"Art in the Garden" at the Ballard pea patch

Saturday gave us great weather and hundreds of local Ballardites at the Art in the Garden festival. I love this pea patch, and when I was offered to show my paintings at one of the booths, I was happy to pack my things up and relax in a local garden all day. My art fit right in, featuring dancing insects, twisted trees and intricate garden scenes.



I worked on several paintings throughout the day, this one is a color study of a larger watercolor piece I will be developing.

Knitting Nettle Weevil

Watercolor, 6x10"
I am grateful for flickr and its endless supply of macro insect photos. The weevil is a silly little gonzo-like insect that was a destructive force on cotton fields during the great depression. So, this particular "Nettle Weevil" has claimed knitting yarn from a spider's web for a new scarf to show he is fearless of all creatures.

Music Endeavours

CD cover painted for Seattle-based band White Helicopter http://www.whitehelicopter/myspace.com
Watercolor and calligraphy pen

Pod of Narwhals

The final design for "Unity Anarchy" scooter group from Seattle WA. I opted for an all black and white logo to help save money on the sticker production, so I focused more on developing the line work to make up for color.
The Narwhals are a symbol of strength and and akward stamina, ...like a group of scooters :)

Morning memories

I did this for a painting contest at work, the idea came from a dream (so typical, right?, but I must say much inspiration comes from colorful dreams). We have 3 watercolors we must include in our entries: Bismuth Vanadate Yellow, Quinacridone Pink and SB Turquoise. My entire pallete had only these colors (but I did cheat on the opaque white cherry blossoms and a touch of dark green in the left corner. :)

Seed

Illustration Friday "Seed"
My little cyclops furballs make another appearance in this piece. I saw the suggestion for seed on IF and thought a plant drawing would be such an easy task, I took it a bit further, and rather liked the results.

Working space

Today I will demonstrate the innerworkings of a productivity...

Messy desk


Clean desk


Wish I could snap my fingers to make this happen!

Artwalk

May was just slightly too cool to set up my "booth" at the Pioneer Square artwalk. It was the first artwalk I participated in this year, I'll be out in June and July too. Gotta take the day of work and get there early, or else I wont find a spot to set up, but it does make it easier to have blankets instead of a tent.

Illustration Friday..."Wrinkles"

I made a quick sketch of a woman, getting older...seeing more wrinkles every day and thinking she looks too much like her sharpe, and imagines how it would feel to live life as her puppy "wrinkles". Her friends put the final touch to her vanity and position a feather hat on her crown.
"There! Perfect and lovely!"

I tried a different approach in medium, using a black graphite pencil to outline the painting, it turned out shinier than I wanted and didn't scan so well. I used watercolor, manganese blue hue, deep scarlet, and quinacridone gold on Arches CP.

Revived!

I attended the SCBWI conference in Belleview WA this weekend and I just returned to my partly rainy/warm residence on the hill. I don think I am over exaggerating when I confess that it was a seriously life changing and affirming experience.
Yes, I learned techniques, exercises and formulas, but the most significant realization I had was not that I only have the technical ability to create imagery, but have a spark to learn how to master storytelling. This has drawn a huge smile inside of me and I feel a new passion to treat illustrating books as a serious career.
Here are a few sketches I did during an inspirational lecture with Martha Chodos-Irvine and one at the end of a more writer focused drawn out discussion from Arthur Levine...

I highly recommend this conference to ANYONE interested in illustrating for books, it woke me up in so many ways!

Landscape

I started this thinking I might potentially submit it to 4culture's call for artists, requesting landscapes abstract or literal. Still deciding if I'll paint up a few more like it.

Homage

My homage to Mark Ryden, a self portrait.

New Blogspot!

This is my first entry at blogspot.com, so I am posting a piece I loaded onto illustrationfriday.com last night. Most of my current work is all watercolor and I am builiding my skills as an illustrator to add more variety to my collection. My style definitely leans towards children's books but I am open and willing to give all topics a try. In any case, this will be a great spot for me to display process and so on...