this is a traditional illustration in colored pencil and copic marker of Venom swinging over a city street drawn on an Amazing Spider-man blank sketch cover. See more at Sketchcardsandcovers.com
"I cried because I had no shoes,until I saw a man with no feet....life is full of blessings,sometimes we are too busy to count them"-anon #count ur blessings :)#aristina.z #originals #autodesk sketchbook
"The moment one gives close attention to anything,even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself."Henry Miller #aristina.z #originals#Digital art#autodesk sketchbook #
I captured an amazing spurr of the moment shot of a grey crane standing by a pond in one of my favorite parks. This year I decided to make a painting of the image.
For an Instagram art challenge, we had to draw a beat ‘em up character in the style of a robot. Here’s my contribution! I could’ve gone with some fairly obvious choices, but to challenge myself and try something new, I opted for Gon from Tekken 3. Turning this dino into a robot, now that’s where it got interesting!
Imperfect Lines, Honest Presence
This sketch is not perfect—and that’s exactly why it’s alive. The bold figure, the dissolving hat, the tilted chair: all of it feels unfinished, fleeting, caught in motion. It’s what the Japanese call wabi-sabi—finding beauty in the imperfect, the impermanent, the incomplete.
But there’s something deeper here too. A quick sketch is not just what the eye records. It’s what the soul permits. To draw without fixing, without polishing, is to admit the world will not hold still for us. Life slips past. The lines break off. And yet, somehow, the essence remains.
When you sketch this way, you are not the master of the moment—you are its guest. The pencil does not carve permanence; it pays attention. The act of drawing becomes an act of being present, of honoring what is already vanishing.
So here’s a challenge: grab a pencil and sketch someone near you in sixty seconds. Do not erase. Do not perfect. Let the lines falter. When you finish, ask yourself: What truth did the imperfection reveal?
Perhaps presence itself is the real art.
Ms. Nathan was a play production teacher with flair and a big personality. She wore colorful clothing and loud socks that never matched. Her joyful, chortling laugh filled the room—or the hallway—wherever she happened to be.
Staff meetings and PD days have always been strong invitations for observational drawings. Over the years, I’ve found that there are many boxes to check in a wide variety of systems. I often created my own boxes—and checked them with sketches of my colleagues.
This one goes out to the colorful Ms. Nathan.
This is a pen and watercolour painting done as a proposal for a competition to do a mural painting in a community centre. This was back in the late 90s. I was beaten out by a contemporary artist who painted the wall with four strips of colour, which could have been done in a matter of hours. The community centre was predominantly filled with local kids. I felt so sorry for the kids. Not once did any of them look at the "mural" and when I asked what they thought of the painting on the wall, they said, "What painting?"
