Kyle Smart - Flowers

Narciso Espiritu - Crush 1

(I'll only do this once, since the other Daily Drawing Challenge I'm doing on Tumblr coincidentally aligns with a free-love day on Month of Love.)

I guess it should be no secret that I (had/have) a crush on Jenna Kildosher, but we work together on Instigatorzine. So we should keep it strictly professional, right?

Right?

Challenge #5 Feb. 12th - 14th

Our 5th Challenge  comes courtesy of Tim Paul

The subject is: "My Love Story"

This is a series challenge. For the three days leading up to Valentines day, do three images related to one autobiographical story concerning love. Crushes, relationships, schoolyard, you name it.

Scott Brundage- Love Sick

Narciso Espiritu - Freestyle 2

Yes, I was watching The Walking Dead last night.
Yes, I miss Daryl's poncho.

Ricardo Lopez Ortiz- Freestyle Sunday

Here's an Arrested Development piece I'm working on for Freestyle Sunday.

Terese Nielsen - Freestyle Sunday

I was attending an expo yesterday and today and my mind was so overstimulated by the end of the day that I seriously had no interest in drawing tonight. The only artistic unwind I could make myself do is muck about with a medium that I don't usually use. I dumped ground up graphite from my technical pencil sharpener, smeared it around and did subtractive highlights with a kneaded eraser. I considered putting a tie on this guy with a bankster logo behind him, but I felt bad disgracing the vulture in this way… so I let him be.

Cynthia Sheppard - Learning to Love Myself

Learning to love myself.

Sad drawing, happy ending. When I was 20, my boyfriend-at-the-time and I did [things] that made us sleep very little. We told ourselves it was because we needed the time to finish our album, that we were valiantly killing ourselves for what we loved. But doing [things] has side effects- you don't eat, you get paranoid, you get fired from your job for being late and/or crazy. You're sad all the time. I remember the distinct moment that I knew things had to change for real: I got on the bathroom scale and I only weighed 89 lbs.

After that moment, I decided it was most important to learn to love myself. With that in mind, I was able to let go of the idea that two people killing themselves for an idea could make a healthy relationship. I moved on to better things.

Sarah Gay - Sunday Funday

I was inspired by the Sartorialist.
I couldn't get enough of this poor little rich girl.

Narciso Espiritu - Freestyle 2 Pre-release

Still working on this one. I was at the day job from 12-7p. Post the finish when it's done!

Chris O'Neill - Hot Dog Buns

A stream of conscious sketchbook page. Trying to think of warm things like Neil Young songs, hot dog buns, and well... buns..

- CHRIS

Kristina Carroll - Venus Study

Watercolor

You can never do too much painting from life. This is a quick study of a tiny Venus statue I have.

Carly Janine Mazur - Klaymen

It's been a crazy past 3 days, with 3 feet of snow, not being able to leave the house, and having a lot of painting to get done. This is Klaymen, the lead character from a favorite game of mine called The Neverhood. This is one of two pieces I'm painting for an upcoming show this weekend involving game art. I'm also doing a piece with Ico and Yorda from, well, ICO!

I will leave you with one of my favorite songs from this game:

Scott Murphy - Freeform Sunday

Here's a dwarf smoking a pipe on this lovely freeform Sunday. 

Scott Brundage- Freeform Sunday

Just seeing what happens with a wandering mind and seeing how much dog anatomy I can fake with two pens and some water.

Oh, and here's a guest contributor, my lovely fiance, Bonnie. She had her own contribution to "A Face Only A Mother Could Love." I thought it an extremely elegant and economic solution.

Boom.

Jeanine Henderson—Free Style Sunday

The last time I talked to my Dad before he passed away, he told me to "look for shooting stars". That's because it was during a meteor shower—but it's always stuck with me as something much more metaphoric. His birthday is this Tuesday, so he's on my mind this week and I decided to use freestyle Sunday to play around with this imagery.

Kate Feirtag- Getting back on the horse

My brain shut off this weekend.  I have no excuse for not drawing and I'm disappointed.  So to get back into this project, I drew another horse. 

Alice Stanne - A Face Only a Mother Could Love

After spending the day shoveling what must have been the entire snowstorm, I passed out before being able to finish yesterdays challenge. This one is just about people who love their pets a little too much, regardless of how ugly those pets are.

Tim Paul - Free Style Sunday

I decided to take last Sunday's post and expand it into a full illustration.

I had a lot of fun working this into a full blown illustration. I'd also like to thank Scott Brundage, Aaron Miller, Marc Scheff, Daniel Nyari and Jess Worby for their valuable feedback while I was working out the details for this. 

Jeffrey Alan Love - Sunday Lunch

One of my favorite things to do is draw in my sketchbook - it's become ingrained that if I go out my sketchbook is coming with me.  One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was from Brent Watkinson at The Illustration Academy when he advised everyone to "Draw What You Drink".  It's a great way to make sure you do a little drawing from observation every day.  In the past 5 years I must have drawn thousands of glasses of water, beer, wine, coffee, etc...  It's become meditative for me, an escape into mindless, pure drawing enjoyment.  Here's a page from lunch today.

