House portrait, and animal cookies

I'm back to my old drawing self, after a couple of detours.

First up is a newly completed house portrait, of a residence in San Francisco.

I did this one with Polychromo colored pencils on Fabriano Artistico hot press paper. WOW WOW WOW I LOVE THIS PAPER!!!!!!! 

There are so many papers to choose from to work on, and I've heard about this one before, but for whatever reason never ordered any to try. I have a draw full of other papers - lots and lots of pads of Stonehenge (which I still love), other watercolor papers, hot press and cold press, watercolor blocks, different sizes, colors, you name it, as well as a ton of illustration board. 

Well this one wins. Its 'crisper' than Stonehenge, and takes a million layers with no complaining. Its just gorgeous stuff, and I couldn't be happier with it.

Before I did the house above, I did a couple of little circus animal cookies, just for fun. These were Polychromos and Pablos on Stonehenge.

The first one is a camel, and I'm pretty sure the second one is a lion. These cookies fascinate me - they are just the weirdest little things. The cookies themselves are nice, and then they cover them is this sickeningly sweet frosting and the little doohickies (there's a name for those that's escaping me at the moment). These come in white and pink frosting, and they taste the same, but the pink ones make a better picture. 

I actually laid out every cookie in the bag, and organized them by 'animal'. I considered doing a huge drawing of every cookie in the bag, including all the broken bits and stray round thingies. I thought documenting them like that would be a cool 'art piece'. And it would. Then I decided I didn't want to make that my life's work, and just drew these two instead.