All images © Cindy Schnackel, all rights reserved. Do not pin my work to Pinterest.

Acrylic and colored pencils on textured drawing paper, approx. 12 × 9 inches.

I really enjoy drawing and painting birds but am not so much into depicting particular species necessarily. I like to capture the essence of birds, which I greatly admire for their beauty, intelligence, and character. At times I imbue them, like my aliens and other creatures, with “human” traits and emotions. Of course, many of those emotions, etc, are found in the animal world as well, and humans are animals, along with them. I like the universality of things like joy, surprise, suspicion, sadness, boredom, companionship, and so on, and my imaginary creatures often depict those universal things, no matter what form they themselves are rendered in.

Was in the top ten in a Pop Surrealism challenge in July 2011.