Dakota Drake

My friend displaying the poster I designed like it's a fish he caught.

I bet the acoustics in that mouse's home are perfect.

I'm lamenting that humans never evolved having huge fluffy tails we could wrap around ourselves to keep warm.
Thanks A LOT great-great-great (ect, on and on) grandparents!

I feel this. Even asking friends to hang out and everyone is busy I'm like (mostly jokingly) "If only my friends weren't so busy going back to school, having interesting hobbies & side hustles, & bettering themselves & the people around them THEN MAYBE we could hang out more!"

But what if we long to live in the PNW? Does longing count? Yearning, even?
I'm 1000 miles away :(

Towns with interesting, unfortunate names like "French Lick" or "Butthole Cactus" or "Evil StepParentsville" are still better than neighborhoods like "Equestria Gardens" or "Greige Palms" or "Vertusia" - names that art the equivalent of grey laminate floors in newly flipped homes.

This is such a cool looking set-up.

Woodcarved scene on a round base. An humanoid octopus wearing a dress is holding a basket with a duck inside of it. On the head of the octopus, a grumpy frog taking shelter of a big ancient book. Next to them all, a sword is coming out of water among bulrush. On the top of it sits a kingfisher.

Glass bell with a woodcarved scene of a humanoid octopus wearing a dress on the surface of a pond. The creature has a kingfisher on its head. It's holding a book wich has a duck sitting on it. On the left of the base looking like water, bulrushes. On the right, a little frog has its head out of water. In the background, indoor plants by a window.

I want to make a third Ancient Wisdom. Someone commission me please.

Look, when I say I love St. Francis or St. Christopher, I mean it in a pagan way.
It has nothing to do with Catholicism and everything to do with St. Francis being a peaceful friend to animals, and St. Christopher protecting travelers. Warm reminders.

I love this! It reminds me of the St. Francis statues that always have a dove on his shoulder.

A screenshot of a Facebook post where a person named Andy ask the Well now “What the hell is transgender?” The Royal Canadian Air Force account response with “That’s a pretty big question asked in a pretty small way, Andy. ‘Transgender’ putting describes someone whose gender – who they know themselves to be – doesn’t match the sex they were assigned at birth. It’s not new, and it’s certainly not a fad. People have lived this experience for as long as people have existed; we’re just finally talking about it openly. You don’t have to fully understand it right away, most learning takes time, but we can always start from a place of respect. That’s how decent folks handle things they’re still getting used to.”

Massive shoutout out to whoever handles the Royal Canadian Air Force’s social media account. They responded to every single comment on their already very solid Trans Day of Remembrance post and they responded like this…

This is gorgeous!

Verdin are some of my favorite birds. They're so tiny, smaller than some hummingbirds, and so freaking fierce. They've bullied and chased off my cat, and have the most acrobatic flight I've ever seen.

(Yes I know these are both male here)

Graffiti seems a fitting background for dandelions. Neither are supposed to be there but they thrive anyway.

Why do his pecks have abs? If they hired someone to paint over that, they would have fixed something that obvious. I don't think they hired real artists to fix anything. It seems more likely that they used a sharpen tool or something and called it a day.

how to draw good

The joke I never tire of is telling students that a blank sheet of white paper is a drawing of the invisible man in a snowstorm.

Followed very closely by pronouncing "scissors" as "skissors" and when they protest I say, "but that's how I learned it in shool."

Here they all are without the concert poster background. Magically silly.

My friend asked me to make his DnD group into a band on their own concert poster, and gave me free range to make them into glam rock himbos.
The song titles are all from inside jokes during the campaign.

watercolour painting of a fat little monster with a pink bottom. Sitting as a dog might sit on its haunches and looking back at us (so we can see his bum) with three orange eyes and a grin and two long ears. He is purple with a green belly and his bum is pink.

sculpture of a fat little monster with a pink bottom, green belly and purple back. Three orange eyes and a grin with an overbite.

sculpture of a fat little monster with a pink bottom, green belly and purple back. Three orange eyes and a grin with an overbite.

sculpture of a fat little monster with a pink bottom, green belly and purple back. Three orange eyes and a grin with an overbite. (rear view, big pink bottom)

I fancied getting back into sculpting which I hadn't done since school. This was based on my Pedro monster I did for one of my books (first pic). SO MUCH FUN. He keeps an eye on me in the studio now. #monster #sculpture #airdryclay #cutemonster #sillymonster #funny #pinkbottom

Flower delivery!

This expression is more like a house cat than an actual, real, house cat. Perfect.

Is it because of supply differences - like different brands and seasonal veggies? Or geographic proximity, culture, and history differences? I don't know! But I love that it's different than the ones here in the US!
Gimme all the regional and hyper-local tastes.

Keep 'em coming!

Strange thing - but when traveling in a different country I love trying the other nationalities of food (obviously along with the local). The experience is just different than what I get in the US.
In Japan some of my favorite restaurants were Indian. In Thailand it was the European bakeries.

This makes me sound very zen and not at all like I laid on the floor of the studio questioning everything yesterday.

I'm at the point in my art career where I'm enjoying the process of making the art more, bc I can trust my process. I (sometimes) know what I'm doing more.
Each stage of the painting is more intentional. Ugly stages are just a neutral part of it.
I may have started becoming patient with myself.

Hottest new album of 2025 dropping soon.

A trio pet portrait I did using posca markers!

I can confirm this!! The fact that my poems are about the desert are so cool!