civet_Africa_Melanie Franz

Art vs Artist II

For the beginning of the year I felt like putting another one of these together. More as motivation for myself than anything else. Just as reminder of what I did during the last year, beside travelling a lot and raising a tiny human.
I am excited about the coming months. Lots of creative plans are in the works. Now I just need to make the time to get started.
Happy New Creative Year to Everyone!

Art vs Artist

Another year is slowly coming to an end. I feel like I haven´t done much illustration wise, but going through my files it actually looks like I got more done than I thought I did.

I tried lots of new things – media and styles – started on my own book projects (more about that soon) and I am looking forward to see where this journey will take me next year!
How about you? Did you try anything new this year?

Art vs Artist 2023_Melanie Franz Illustration