"Eliza Dushku Close Up" Eliza Dushku turns 35 today. She's a beautiful, smart, strong, and extremely talented woman. She's starred in movies such as True Lies and Wrong Turn . She's also has starred on shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Tru Calling and Dollhouse , the latter two of which she was the lead actress. She's a very caring person. She's help some great causes like the one of which THRIVEGulu is for. THRIVEGulu helps people in Uganda like former child soldiers. I thought I'd use an old drawing I did (pictured above) as a birthday tribute to Eliza. I drew it on paper and inked it with some Sharpies. I posted it on deviantART some time ago, but this is the first time I've blogged it on here. Happy birthday, Eliza Dushku!

  These, in the pictures above, are two of the gifts I got for Christmas. I think they're awesome! The first one at the very top is a book my sister made on Shutterfly with art and comic strips from my comic strip series titled The Drawing Board . The Second one below that is a 2016 calendar my sister also made on Shutterfly with a variety of my art in it. I can't say enough how much I appreciate my sister making these gifts for me. I've already put up the calendar even though the new year isn't here yet. I have a really awesome sister! I hope everyone has been having happy holidays and will have a happy new year.

"Merry Christmas!" I drew this earlier this week. I drew it on printer paper. I inked it with a black Sharpie and colored it with Liqui-Mark colored pencils. I thought it would make for a good post for the week of Christmas. Merry Christmas and happy holidays!

"Santa Claus (Alternate Version)" Here's an alternate version of my Santa Clause artwork from last year . I decided to see if I had another Christmas pattern I would want to use for it, and I found this one with bells and Christmas trees. This background seems like more of a Christmas background to me. Merry Christmas and happy holidays!

"Saint Nick" Here's a picture I drew of Santa Claus last night. Santa is also known as Saint Nick. The Beach Boys wrote a song titled "Little Saint Nick." Santa is known by many names, some of which he mentions in Tim Allen's movie titled The Santa Clause . Merry Christmas, and happy holidays!

"Jennifer" Here's a color version of an artwork I blogged some time ago . This is Jennifer Kyle, a character from my comic strip titled The Drawing Board . I digitally colored it awhile back. I only did flat colors, but I may give the colors more depth at some point. Happy holidays!

Here's a fun Christmas video from Christopher Hart. In this video, he shows how to draw Santa Claus.

I'm doing this blog post to bring attention to my art links. The first link is  Wacom . I use a Wacom tablet for digital artworks. It's a great tool. My Wacom tablet helps me to digitally color drawings, and to do entirely digital drawings, both in better quality than I could do with a mouse. Next is Christopher Hart How-to-Draw Books . I've got four of Christopher Hart's how-to-draw books. I've got Drawing Animals Made Amazingly Easy , Human Anatomy Made Amazingly Easy , The Master Guide to Drawing Anime , and Modern Cartooning . Christopher Hart's books are very informative and easy to understand. If you want to learn how to draw, his books are some great ones to check out. The third link is Pacon Creative Products . I often get Pacon brand sketchbooks and drawing pads for my art. I like to use the ones with heavyweight paper in them. You can find those products at stores like Walmart. They're great products. These things are very helpful to my art. Happy

"Frosty the Snowman - Merry Christmas!" This is a new drawing. I just drew this last night. I've been blogging old ones recently but I decided to blog a new one today. I decided to do a Christmas drawing last night, and I decided on this. It's based on the Rankin/Bass version of Frosty. The Frosty the Snowman cartoon from Rankin/Bass is a classic. Jimmy Durante gave a great narration for the show. There have been follow ups to the cartoon over the years. This Frosty cartoon gets shown every year, and in recent years it's been shown with a very different Frosty cartoon with John Goodman voicing the title character. That cartoon is titled Frosty Returns . Frosty is a classic Christmas character. He's as much a Christmas icon as Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer. As the artwork says, "merry Christmas!" Also, happy holidays.

"Batman in the Dark" Here's a Batman artwork from 2007. I like to draw--or paint or whatever--Batman. He's one of the best comic book heroes ever. He'll be played by Ben Affleck in the upcoming Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice , which comes to theaters next year. Happy holidays!

"Blue Heart" Here's one of my award-winning artworks. It started out as a paper drawing and then I went digital with the colors and the textured background. The character in this artwork is love sick and doesn't have a soul mate. I went literal in a way by making him blue. On a more upbeat note, happy holidays!

"Fastback Generation One Version, Rough Concept" Here's an alternate version of a character I made up for Transformers. A friend of mine on deviantART made up a Transformers character, so I decided to make up one myself. I blogged a different version some time ago. I did flat colors on both. I could tweak them a bit and do give the coloring more dimension in the future. Happy holidays!

"Lucky Heart" Here's an old artwork that I won an award for. I posted an earlier draft of it here . I drew the heart in the spade with the hot rod flames on paper. I scanned it and digitally colored it in a paint shop program. I used some tools in that program to get the worn fabric look, and the shadow, behind the heart/spade/flames image. The fabric texture is from a textured fill. Happy holidays!

"Toony Batman" This is a follow up to yesterday's blog post . Here you can see that, besides exaggerating Batman's jaw, I also exaggerated his body. I made his torso and his arms disproportionately large, which I think helps make him look more like a cartoon character. I did the cape, cowl, etc. a little differently in this one. I think I like the other way better. Those parts look airbrushed on this one but the colors look solid on the other one. Happy holidays!