New sketchbooks are fun.

I began a new sketchbook today, so have a tree golem and some monster skulls in brown micron and watercolor. Looks like the paper in this book will take a little watercolor abuse if I'm not too rough with it, so yay! 

More recent art.

A holiday card design for my parents, featuring their cats! 

I can't believe I forgot to post this painting to the blog! I started this personal piece about 18 months before I finished it... I had became of painting ivy and busy with professional work and it was buried under a stack of sketches for a long time. When I finally dug it up again I decided it had to be finished! 

It's a mock cover painting for "The Secret Garden."

New Artwork!

Some recent ACEO commissions.

Cute Fox Circle

Watercolor, 3x3inches

A little fox painting I did with hand-embellished wood base magnets and perhaps buttons in mind.

Little Owl

A little owl sketch I did on a bit of scrap paper. I've made some hand-finished wooden magnets out of this I'll be putting up on Etsy pretty soon. 

The Secret Garden

So, I started this personal piece about 18 months ago. I got tired of painting ivy and busy with professional work, and it was buried under a stack of sketches for a long time. I dug it up yesterday and decided to finish it.

It's a mock cover for "The Secret Garden." I may use it to play with typography later.

As a refresher, here is the sketch and line art from early 2010.

Seasonal greeting card design of my parents' cats: Poppy, Francis and Bjørn.

Lantern Cat

Autumn is my favorite season. Makes me sad I can't experience it in Florida...

Dragon-Critters and "Bottled!" Art Book project

Yeah, that little guy is pure trouble. He might be able to fit in a large coat pocket, but he's got a talent for mayhem all out of proportion to his size.

I've got a few more "bottled" critters than I've been showing, so I'm probably going to be saving most of those for the print book. Yes, I intend to make a Bottled! creature book! I'll likely publish it through Lulu or a similar place. Tentatively ready for print in late August or September, life and work permitting!

Bottled Daydream

The daydream is considered a more benign cousin to the nightmare. It causes fuzzy thoughts, lack of ability to concentrate and memory loss.

Bottled: Bearded Mudwyr

The Bearded Mudwyr is a distant relation to the dragonlike but still diminutive wyrms. Its habitat includes ponds and lakes, where it hunts small fish and insect larvae.

I'll be uploading some more bottled creatures this week to prove I'm still alive!

Maug and "That Goat."

I recently finished a NanoMango challenge with a sketched comic about an old troll named Maug who doesn't like goats very much. I hope to edit and complete it at some point, but here's some pen drawings of the main characters!

Also, have some fantasy setting weapons. No reason. Just for fun.

Charity Piece: Feathered Dragonlet

Watercolor, 4 x 6" (6.5 x 8.5" framed)

My friend Michelle contacted me a little while ago to contribute a painting to a charity auction to benefit the Japan earthquake relief effort. If you would like a chance to own this painting which I also made a custom frame for, please take a look on eBay. All auction procedes go to the Red Cross.

You can bid on my dragonlet here, and see the auctions of the other five artists in the group here.

EDIT: the eBay listing currently says 25% of the auction will go to the Red Cross. I am working to get that changed to 100%, but if it can't I will donate the remaining 75% manually.

Unfortunate

I'm working on a lot of things at once, but have a little painting from my notebook to look at:

Where I live in Florida, you often see egrets and herons catching lizards. This unfortunate little dragon has found itself a little lower on the food chain than usual.

Abstract watercolors?

Been a little stressed out lately... okay, maybe a lot stressed out. In the interest of doing something fun, I decided to moosh around colors on paper today and see what came out. One sort of reminds me of a John Bauer forrest, the other is simple some fun with an abstract expression of energy.

Getting close to the end of a big project, so I should be looking for more work soon as well as finishing up a personal commission I've had on my desk for a while! Then I have some ideas for handmade print magnets to sell on Etsy, and maybe some other stuff, too.... and then there's that comic story I'd like to try writing/drawing.

Lots to do, and so little time!

Improbable Flight

A little something I saved for the spirit of the holiday. Remember to take care of each other...

Another card design

A possible design for a personal notecard set, experimenting with drawn text.

Thank you cards.

I made some "thank you" cards for my relatives a bit ago... sadly, I lost the scans in my recent hard drive crash and backup hard drive corruption so these photos that were still in my camera are all I have to show around!

In the meantime, I am rescanning my watercolors. I had planned to do that anyway for my new portfolio presentation because I have a better scanner now, so at least it's not a huge loss! Physical originals = great backup.

It's been too long!

watercolor, 11x7.5"

It really has. So Happy New Year to everyone, belatedly! I managed to squeeze some time for personal work out of the time I was supposed to be sleeping; the result is the image above. I took some WIP photos as I went, so perhaps I can pull them together into something later.

It's done!