Meerkat

I just love these little creatures! I'm so addicted to the Animal Planet show, "Meerkat Manor." LOL!! I found the reference photo in WetCanvas. This was originally done first as a sketch for my sketching class, then I added light watercolor. This was done in an Aquabee Sketch Pad and it's the first time I've used watercolor in it so I wasn't sure how well it would take water -- it did great, but I did work with a light touch and very little water. The original sketch was a practice with gesture sketching and also negative space (the triangular spaces within the legs). I'm still getting accustomed to my new scanner, the pigments on the meerkat came out pretty true, but the dead tree in the background has a little more detail in real life and the spatters on the foreground are more pronounced. For the spatters, I used watercolor pencils -- just dabbed some random dots and then used a wet brush on them. This technique worked pretty well! I didn't have to worry about getting spatters on the meerkat.