This is Slick; she wants to say Happy New Year!

She is a snake I created when I was 15. I started with Sprout and decided he needed a gang of friends. I went through auditions with characters, call backs, and finally chose the cast of 7. This picture is missing a couple of people.

Slick started with some crazy dark eyes. I was going through a phase and these eyes were all over my sketchbooks. For this image of Slick I updated them to still have a similar feel but, look more like my currently illustrating. It’s odd to look back at these kid drawings! I am amused by my limited skill. I had had one art class at this point and my sketchbooks. There wasn’t a fully fleshed out art department at my high school because it was brand new and they hadn’t been able to fill out the facilities yet. My literary magazine teacher was the most encouraging to my drawing but, I was figuring everything out on my own with the How To Draw Books.

Do you think I was influenced by the Muppet Movie?

It’s fun to bring her back and look through my childhood sketchbooks. I think snakes are neat but, I’m actually rather fearful of them. However, I used to love them when I was a child. I had pet green snakes all the time as I found them around rocks on my Great Grandmothers land. However around 9 years old something happened and they started giving me the willies. To this day I wouldn’t want to have one as a pet but, I still think they can be beautiful and deserve more love.

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From all of us Happy Valentine’s Day!

Eric Carle inspired painting of Valentine Bug Puppets. We watched Mr Carle painting one of his big canvases then got to work!