All posts by The Artist

Red panda bonsai 

So my back was out Thursday which left me lots of time to draw petals. After I finished with pencil I inked them. 

I think this represents about 10 solid hours of drawing cherry blossom petals and none of this will be seen in the final product. 

This inked page will be taped onto my light board where I will use it as a guide to transfer it with color pencils. I expect that will probably be another 30 to 40 hours. Those of you who’ve been watching me for at least 6 months might remember flightless flora which took 30 hrs to color. This piece has more petals I’m pretty sure. Oh no, now I want to count them. 

Flower petal shapes 

That moment when you realize you will need to fix something like 400 flower pedals. 

There are notes around the outside about which color of petal will be used at different locations. 


I started with the flower shape in the middle. I’ve decided that the bottom flower shape is more accurate for the Japanese cherry blossom. 

Since it is a relatively small change in shape I’ll just fix it at the ink stage. 

Color pencil topiary piece

It has been remarked more than once that I have two very different styles. Style 1 is my Chibi and I do that with Copic markers. Style 2 is more detailed and takes a lot longer. I do style two in color pencils. 

Since I have a bit of a gap in commissions right now I decided it was time to do my next color pencil. 

This one will eventually be a cherry blossom topiary in the shape of a red panda. So far I have spent two hours on it and this is where I’m at. 


In the end this will be in a mat with an 11×14″ opening.