I painted an early version of this image in art school and then re-painted it shortly after I graduated. Looking at it now I can only think how much better it would look if I re-painted it yet again. It's kind of fun (and occasionally painful) to look back at old work and see where you've improved (and where you still need some work!). This painting had a brief life some years ago as a greeting card for a charity card company and it's been more recently revived as a greeting card once again in my CafePress shop. Need Christmas cards? Get them here!
- which is currently in progress and taking quite a lot of time. 
These little nature studies are really fun to do and much quicker to finish than my usual work. I hope to do more of these in the future. This one's available here in my Etsy Shop.
Visited an abandoned lead mine at the Missouri Mines State Historic Site which was excellent reference for my husband in his video game work:
Took a boat tour through an old flooded mine at Bonne Terre Mine:
And circled back to St. Louis where we got to be kids again at the incredible playgrounds of City Museum:
Busy vacation! Now I need to recover!
On an aside - well, I followed my own advice from my last post and went to see Paul Zelinsky speak at the Allen Public Library last weekend and he was just great. He showed us all about the construction of pop-up books and the amazingly complicated paper engineering involved. Additionally, the people at Storyopolis Entertainment ran a raffle wherein to my disbelief and amazement I won a very limited edition print of an image from Tony DiTerlizzi's The Spider and the Fly! 
It's now available here in my Etsy Shop.
And regarding the "rage" in the post title - no, I'm not angry about anything, but I have to take a moment to promote my husband's new video game Rage which just released today. (And in the unlikelihood that the title isn't enough of a dead-giveaway, this game is not for young children! :) )
I'd even started paintings for all of them, but got sidetracked by other work at the time and never came back to them. I probably won't use them for their original purpose, but I thought they might make for some more good digital practice.
Following lunch we started hike #2 on Falling Waters Trail, intending to climb all the way to the summit of Little Haystack Mountain. We thought surely this would be no problem at all as the trail was only 3.25 miles one way. I knew it was a steep mountain just from reading about it, so I must have been deluding myself that the trail would gently meander it's way up the mountain.
I was wrong. It was 3.25 miles of up. Boulders, stairs, crossing streams here and there. It was beautiful - just what we've been missing out on in Dallas, but it was too strenuous for us out-of-shape, currently non-hiking hikers and we decided to give up after learning from several descending hikers that after about two and a half hours on the trail we still had an hour of up to go before reaching the summit. Even so, we enjoyed several gorgeous waterfalls along the way. I think this one's called "Cloudland Falls:"
Having a little bit a daylight left and suffering the disappointment that we didn't get to enjoy a view from the top, we cheated our way to the top of a different mountain by way of the aerial tram on Cannon Mountain. We had a nice view of Echo Lake from the tram:
And a nice view of a black bear too!
Hurricane Irene, turned tropical storm, did ruin our plans to spend a day in Cape Cod where I'd hoped to capture some good beach reference for my "Sand Lion" painting (see previous post), but we did manage to drive through the blustery wind and rain to Plymouth, MA. Being near the coast, we were really lucky to miss out on the worst of the storm. I know a lot of people were not so lucky and I hope they're recovering well from the damage... Our day in Plymouth was aimless and relaxing. The power had gone out mid-day, so we weren't the only ones out wandering around the waterfront in the wind and spitting rain.
It seemed so fitting that the night we spent in the oldest town in New England happened to be completely blacked out. We spent a candlelit evening in a house built in 1782 and even enjoyed an impromptu ghost-tour of some nearby houses led by a friendly neighbor.
Our vacations always seem to be a bit more busy than relaxing, but we can always say we're never bored! It was great to get away for a short time, but it was also good to come home (despite all my complaining about the heat!). Hopefully some of those pleasant New England temperatures (and rain) will follow us here soon!
I guess I'd be worn out too if I'd spent the day building a huge sand lion!
And here's the drawing on which it's loosely based - probably over 25 years old now:
As you can see, in my childhood fantasy world, rabbits could fly which is why in my new sketch we find a lop rabbit sitting in a tree. According to a small note at the top of the old drawing the unicorn in the picture's name is "Pollen," whose acquaintance I'd imagine no one suffering from seasonal allergies would ever desire to make.
This is an ancient painting from my art school days. Nearing the end of my time in college, I realized I hadn't yet revisited my favorite subject of old, so I did this painting for a class assignment. The little girl riding the unicorn is more or less my childhood self, complete with great big glasses and a school uniform. This little painting's for sale here.
