This is actually the beginning of a little series I've been playing with: I went to a funeral for a cousin, and a different cousin requested a piece of bunny art in my journal, and since it was a) a reference drawing for a commission which has since been added to and b) in a journal that was a gift from f2tE, I told my cousin no.

That bunny drawing is rather dull anyways, as it's not designed to be art on its own but beadmaking reference: I have been trying to draw bunnies in order to become more comfortable with their anatomy for lampworking; so I told my cousin I would make a bunny drawing just for her:)

This bunny drawing, a little later in the same journal, is however supposed to be the ‘end product." It combines classic pen&ink cross-hatching with layered doodles that started with henna designs that served as the basis of low-effort covid era mark-making, gradually evolving into a palimpsest of watercolour and micron line work over a graphite (pencil) layout.

sketchbook, 25nov26, approx 6x8"; watercolor, microns, graphite underdrawing. photographed 7jan2026 with a sony A7c, sony 90mm macro, 1/160s, ev +0.3, ISO 800, WB: cloudy; squared up with the transform tool, lightened, & cropped & scaled in gimp.

Earlier pieces tended to feature henna-inspired doodles of flowers in the watercolour drawing, as opposed to the playful, abstract wiggles in this piece, which, like drawing kanji, celebrate the fluid line width changes so easily achieved with a brush (in this case, some sort of water brush)—my favourite watercolour tool, cheap though it is!

Silver grey microns, featuring the pale grey ink, have proved to be an absolute game-changer for this style, as they provide a delicate and very useful intermediate layer that is on the one hand a light value like the watercolour washes and blurry brushwork underneath it, but composed of intricate, delicate, but above all crisp linework like the black micron doodles above it.

I no doubt chose a bunny as the subject matter because I happened to be visiting the friend (Fran) for whom I shoot bunnies (plus the need to practise, ofc)—this tiny exercise delights her & makes our evening walks more interesting, incorporating as they do this challenging, but low stakes goal.

Not great art, but I really enjoyed making the piece & am happy with the result: I'm slowly learning how to make effective watercolours on thin dry-media paper utterly unsuited for them:)

And now that I need to come up with a bunny sketch to give to my cousin, I have an excuse to continue the series and have made at least two more drawings in this basic style, which will show up in due course. ^[1]

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.