The Good Ship Rhino ~ WIP 3

This looks a little rough because in some areas there are 2-3 layers of tracing paper overlapping.The vertical cut on the right was made to tighten the width of the format. I simply sliced the chosen area and slid it over to the left.

This will be the last update of my sketch before the final. There are still a few things I plan to adjust but I'm close to completion. Once I'm completely satisfied I will do a final tracing and post that before tranferring the drawing onto my working paper. As weird as this may look it is surrealism. I plan to post my thought process while working on this. I must say, it's a great deal of fun to let my imagination run wild and free. I love fantasy, cats, critters and who knows...before this is done there may be a few flowers that show up. Flowers are another love of mine. So fun to include it all in one painting.

The Good Ship Rhino ~ WIP 2

This project has begun to turn into a monster, literally and figuratively. As the ideas increase, so has the size of the sketch and my teacup has sprouted tentacles. I now have this taped to my biggest mounting board on my tabletop easel on the kitchen table. I snapped these photos just now so I could post a quick update. I've made some changes to the original sketch and added an overlay of tracing paper showing some possible additions.

Wreck of the Good Ship Rhino & a Shag ~ WIP

Inspired by the work of Yuri Laptev, I recently visited Paint My Photo (link) to gather some ideas. I haven't been on this site for ages and was amazed at the quantity and quality of photographs in their gallery. Over 1600 images, all copyright free. I found a wonderful image of a rhino, resting in a zoo enclosure, and saved it to my on-site 'favorites'. Later I stumbled onto another image of a beached fishing boat, falling into decay. The overall shape and angle of incline reminded me of the rhino. I did a tracing of the boat, then overlaid that onto the rhino image and they meshed perfectly. An idea was beginning to form. I added the cormorant later. Whenever I include a new 'critter' in my artwork I like to learn a little bit about it first. Googling revealed that the slang term for a cormorant is a shag. Cool!

I'm now in the process of creating what I like to call a storyboard. Whenever I create a piece from multiple images I like to work on tracing paper. Each element is drawn or traced onto separate scraps of paper so they can be moved/removed and adjusted into various compositions on a board. Because the tracing paper is transluscent every layer is always visible. An example of this process can be seen in the WIP Cawcus (link) , a painting I completed last year. I'm currently jotting down more ideas for this project in a small notebook as they come to me. It should be fun to see this evolve and what comes of it.

Yuri Laptev ~ artist

I recently discovered Yuri Laptev's work on Facebook and immediately fell in love with it. It's full of fantasy and surrealism which I truly enjoy, especially when it's done well. After much Googling, finding many sites that featured bits and pieces of his body of work, I finally located his website. Here is a brief bio (in my words):

Yuri Laptev was born in Petropavlosk (North Kazachstan). He moved to Crimea and studied at Simferopol Design School. After completing his studies, Yuri began working for the Artistic Foundation of Ukrainian Soviet Republic with the specialization in Interior and Application Design and found success and distinction as an artist/designer. He also developed an interest in self expression and worked in several mediums including mosaic and sculpture before finding he preferred working at the easel. In 1998 he discovered he enjoyed digital art as well. 

A more complete bio is available on this website:

Yuri Laptev