"Too Feminine"

That parrot I drew for work hanging out in the hammock has been deemed too "gay" for the buyers' palate it seems. Again my boss tells me "much of the artwork coming from you is a bit too feminine." Imagine that. So why are we putting flowers on shirts at all? I guess there's an acceptable form of "tropical" that men are comfortable with I need to study more. In the mean time, I am trying to make my parrots a bit more masculine...or at least more neutral as in the revamped version of my parrot-in-a-hammock print in which an alternative parrot (which I also drew, but for something else) was pasted in. Looks drab to me. But you know, I'm not the boss:
I think the words are going to change too. So basically what's left of my original piece is the background and the foliage. On the other hand my boss really liked this piratey print I finished right after that first one:


Though honestly I liked my first idea more where it said "Cap'n Bluebeak" and "Freebird's Quest" and he had an eye patch. I'm not sure it makes sense for him to be on a treasure chest anymore (I tried to get him to add "Tropical Treasure Trove" at the bottom so it would be a bit more sensible), but oh well. Here is a close-up of the parrot so you can see how I work with a very limited color palette, yet still manage to pull off a nice enough level of detail:


And a third parrot print running in the same "escape" vein:

Used a little bit of a different technique on this one (a "chalk" brush) so it's a little more gritty.

Thought I might show off my most recent marlin also while I'm posting an update. I'm pretty happy with how he turned out:

Especially when compared to the first marlin I drew for this job in 2006...

And then lastly I'm throwing in a sketch of some moose that I drew when my pen pal Al in Alaska emailed me some photographs he took the other day just driving down the road. He is lucky to live in a place so filled with wildlife. Anyway when I saw them, I could not help but draw them in all their cartoonish lankiness.

Click for a larger view if you want. I'm not as paranoid about my sketches as I am about my professional work. :P

And that's my art dump for today! I'll be heading up to Yellowstone this upcoming week so I probably will not be updating at that time, but I will be sure to bring a sketchbook so I can draw some of the wildlife we see up there, and scan it for you all upon my return.