Gentleman Cat was modelled on a victorian oil painting with a special family cat as the star of the show! Part of a pair for a special Christmas present.
Experimenting today with an oil transfer drawing technique. The red and purple lines are oil drawn/transferred to hot press 140 pound watercolor paper with watercolor applied. The oil resists the watercolor.
The new Hasselblads are so dang out of my range! I can't even swing a used one. This is the first time using the oil brush in @procreate on a final illustration. I have to admit i didn’t want it to end.
A penguin. Digital watercolor base with oils overtop. I wanted to try to paint it like those traditional animal paintings from ages ago. I gave them an ear piercing for the challenge and kept it at that. They're stuck up; they don't need much. ;P
I did this mostly from the imagination.The perspective is a bit off,but I still like it. Its of a peat bog in Ireland. A peat bog is similare to a marsh except the mud or soil solidifys, and then it can be cut for fuel.
Vine Charcoal and Oil Pastel make for a messy, smudgy experience. A certain amount of messiness can make a process feel more real and human. When things aren’t perfectly polished, it reflects a genuine effort, imperfections, and growth. In personal life, letting go of the need for everything to be tidy can promote a more authentic existence. The hat is a Stormy Chromer. It also evolved out of a mess. More on that later. Peace.
I am amazed summer after summer seeing this tree and garden grow. I started this with a blue background and a black layer that I punched through, and from there, I painted layer by layer from the back to the front. I like the realism I got, but I kept to a painterly feel using oil brushes.
My latest illustration created for an illustration technique demo video. Oil drawing transfer technique. Watercolor resists the oil drawing on the paper. Sometimes oil and water do mix.
I am an art teacher with a master’s degree—trained by brilliant professors who believed that art could do more than decorate walls. I offer safe spaces for teenagers to grow—nourishing soil where their imaginations can take root.
And yet… I am assigned to hallway duty.
This is compulsory education, after all.
So I sit—posted like a sentinel—watching young lives stream past.
“Get to class,” I say with a smile and a nudge.
The system wants attendance; I’m hungry for presence.
Armed not with a whistle or clipboard, but with a pen—
my scribble’s soft insurgency.
The hallway stretches out like a geometric hymn.
Columns and corners chant structure.
Teenagers swirl past—half-formed galaxies of limbs and laughter—
their orbits chaotic, their gravity pulling time forward.
I begin to draw.
Not their tardiness, but their motion.
A shoulder. A blur of sneakers.
A tilted head chasing freedom.
Feet flickering like seconds.
Each mark a pulse.
Each smudge a breath.
My paper becomes a seismograph of seeing—
trembling gently through the mundane.
This isn’t about making art for a frame or a feed.
It’s about refusing to leak away in the fluorescent hum of obligation.
It’s a quiet mutiny against the clock.
I do this on long car rides, too (passenger side, mind you).
Letting the lines grow wild, jagged, and unapologetic.
Not for polish—
but for presence.
This is how I remember I’m still alive.
Still growing.
Still watching.
Still choosing to see.
Because sometimes mental health looks like
a piece of scrap paper,
a moving pen,
and the simple, sacred act of
marking time with wonder.
4 year old Henry engaged fully with thick applications of watercolor and oil pastels. He said it was a stormy sea with a small boat. This was at the onset of the pandemic, when we were all a bit uncertain and confined to our homes. I was reminded of an insight by Kierkegaard written in the early 1800s: “When the sailor is out on the sea and everything is changing around him, as the waves are continually being born and dying, he does not stare into the depths of these, since they vary. He looks up at the stars. And why? Because they are faithful – as they stand now, they stood for the patriarchs, and will stand for coming generations. By what means then does he conquer changing conditions? Through the eternal: By means of the eternal, one can conquer the future, because the eternal is the foundation of the future.”
The forest nearby is full of baby banksias growing in poor gravelly/sandy soil which they do better in. The little one was growing on the edge of a gravel road.
Capturing the spaces in between and amplifying them with a play on exposure and contrast to bring forth the beauty I see within the layers. This particular play is a flower I saved from a very special event I attended. I then dried the petals of this beauty. These special petals make their way to various projects, including oil and acrylic paintings and resin on canvas. More to come :)
A big fan of the Star Trek universe and was especially impressed with the final run of Picard. This is the new Enterprise in action, heavily damaged but winning a battle against a Klingon Bird of Prey. I wanted a unique angle and decided to flip the starship upside down. It's space; why not. Digitally painted in Rebelle 6 with watercolors, pen, and oil brushes, and meant to have a classic/watercolor feel. This is not AI nor is any part of this AI.
This is a reproduction study only of a very famous Monet piece. I am not selling this. I learned how to do art according to the traditional methods of studying great masterpieces. I did this in soft pastel,but the origional is done in oil I think.
Caged is a collection of healing through deep inner journey work. Note: this is part of the process included while writing the final draft of my upcoming novel.