Marc Scheff - a face only a mother could love

I am currently sitting in upstate New York. No computer. No sketchbook. Just my iPad and adonit jot touch. With -15 minutes left to post I tried a sketch with the app procreate. Maybe only I can love this, but I do see a lot of possibility with this medium.

Cynthia Sheppard - A Face Only a Mother Could Love

Unlike Scott Brundage's sleepy pitbull, my 4 year old hound mix Gordon is a ball of nervous energy and hate. But yeah, I love him anyway.

Kristina Carroll - A Face only a Mother Could Love

 

I tried really hard to draw something clever today, but all I wanted to do was make Ogre faces. The heart wants what it wants I guess.

Jaime Zollars - A Face Only A Mother Could Love

Chris O'Neill - Face only a Mother could LOVE

Steve Buscemi is an ugly man, that's for sure! I bet his mother  still LOVES him though....

- CHRIS

Scott Murphy - A Face Only A Mother Could Love

I couldn't resist, sorry.

Sarah Gay - "A Face Only a Mother Could Love"

I know this isn't a typical interpretation of, "a face only a mother could love". 

When I was 19 I signed my inexperienced, young, naive, name to my student loans thinking I was borrowing $50k for college...little did I know that they would inflate to over $200k before I was 30 years old.

Albert Lord (former CEO of Sallie Mae) is the face to this ugly company...and I don't even know how this man can look at himself in the mirror, knowing he has robbed an entire generation the chance to:

- own a home

- have children

- etc.

So I figure...

He must have a face that only HIS mother can love...because he's a greedy piece of shit.

::steps off soap box::

Tim Paul - A Face Only A Mother Could Love

I loved the Twilight Zone growing up. I loved it how it would often flip accepted perspectives. In particular, the episode, "In The Eye of The Beholder". A young woman lying in a hospital bed, her head wrapped in bandages, awaits the outcome of a surgical procedure performed by the State in a last-ditch attempt to make her look "normal".

But normal turns out to be pig-nosed, hair lip and heavy bags under the eyes. The operation to make her normal doesn't work, and she remains model beautiful, and is banished to a colony of other abnormal's, like her.

I face that only a mother could love, really depends on your view. 

Jeanine Henderson—A Face Only a Mother Could Love...

While the worst of the snowstorm was happening last night, I stumbled upon "Whisker Wars" on Netflix. A whole season later, I was amazed & a little appalled—I had no idea the beard culture was so dramatic! Haha...But a few guys on the show got me to thinking of today's challenge topic, which led me to think about what a bearded woman would like....and then obviously I thought of the Coney Island Sideshow (because I am completely infatuated with all things Coney Island!) I've done pieces in the past inspired by the sideshow performers, so decided to create another one—this time playing off the kitschy posters at the FreakShow.

Tara Jacoby - A Face Only a Mother Can Love

I drew my cat Ms Jackson. People think she's evil but she's just misunderstood.

Tara Jacoby - Your Brain on Love

Making up for missing yesterdays post!

Ricardo Lopez Ortiz- A Face Only a Mother Could Love

The Lion of Natuba is character from Mario Vargas Llosa's "The War of The End of The World". He was born deformed with very short legs and a gigantic head. He walked around town on all fours, with his large head and long hair. Because of this people called him "Lion".  He was incredibly brilliant and taught himself to read and write. Even though he would read and write letters for everyone in town he was never accepted.

He was almost killed by an enraged father after the Lion had expresses his love to his daughter. He was saved by The Caunselor(A man with a Christ like following) from then on the Lion lived the rest of his days in happiness next to his savior.

Carly Janine Mazur - A Face Only a Mother Could Love

7"x5" acrylic on masonite

I've got these little monsters all around my classroom and the kids love them. Yeah, they're adorable, but I'm sure no one loves him more than his mum!

Terese Nielsen - A Face Only a Mother Could Love

Charcoal

Scott Brundage- A Face Only a Mother Could Love

This is a hyper-accurate self-portrait.

Narciso Espiritu - A Face Only a Mother Could Love

The Phantom of Phantom of the Opera fame

I saw The Phantom of the Opera for the first time last year thanks to my friend Robert Jason Clark. It's probably the best play I've seen, but that's not saying much since I don't get to the theatre as much as I would like to. Like, what happens to Phantom after I watch Wicked?

I regrettably looked up cleft lips on Google for reference. Regrettably.

Drawing this was a lot of fun, though.

Kyle Smart - A Face Only a Mother Can Love

Jeffrey Alan Love - A Face Only A Mother Can Love

Today's theme reminded me of the horribly scarred Sandor Clegane, aka "The Hound", from George R. R. Martin's fantasy series "A Song of Fire and Ice" (better known now perhaps as "Game of Thrones" due to the HBO series).  This is the vision of him that lived in my head while reading the books.

Ricardo Lopez Ortiz- Horacio Quiroga

Here's a portrait of Horacio Quiroga, a fantastic latin american writer who excelled at portraying mental illness, hallucinatory states, death and the supernatural. His book of short stories "Stories of Love, Madness and Death" is incredibly dark and tragic. I highly recommend it

Jaime Zollars - Love is a Battlefield

Ack! I'm totally behind. But I remain steadfast and will try to keep up... For this challenge I had fun drawing military medals for weathering said battlefield  :)