I woke up this morning with a sense of unbalance that I found hard to place. I’ve never really felt this way before, but then, I’ve never really been this old before. With all the changes in the world—in my world—(mostly…not good), the best way I can describe it is the ground shifting under my feet. The easy place to …
Playing in the mud
I touched clay for the first time in a class I took during college in 2001. It affected me so much I married my professor. (Different story all together, but just know it really can affect you.) I played in it off and on until I graduated in 2005 and demonstrated a couple of pieces to a high school class …
Autumn Rust
I needed to take a little time for myself and smear some paint around, and this is what came of it. It’s called “Autumn Rust.” I painted it with acrylics on stretched canvas, and it measures 20″ wide x 24″ high.
Art of Facts: Uncovering Pittsburgh Stories, part 2
So here’s the final illustration of the Pittsburgh H for the Art of Facts exhibit. I’ve titled it “Pittsburgh is Spelled With H” after the newspaper article in The Gazette Times with the same title. You can see the sketch for the illustration and an explanation of what we were asked to illustrate in this post from last August. It’s also …
Visual Journal
This one is actually cheating since I drew it over a two-day period. I ran out of steam the first night, and had trouble thinking of ways to illustrate what I had done that day. As it turned out, I did pretty much the same things on the day I finished it, so it worked out in the end. For …
Art of Facts: Uncovering Pittsburgh Stories
I’m a member of the Pittsburgh Society of Illustrators, and they’re putting on an exhibit at the Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh sometime next year (exact dates TBD). It’s called “Art of Facts: Uncovering Pittsburgh Stories” and will showcase Pittsburgh-related stories as illustrated by our members. We were asked to illustrate something that told a specific story that happened in or …
Wood
While I was transferring new texture photos to my computer, I scrolled through one of the folders there and found some beautiful extremes in wood. The ones I picked to share here are wood that was made into some “thing”: floors or picnic tables or walls or railroad ties. I remember where a lot of the photos were taken and have taken even more on return visits. Every one of …
Journal Doodles
I started a visual journal almost exactly nine years ago (Yikes! Has it been that long already?) on July 19, 2007. My intent was to illustrate my days so when I went to bed I could say I drew something that day. The sketchbook has been sitting dormant since Feb. 2013, and it’s high time I got back at it. …
Look Down Once in a While
Look at this beautiful texture I found while we were visiting Slate Run. It looks like it could be the granite from a countertop or some incredible interior design pattern. Nope. It was a road. The middle of a freakin’ road. Thankfully the traffic stayed away long enough for me to snap a few close-ups (along with some mid-range and overview shots). I …
Thumbprint Tree
I’ve been working on my first “Thumbprint Tree,” this one for my niece’s upcoming wedding. I had never even heard of them until now. Very out of the loop, apparently. She told me what she wanted and sent me off to my room. Here’s the initial sketch: I needed to do a little tweaking for size, but here’s how it turned out: …
So late with this here, but HEY! I HAVE AN AGENT!!!
It’s true. I pinky swear. We had Tricia Lawrence from Erin Murphy Literary Agency on our faculty at a somewhat recent Western Pennsylvania regional SCBWI conference, and the two of us seemed to hit it off pretty well. But that was November of 2014, and it had been months since I had submitted a picture book dummy to her. And, honestly, I had assumed it …