New work underway! (drawing some hedgehogs and plants!)

 I thought I'd show you a bit of what I just started in on!

Don't be fooled, it's a bit different than just hedgehogs!

For a long time now I've wanted to make some pieces based on a beautiful day I spent at a botanical garden. I took a million pictures that day, and the project has been in my mind for about a year and a half!

Can you find me in this photo? ;)

I was super inspired by all the plants and the sunny setting, and (because I'm me) I visualized cute critters enjoying some tea there in a little outdoor cafe! So my new project is bringing this to life in an illustration, and I may make it a series.

I printed out my garden reference photos nice and big (thanks for all that extra photo paper, Mom!) and I'm going to go from there.

First I want to figure out what my critters will look like, and I know I want at least one to be a hedgehog. So this afternoon I began by drawing generic cute imaginary hedgehogs, but after a few minutes I thought I'd better reference some actual hedgehog photos. As you can see from the drawing above, I "cute-i-fied" them and (trust me) these guys look SO MUCH BETTER! Dear aspiring artists (or seasoned artists!!), please look at reference photos. LOL!

I'm done for the day and ready for a fun long weekend, but I'll share more as I go -- plants, too! :)

It feels really good to start on a fresh project, especially one that feels long overdue AND is not part of a larger endeavor like a book! Sometimes I just want to create and know that the finish line is probably not too far from the start. Satisfying!