Christmas Cheer

Not a lot of drawing happening at the moment - lots of cleaning, computer-virus-fending-off-ing, and general Christmas-type stuff happening. In that spirit...



No, it's not technically "art", but I actually baked something! It's hard to ruin cookies. :) We did find out later that the sprinkles were probably from the late eighties.



The church I grew up in asked me (years ago, now) to do a drawing for their weekly bulletins. This season, they've turned it into an ornament for a fundraiser. They sent me one as thanks - pretty neat!

Commissioned Greyhound Portrait

I don't usually work with acrylics (says she who finished a mural using just that medium not two months ago), but I'm pretty happy with how this turned out. My draftsmanship still gets lost at times, but I feel like my sense of color and light are improving.

The woman who commissioned this painting is involved in a greyhound rescue, and these are her dogs through the years. From time to time I dog-sit the one on the far right!

Bookstore Mural

I see I completely failed to update during the month of August. :/ But it was because I was busy! Jennifer and Andy Gyurisin of Winchester Book Gallery, a great independent book store, hired me to paint a mural for them. I'd done one for the shop a few years ago, on canvas. This time, I got to paint on location, in the children's section.

Andy and Jen had the idea of a 'feast of books'. On the first wall, I painted books growing on trees and kids harvesting them. On the second wall, I painted a 'book bakery', where blank pages go to be filled with ideas, words, and pictures. The third and final wall was where everyone ends up - at a 'book banquet'.









More pictures and information on the Book Gallery's facebook page, and in this album!

Baby Gift

A commission I just completed for a friend.

Fifth Avenue

Back from summer vacation and working on a few projects. The sketch below is for a book dummy, but I think it might make cute note cards as well.

World Cup

Wednesday morning, I headed over to the Alamo Drafthouse (amaaaazing movie theater) to watch the U.S.-Algeria game. As anyone who watched the game knows, epic-ness ensued. Here's my personal play-by-play:



Thank you, team USA. You guys rock.

Tra la! It's May!

I worked this weekend. All weekend long. And actually got things accomplished! But I'm not going to share them today because I'm too lazy to use my scanner.

Instead, three reasons May is the best month ever...




I forget how amazing May smells. Coming home from a trip to New York when I was about 12 was the first time I realized - the place I live smells really nice. Especially in May.

Also, since they were on my camera, two final art projects with the kids. I really wanted to do something that involved both the individual and the entire class for the younger ones. So the pre-Ks did these flowers. First we each drew our own stems, grass, and... flower middles. Whatever they're called. Then the kids dipped their thumbs in paint, stamped a thumbprint petal, and passed their picture to their neighbor. It was a bit of a nightmare to get the passing and the stamping coordinating. I ended up doing "Simon Says" to get them to stamp and pass at the same time, and felt oddly like a coxswain on a rowing crew. But at the end, each kid had a cute picture that everyone helped make.




For the Kindergarteners, I decided to do something that wouldn't require much planning or preparation. First we read a story about a rainbow, and I told them we'd be making our own rainbow, but it would require teamwork. Each kid picked a piece of paper out of a jar; each piece of paper had a color written on it. The kids were given magazines with instructions to only cut out images in their color. Two of each color x three classes, and I had six of each of our color wheel colors. Then on Thursday, I put them up in the cafeteria.