This painting is cobbled together from several photos I'd taken when we lived in Los Angeles. This type of poppy (Alpine poppy?) was a popular garden flower in California. I remember seeing sizeable beds of them at my husband's office and we had some smaller collections of them at our little apartment complex. I always looked forward to their blooming every spring! 
I don't know why her hat is so tall or how exactly it stands up as well as it does. Maybe she stores something under it - perhaps flower seeds or some such, although that seems highly impractical. I probably won't get to it for a while, but I do eventually want to do a full-scale painting of her in her garden:
I'm not sure what to do with the background yet. Maybe some dynamic clouds or possibly some tall silhouetted pine-y trees to give contrast between a dark background and the sunlit, brightly colored garden. I'll have to give it some more thought....
I wanted to have red punctuating the green wall of leaves, so for a while it was a toss up between tomatoes and scarlet runner pole beans. I can't say why, but the pole beans won out this round. Tomatoes will still have their day, I'm sure.
I did a second sketch on the topic. This is me. Sort of...
Probably not a very well-proportioned me, but who can tell with the blanket, right? I've developed a bit of a reputation for being cold all the time. My family likes to tease me about it. Blankets are common Christmas presents for me - which is not a bad thing at all since, as you can see, I like them. They're both decorative and functional after all. My husband likes to ponder the reasons for my chronic coldness. Current theories revolve around my having poor circulation or quite possibly "a small, cold heart." It couldn't simply be that when I'm cold it's because it's just plain cold outside, could it?
I drew this piece not long after graduating art school to accompany the old nursery rhyme:There was an old woman tossed in a basket,
Seventeen times as high as the moon;
But where she was going no mortal could tell,
For under her arm she carried a broom.
"Old woman, old woman, old woman," said I,
"Whither, o whither, oh whither so high?"
"To sweep the cobwebs from the sky;
And I'll be with you by-and-by."
Hope everyone's having a great holiday weekend!
A wet cat is a grumpy cat. I know that from first-hand experience. Since this little guy is a kitten, he'll probably bounce back from the unpleasant shock of being drenched pretty quickly and be right back at the bowl batting at the goldfish.
Poppies and ? This large field is located in Richardson, right next to the library and just off the highway. I love that even very urban parts of Dallas are sprinkled with these breath-taking patches of color!
Looking at it now, I notice the original is a bit dimmer than I'd like it to be (it's displaying a little higher contrast here than it is in real life). Even though it's a twilight rain scene, I think I should have added some moonlight-esque highlights to the characters to make them pop a little more. But that aside, I'm pretty content with the design and I like the characters.
While sketching these little guys I couldn't help but think back to our cat's kitten days. Here's a pic of our little guy before he put on fifteen pounds and developed a deep and abiding fear of the laundry basket.
He's since grown up to be a good-natured and laid-back seven-year-old, but, my oh my, those kitten days were fun!
Mama Bird's trying to figure out just what the little one is doing wrong. What I learned from drawing her is that it's a bit tricky to convey the expression of 'thoughtful criticism' on a bird when you have only one eye with which to portray the expression. Cocking the head helps, but it's still tricky. And I think I almost got it, but my mind's eye-version is a still a whole lot better.
I'm trying to get myself in the habit of doing quick warm-up sketches in the morning where I have to produce something in a relatively short amount of time. It can be anything at all and it doesn't have to be good. I just have to agree with myself to leave it alone after my allotted time is up no matter how badly I may want to fix. Like those tires, for example. I rather dislike the tires, but I'm forbidding myself to do anything about it (which is hard when you're me). Anyway, I'm hoping this kind of exercise will gradually help me to loosen up a bit as well as provide an opportunity to play with media I seldom touch. Today I used micron pens and colored pencil. I can't remember the last time I used micron pens...
I'm amazed by how quickly they were able to construct a new nest. They seemed to have completed it well within two weeks. I think I should take a cue from those little birds and get my house in order as soon as possible!
I think I'm probably going to post this one for sale on my Etsy shop, but I think it might be best to hang on to it until my postcards are finalized. So, if you're interested, check my shop in maybe three or four weeks. I'll update here with a direct link too when it's available.
I think I'm setting myself up for a serious challenge with all the ripples in the water those little ducklings can't help but generate. But for the opportunity to illustrate ducklings in all their irresistable cuteness, hopefully the challenge will be worth it!
