Reference from Life

While I work from my imagination a great deal, when I need reference for something very specific I often work from photos. However, the chance to work from life is always welcome and so I'm often on the lookout for nature's little treasures - acorns, pine cones, feathers, etc. My husband fished this exquisite dragonfly out of the swimming pool the other day in the hopes that it was still alive and just needed a helping hand out of the water. We were too late though and this little guy had passed on:
I wanted to preserve the dragonfly properly, but when I read that the standard method involves using acetone which is "volatile and explosive" I had second thoughts and went with the 'stick him in a shadowbox and cross my fingers that he doesn't rot' method. I took a bunch of pictures of him as back-up in the likelihood that my method doesn't hold out for very long.

He did lose a little bit of his luster after just one day and his iridescent eyes faded to opaque, but I think he is still a little jewel. Dragonflies often work as a nice extra detail in paintings, so it'll be nice to have some first-hand reference.

Halloween in August

With the adjustments to the sketches for my book dummy now complete, I thought I'd take a short break before starting the painting phase to work on a promotional piece. Continuing on the theme of cats, I added the last details to this sketch this morning:
This piece is actually a re-make of a painting I did back in art school. If I remember correctly, I believe the assignment was to illustrate a cover for Cricket magazine either on the theme of Halloween or possibly for the month of October. I had been fairly pleased with the original composition, but have had it in mind for some time that it would be nice to revisit this image and put more time into the final art than I was able to as a student. I remember back in school I had originally drawn the little mouse to the far right much more plainly and it had been the excellent suggestion by one of my classmates to dress the mouse up for Halloween and have it trick-or-treating. I think that simple suggestion really helped to make the painting.

Picture Book Dummy

I've been illustrating for a while now, but I've long wanted to both illustrate and write my very own picture book. I had jotted down a simple story a couple years ago, poking at it now and then whenever I had some spare time. Pulling it back out this summer, it seemed ready for the next stages - layout and sketches. This drawing will be the spread for pages 4-5:All the sketches for the book are nearly complete with only minor adjustments yet to be made. Oh - and I still have the cover left to design. I always leave the cover for last when illustrating a book so as to maximize the amount of time I have to ruminate on it. Once the sketches are complete, I'll need to paint two or three finished illustrations before it will be ready to submit to publishers. I'm contemplating dabbling in media different from my usual for this project - possibly digital or perhaps try out some the textured gel that's been sitting in my closet waiting to be cracked open....
For all my previous books I faxed or e-mailed sketches to the publishers, so this will be my first time actually assembling a physical book dummy. It should be quite a learning experience and I'm looking forward to it!

Four Seasons by the Stream

I love doing seasonal paintings drawing on the characteristics of a particular season and/or holiday. I think it's a great way to maintain a lot of creative freedom while still setting some parameters within which to work. This painting falls neatly into the category of seasonal and I'd say is something of a mega-seasonal painting with all four seasons flowing one into the next:
This piece was another private commission. I had anticipated the blending between the seasons to be very difficult, but as it turned out, so long as I worked with very light washes for the sky in the background and the water in the foreground, the blending went pretty smoothly.

My husband and I decided the little squirrel swimming in the foreground had the right idea as to how to spend the summer months and we spent some time over this past holiday weekend cooling off in the pool. Even though we're only half-way through the summer I am so looking forward to the fall - although I don't think we'll be collecting acorns like the mice in the painting.... Ice-skating in the winter, however, is a possibility...

Wishing a slightly belated Happy 4th of July to my fellow American readers!

Water Taxi

Here's a sketch I started a while ago between projects and just recently finished up:

This is one of those images that just 'popped' into my head one day, but I have no doubt there's some very heavy influence from two of my favorite artists P.A. Lewis and Jean Baptiste Monge in there. The bird is an egret and the bird's saddle is based on a camel saddle - like this one for example. They are beautifully vibrant in their patterning and colors and I'm not quite sure how to approach the color for the saddle in my sketch since I was picturing a rather pastel-y color scheme for this piece. I'd thought I could possibly use this image for a promo card once it's finished, but looking at it I realized it's awfully similar in terms of setting to one of my recent promo cards, so I think this sketch will have to be put aside for the time being while I dream up another image to use as a postcard. Hope that I'll be able to get back to it soon...

Around the Campfire

Here I am again posting winter-themed paintings in the middle of the summer. Perhaps it's more wishful thinking on my part. I'll have to see if this trend continues over the next few years...
This piece was another private commission which came together in an interesting way. We started with about five loose thumbnail sketches all quite similar and based on the idea of a winter campfire. My client picked out the characters she liked best and then we arranged them into one cohesive scene. Amazingly, all the chosen characters fit together quite easily and required only minimal adjust to make the scene work.

I really enjoyed painting the snowy background in this painting. One thing I especially like to paint is moonlit clouds. Somewhere along the way I began referring to moonlit clouds, both real-life and painted, as "Buehner clouds" as I think illustrator Mark Buehner is the master of moonlit clouds.

Getting back to summer and a brief update on our swallow neighbors (see previous post) - the pair successfully raised five baby birds all of whom have since left the nest. We feel so privileged that we got to watch them grow up:What's really surprising to us is that almost as soon as the babies left the nest, the mating pair started on a new family. The nest is up too high for us to peek into, but with the use of a mirror we could see the new eggs:
Looking forward to watching the new family grow up!

All Settled

After our first couple weeks in Dallas, our boxes are all unpacked and our new place feels pretty much like home now. My studio's all set up and I was able to get back to work last week. I'll have some new work to post very soon, but not quite yet...

We discovered just before our moving day that a pair of barn swallows had constructed their nest just above our little kitchen window. They picked a nice sheltered spot out of the wind and rain, but unfortunately for them, they are right next to our front door. Our comings and goings do seem to upset them a bit, but I am hopeful that once they realize that we aren't a threat they'll calm down and no longer feel the need to flit away every time we open the door. The female seems to spend nearly every moment on the nest (except of course when we've disturbed her) and her mate often sits nearby on the railing, almost as though he's guarding the nest. I didn't think I'd be able to snap a picture of them without upsetting them, but last night I managed to shoot a quick one while they were settled in for the night:

You can't tell from this picture, but they have beautiful blue feathers and of course the classic forked tail. This is their usual night time habit - sitting together on the window frame. They are such fun to watch and naturally I've added them to my list of animals to paint some day. I'm looking forward to the day their eggs hatch!