Really, not since May? Well, anyway, here’s a Praying Mantis and Hairy Running Carrot for you…

Okay, so I was a little surprised when I saw that my last blog entry was in MAY, but it’s not really that surprising—after all, summer so far has been crazy!

Anyway, for those wondering how my Paper Cup Challenge is going, it has been going, but very slowly. I was pretty good about work for a little while (though I haven’t been blogging about it), but my mind became so inundated with cartoony Andrea children book style animations that I really needed to switch gears for a bit—you know, reground myself. So, here’s a praying mantis for you:

This praying mantis actually started out completely different—imagine it brown/orange, flipped vertically, then flipped horizontally… actually, here, I’ll just post it:

Pretty different feel, right?

I began the drawing on a whim (a much needed break from a playground illustration in The Paper Cup Challenge) in order to test out some new chalk pencils I got, and I really had no intentions as to what I’d create. As I started on the pen, I saw a face and decided to go with it, and ended loosely crafting a running carrot with a hairy head. I mean, you see that, right?? (I josh, of course—as much as I’d love people to see that, I realize that everyone will probably see something different.) Actually, the praying mantis I ended up with came about when I was rotating the image and flipping the orientation in Photoshop, and my boyfriend pointed out how much it looked like a praying mantis. I’m not too familiar with praying mantises, but after I looked it up, I had to admit it was pretty uncanny, at least for an abstract unintentional drawing.

Needless to say, I grew attached to it and a praying mantis it will be. (Hairy running carrot, next time…)