Beach Bathing Capybara

Happy New Year everyone! Please enjoy this illustration of a capybara relaxing beachside with his bird buddy. 

Here's to soaking in the sun in 2014!

Root Beer Dog Redux

 Hey Everybody! Well, October is over and with it goes all the dreams of more pumpkin carvings. With that my jack-o-lanterns slowly rotting away in the compost, breaking down into nutrients for next year's garden, it's time to quite literally get back to the ol' drawing board.

Months ago my wonderfully creative fiancé left me this delightful drawing in my art studio of an exposed dog rootbeer genie/party animal.

I've always been a fan of visual conversations and thought it would be a fun exercise to reinterpret her line drawing into my more realistic style. Check out the results below!

This was a lot of fun to do, so expect to see more collaborations like this on here in the future. And be sure to check out her artist statement and blog HERE and HERE!

In other news the Advanced Style Coloring Book can now be purchased at New Seasons grocery store on NE Killingsworth and 33rd here in Portland, OR. For those of you outside of Portland have no fear! The coloring book is also newly available for sale at Urban Outfitters! It's only on their website at the moment, but if it sells well there maybe they'll start stocking it in their stores. If you could help us out in making that happen we'd be forever grateful. Thanks anonymous internet user!

It's Friday! Coloring Book Page #5

Hey all! It's Friday and we should all take a page out of this guy's book and get dressed up for the weekend. Does anybody have any big plans? Any Color-Ins going on that you're attending? 

*A Color-In is a hang out session where you invite your friends over, listen to music, drink libations, and immerse yourselves in a pile of crayons and markers. It's a totally real thing that I just made up.

There's only two more free coloring book pages left, so I hope you're enjoying each and every one of them!

Coloring Book Page #4

Put a spring in your step today by coloring in this dapper dude. From the shoes to the hat, this guy exudes style, but my favorite item has to be his carrot lapel pin. 

Here's a great submission we received of one of last week's drawings expertly colored in by reader Rebecca Merritt. Thanks Rebecca, and keep up the good work!

Coloring Book Page #3: Hat's Off!

Hello my little Merry Maladies and welcome to the second week of April, 2013. Did anybody pull off any spectacular April fools jokes or get taken in by any? If so I'd love to hear about it! Please feel free to share in the comment section below. This post however is no prank; I am still giving away coloring book pages and will continue to do so this whole week, so stay tuned!

And once again if you'd like to share your coloring expertise, I'd love to see it. Email me a scan or photo at beardedmaladies@gmail.com or take an instagram photo of it and tag me in it @ischraer. 

Coloring Book Page #2

Followers of my old blog may recognize this gent from a drawing I did several years ago. Well now you have the opportunity to color him in any way you want! All you have to do is download this image, print it up, and break out the crayolas. This continues my giveaway of coloring book pages I have drawn that will never be used for anything else. 

If you DO end up coloring this guy in and want to share it with me send a scan or photo to beardedmaladies@gmail.com or instagram it and tag me in the picture @ischraer. I'd love to see your work and I'll even post it up on the blog. Do it!

Stay tuned for even more free coloring book pages to satisfy your artistic whimsy. 

Free Coloring Book Page!

Hey everybody! I've been hard at work on various projects and as you know I've been creating a lot of coloring book images lately. I've created so many infact, that we simply can't use all of them, so I decided to post the extras here and give them away for free!

Please feel free to download this image and color it in at your leisure, and if you find the time I'd love to see your work! You can email pictures or scans to me at beardedmaladies@gmail.com or take an instagram and tag me in it @ischraer. Also keep checking back here in the next few days because I have a handful more of these that I'm going to post.

"And that's why, thanks to Mickey, we have cake every morning"

 Did I mention that I made a second pumpkin for Halloween?

The pumpkin, carved

For the past three years I've been carving pumpkins to commemorate a celebrity that passed away in the past twelve months. In 2009 I did Michael Jackson, in 2010 I did Dennis Hopper, and last year I did Macho Man Randy Savage. 

This year I decided to commemorate one of my favorite illustrators, Maurice Sendak. He's best remembered for Where the Wild Things Are, but when I did a google search I found plenty of WtWTA pumpkins and I wanted to do something a little more original. Another of my favorite books of his growing up was In the Night Kitchen, which has some amazing drawings and is also totally weird. I decided to depict the iconic picture of Mickey holding his jug of milk from the final page of the book. I also decided to try another new technique. This time just scratching away the skin of the pumpkin to let the candle light glow through the meat. It was a pretty tedious process. 

Fresh Air did a great retrospective show on Sendak when he passed away which included clips of Terry Gross's interviews with him throughout his career. I highly recommend listening to it, and you can do so here.

Lit up!

The best part was hearing a small child exclaim to his parent as he walked up to our house for candy, "Look, it's the boy from my book!" 

R.I.P. Maurice.