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Mars Will Send No More

~ Comic books, art, poetry, and other obsessions

Mars Will Send No More

Tag Archives: nature

sketchbook sundays

19 Sunday Jul 2015

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in art studio

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animals, art, drawing, fine point pens, frog, frogs, leaf, memoir, nature, pen and ink, sketchbook sundays

frog on leaf ink drawing - Copy

Oak Toad on a Leaf. Micron 05 and 01 fine point pen.

And that’s it for my drawing pad of 6×8 paper! Though I have a couple other blank sketchbooks waiting, I might get another 6×8 pad to have around. I like working in this size for several reasons. One, it takes less time to go from concept to completion than it does with a 9×12 drawing. Two, the dimensions make it easier to crop to a 5×7 aspect ratio for custom-printed greeting cards. Three, I can find mats and frames for a much more reasonable price at this size, compared to the relatively exorbitant cost of matting a 9×12 to an 11×14 frame. And four, since I draw all my mid-tone lines by hand without a ruler, it is less challenging to cover large areas of the drawing than it is in a 9×12. Just try drawing hundreds of straight lines across a 9×12 sheet of paper sometime, and you’ll see what I mean!

Like last week’s damselfly, this toad had as its photo reference one of my mother’s recent nature photographs. She’s taken some especially crisp and detailed photos of small animals lately, and it’s been fun using them as inspiration for opportunities to practice inking with fine point pens.

Mantis and Cactus Flowers

22 Friday Aug 2014

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in educational

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animals, cactus, flower, Mantis, memoir, nature, wildlife

mantis and cactus flower 1 - zoomed

Today is the first day we’ve seen the cactus in the front yard burst into bloom overnight. Perhaps it liked the rain we got yesterday. To make the event more rare, we have never seen a preying mantis here in the urban desert either. But this morning, when we stopped to admire the flowers, one tiny mantis had already staked a claim to them.

mantis and cactus flower 1

We suppose if the flowers attract ants, bees, and other pollinators, then this is the mantis version of a hunting shanty or hidden fishing hole. Maybe the mantis will chop the heads off little bugs and stick them on the cactus spikes like trophies. How awesome would that be? We’ll check in on mantis later and see how the hunt goes.

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Oops, we disturbed the mantis. See how it moves down into the spikes? Smart thinking, mantis. Now sit still!

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Puma Blues: The Dreaming!

28 Friday Mar 2014

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in indie

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aardvark-vanaheim, Dreaming, dreams, Indie Comics, Michael Zulli, nature, puma, Puma Blues, wildlife, wildlife art

puma blues 13 dream michael zulli art

Puma Blues #13 brings together many of our favorite themes here at Mars Will Send No More, from wildlife art to dreams and silent issues. If Michael Zulli’s art appeals to you, we have more samples of Zulli’s wildlife art in our archives. Let us also recommend to you, again from our archives, John Totleben’s wonderful fish-filled issue of the Vertigo series The Dreaming.

puma blues 13 dream michael zulli art (11)

Collector’s Guide: The Puma Blues; Aardvark-Vanaheim, 1986. Reprinted in The Puma Blues Book One and Book Two; Mirage Studios, 1988. Reprinted in 2015 without the original covers in The Puma Blues (Dover Graphic Novels) in paperback, hardcover, and ebook.











puma by joe robertson

20 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in art studio

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art, cats, cougar, Joe Robertson, mountain lion, nature, puma, scratch board, wildlife

puma by joe robertson

Scratchboard artist Joe Robertson’s work caught our eye at a local art festival last year. What a magnificient mountain lion he created! This print is called Mountain King. You can get one of your own online at Joe’s Art Gallery.

Puma Blues: Wildlife Art by Michael Zulli!

10 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in indie

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Tags

animals, art, birds, drawing, Indie Comics, Michael Zulli, nature, puma, Puma Blues, wildlife

puma blues art by michael zulli-005

Aardvark’s The Puma Blues from 1986 features the artwork of Michael Zulli. Zulli drew some of our favorite Ninja Turtles pages in the story Soul’s Winter, taking those silly cartoon characters and imbuing them with a totally different, darker spirit. Here, however, Zulli portrays wilderness and the animals that live there, and the borders where they contact the human world.

Collector’s Guide: from The Puma Blues; Aardvark-Vanaheim, 1986. Reprinted in The Puma Blues Book One and Book Two; Mirage Studios, 1988.

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wolverine

20 Friday Sep 2013

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in educational

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album of north american animals, animals, clark bronson, nature, rand mcnally, vera dugdale, Wolverine

wolverine by bronson and dugdale -002

This week we’ll take a look at three of our favorite animals from The Album of North American Animals: the wolverine, the bobcat, and the cougar! This wonderfully illustrated book came in many editions, some of which fetch high prices on Amazon. We have the sixth printing, from the mid 80s, which cost much less. Many of the 26 animals featured within have become exceedingly rare due to loss of habitat caused by the expansion of our cities and industry. Liberate the mountain lions!

Collector’s Guide: from Album of North American Animals; Rand McNally, 1966. Text by Vera Dugdale, illustrations by Clark Bronson.




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