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As Halloween and Samhuinn fast approaches…

A special commission for a Christmas present, drawn on A3 medium cartridge using 0.03, 0.05 and 0.1 fine liners. This was a bit different for me but I loved it so much! Took about 28 hours in total.

I love creating work that starts from a point in nature and develops into something more abstract, something that can be interpreted in many different ways. It’s interesting to hear what people see, what connection to their own life they bring when viewing a work.

For Valentine's Day, I wanted to paint my husband and me. I think it turned out great. We'll print it and put it up somewhere in the house.

I wanted a fierce pose and landed on a good side-eye. Used really strong colors and a digital oil application

I have been watching a lot of sci-fiction lately. Like so many others my age or younger, the weight of global warming sits on my shoulders constantly. I imagined the final trek through a wormhole as someone sees their new solar system for the first time. I enjoy the bright colors and such but wish I conveyed a more bittersweet emotion.

Sakura Pigma Micron pen and DR PH Martin Radiant Concentrated Watercolors. One side was painted, then embellished with ink, scanned into Photoshop, copied, flipped and pasted to make the two sides. (Fairly large image, so I included a couple of details.) Silly but fun to do. A little "acid" and a few hours of gazing is all you need for a profound experience. Ask me how I know.

This started as a line drawing based on a photo of peonies in the garden. It’s drawn with three different pens: Micron 005, Micron 03 and Faber Castell Pitt superfine (0.3) on 11x14 Strathmore Bristol Vellum. The paper isn’t terribly tolerant of wet media, so I played around with tinting it in Photoshop because I wasn't sure how it would go. But I liked it in color enough to chance painting the drawing with the nice and bright Dr Ph Martin Hydrus watercolors. It's photographed it on my drafting table with my glasses for scale. The lamp has a daylight bulb, so I think the color (at least where the light is more prominent) is fairly true.

Ren and Stimpy fan art - these two were my childhood favorite and influenced my art, as you can probably tell, ha ha. Thanks for the idea, @Rayedrgn :)

The rhododendron in my yard is blooming and my daughter and I love to stare out the window to watch our cats, Squanchy and Beemo, hunt and play in the yard.

Pelican Queen gives a captivating rally speech to her subjects that are in her mind. Used some watercolor-pencils and some digital overlay.

This shriveling half onion has been in my dirty fridge for a week.

Running Late. The personification of the reaper running late for his next appointment. 10” x 15” Original ink and watercolor illustration on Strathmore 500 Series 4-ply Bristol illustration paper. Signed by the artist. Unframed.

Drawn from a garden photograph. This took me much longer than expected. I kept stopping because I was getting discouraged. I still don't like the leaves, but there's not too much I can do about it at this point.

Had a wonderful morning at Perry Lake painting this scene from the harbor. The soothing harbor sounds and a flock of pelicans taking a rest on their way to Texas were my companions. Swipe for a few detail shots. Also... a bonus fly for your nature enjoyment.

More ballpoint pen experiments. This was trying to "blend" colors, using ball point pens in a similar way to colored pencils. I found Layering evenly to be pretty difficult, esp with the pens blotching and very very limited burnishing. The interesting thing is that the paper doesn't seem to get "tired" the way it does with pencils. This is just cheap printer card stock.

Most evenings, I watch a couple of news programs streaming on my computer. During that time, I also make it a point to draw a person (usually from an on-line reference photo) with a No.2 yellow pencil (generally Ticonderoga) on whatever paper is handy on my desk. It's good practice and keeps my hands busy. These are some "News Doodles" done this past week.

My idea was to make a textile pattern for fabric printing. Drawn on paper with a micron pen .005, colored with pens then put into Photoshop for some color manipulation, blurring of lines and pattern arrangement.

Mixed media on cradled board

Home grown shallots commemorated in a small watercolor painting. This is done on Arches hot press paper with Daniel Smith watercolors.

Prismacolor colored pencil drawing of stylized begonias. This was fun, especially making the leaves have a satin texture. I printed this on card stock as a blank card to give to friends.

This is a graphite pencil drawing of a hunting hawk somewhat loosely based on a photo. The reference photo is from: Birds of Prey by Paul D. Frost (Paragon Books Ltd 2006) and credited to Martin B Withers/FLPA. I found the book in the Goodwill a couple of month ago and was much inspired by the beautiful photographs.

Ice Dream. There’s some strange references going on in this one. If I don’t explain it won’t come together. Back in my day the Europe 72 3 record Dead live album had a crazy kid on the back cover smashing a cone on his head. Later an ice cream truck company called Weaser ripped off that art and would visit my mid Jersey neighborhood daily. Google it if you care. Flash forward to 2019. The ice cream truck that hits my neighborhood EVERY DAYS has a loud obnoxious song and no Greatful Dead connections. It drives me out of my mind so here is the result. I always try to turn my pain into gain. What a long strange explanation it’s been.

In the Finnish mythology killing of a bear was followed by a great feast in honour of the bear (peijaiset), where a substantial part of the celebrations consisted of convincing the bear's spirit that it had died accidentally and hadn't been murdered. Afterwards, the bear's skull was hung high upon a pine tree so its spirit could re-enter the heavens. The bones of the bear were then buried under the pine. Reference for this work is my old drawing of karhunkallopetäjä/bearskullpine in the Riisitunturi. Also practice sketch of bear skull and at last photo i took of pine.

Created this before my trip to Japan. Combination of my characters and japan inspired stuffs. Japan was awesome!

Doodles and notes I started at a regional NJ chapter of SCBWI conference this past weekend. Then just kept adding stuff to the page this week. I learned a lot and met some great people. Looking forward to June!

Inktober2018day12-Whale. I’m using inktober to explore and improve my techniques. This time I wanted to try using more crosshatching. I’m happy with the result. Also, at first I had nothing for the whale prompt but it’s rewarding when you push through the dead space and a concept or idea comes to my head that I can be excited with.

Did you ever have a page in your sketchbook that was so bad and so embarrassing that you tore it out and chucked it? This was one of those pages that made me cringed every time I came to it. So today I said to myself, "ENOUGH!" and ripped it out of my moleskine. But something wouldn't let me throw it in the can. Now, I'm not one of those artists that can't bring himself to throw away any of his stuff because each and every piece, good or bad holds some kind of sentimentality or sense of importance. This particular page was a result of a crappy angst filled day and stuff poured out of me. For some reason, it felt like I was throwing away some piece of my soul. There were parts that were overworked and others that were painfully too personal. So I decided to cut it up and put it back together in no particular order, however it seemed best. As I was pasting the pieces down it occurred to me that this had a comic book feel so I scanned the final and added the black borders in photoshop which I really dug. I like that it is cryptic and jumbled up like my brain can so often be. This reminded me of the awesome @johnhendrix who said something in his book, Drawing Is Magic that stuck with me. He said, "Don't worry about doing anything wrong. If you're hoping your sketchbook turns into a glossy display of only your best drawings, you are not carrying a sketchbook, you are carrying a portfolio." In other words, explore, take chances, loosen up and have fun. Try your best to go at it like an uninhibited child. In so doing, you will stretch as an artist by avoiding repetition and predictability. We all know how to do what we already know. To sum up, I created a bad page, and whether or not I was able to fix it, it expanded me. So, follow your pencil, pen, or whatever and let them take you to places you never imagined when you started. Then, maybe you will end up staring happily at the final and with childlike wonder, say, "man, where did that come from?"