The Art of Phyllis Hornung Peacock

In The Book Forest Finish

2012-01-26T11:47:00.000-08:00

Finally finished up this piece:

And haven't been terribly pleased with it throughout the whole process though I'm not entirely sure what exactly is bothering me. I probably just need to step away from it for a few months and then look at it with a fresh eye. Ah well, it's finished for now.

IF: Twirl

2012-01-23T15:44:00.000-08:00

IF: Grounded

2012-01-09T14:05:00.001-08:00

Something a little different for me...
Hope the little cottage is grounded!I've been reading some Hellboy lately and finding myself inspired yet again by Mike Mignola's work, so I thought I'd do something simple and graphic and comic-y for this week's Illustration Friday.

Art Display at the Allen Public Library

2012-01-05T11:40:00.000-08:00

I'm very excited to have on display an assortment of my illustrations at the Allen Public Library in Allen, Texas. Most of the illustrations are from two of my books What's Your Angle, Pythagoras? and Pythagoras and the Ratios. Also on display are some process pieces - sketches, character designs, and really old color studies created during the making of the books. The exhibit will be on display in case #5 in the gallery/lobby throughout January, 2012.

So, if you're in the neighborhood, please stop by and check it out!
Allen Public Library
300 N. Allen Drive
Allen, Texas 75013

New Year's Etsy Sale!

2011-12-31T12:12:00.000-08:00

To celebrate the New Year I'm running a sale in my Etsy shop. 10% off everything in the shop (before sales tax and shipping) from today, 12/31/11 - Wed. 1/4/12. Use coupon code NEWYEARS10 at checkout to get the discount.

I hope everyone's had a wonderful holiday season. I just arrived back in town last night from a long trip to Arizona to visit family. We did a ton of hiking in and around the Prescott area - Arizona is the place to be if you're into hiking. Here's a shot of the dells from the Watson Dam Trail:

Happy New Year!

IF: Round

2011-11-25T20:50:00.000-08:00

I thought this old illustration would work well for today's Illustration Friday topic and be oh-so appropriate for the upcoming holiday season:
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!

In the Book Forest

2011-11-14T14:42:00.001-08:00

Just when I was starting to appreciate the relative speed of digital art, I had to go and do something like this -
- which is currently in progress and taking quite a lot of time.

I started a traditional version of this piece many years ago as a poster to take with me to the second annual SCBWI Winter Conference. It was very large when compared to the sizes I'm accustomed to working with and proved to be rather overambitious given the very limited amount of time I had to complete it. So... it has sat around in my closet waiting for its day of resurrection which seems to have come at last. Now, I just need to tame this beast by painting lots and lots of books, books, books!

Feather Study & a Visit to Missouri

2011-10-27T08:49:00.000-07:00

I'd seen a number of watercolor studies of feathers online recently and had a bit of an itch to do one myself. Fortuitously, I stumbled across this bluejay feather and thought it would be the perfect specimen: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.

I didn't find any feathers... but hopefully our most recent excursion outdoors will give some inspiration for further studies. We just came back from our annual trip to St. Louis to visit my family, where we all set out on a short side-trip together. We clambered about on huge rocks at Elephant Rocks State Park:
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!

Kitten Spots

2011-10-18T13:12:00.000-07:00

Here are the finished versions of my kitten spots. As you can see, my intention at the time of developing these years ago was to have a different image for each season that I could use on letterheads, etc. in conjunction with the current season:
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!

I am one of those people who never wins anything, so I was and still am so excited that apparently I had to blog about it! So the lesson for any local Dallas children's book aficionados is to go support these presentations - even if there aren't any future give-aways, you might get a chance to see the moving innards of a pop-up book or some such and how cool is that?!

Woodchuck Mama

2011-10-12T14:43:00.000-07:00

This illustration appeared in last May's issue of the children's magazine Clubhouse Jr.
It's now available here in my Etsy Shop.

I don't know if I have any local readers, but in case I do I thought I'd bring up something very cool that's happening here in Dallas. Storyopolis Entertainment has established a speakers series featuring various children's book luminaries. The speakers give their presentations in both the Ball Park in Arlington and the Allen Public Library. Here are links to the list of speakers at both locations:
Ball Park: http://www.storyopolisentertainment.com/texas-rangers
Allen Public Library: http://www.storyopolisentertainment.com/allen

I went to see Raul Colon last month in Allen and really enjoyed the presentation. I'm going to try to see them all!

The Sand Lion and a Little Rage

2011-10-04T07:07:00.000-07:00

All finished:
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! :) )

Official website: http://www.rage.com/gate/?return=%2F
EGM Review: http://www.egmnow.com/articles/egm-review-rage/
Several trailers: http://www.gametrailers.com/game/rage/5315

IF: Ferocious

2011-09-26T08:36:00.001-07:00

Okay, maybe not so much...

Kitten Spots

2011-09-19T15:33:00.000-07:00

I'm currently resurrecting a number of decade-old spot illustrations based on my kitten logo that I had intended to use as a sort of branding - on letterheads, business cards, invoices, etc. Here are two of them: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.

Escape to the North

2011-09-09T13:25:00.000-07:00

Finding that last summer's 'escape to the north' vacation worked well to disrupt our protracted Texas summers, we repeated the venture again this year, this time visiting New England. Unfortunately, we were met by a number of less than ideal circumstances - I contracted some kind of illness almost immediately upon our arrival and Hurricane Irene was on the approach.

We spent a very long first day making up for all the hiking we didn't get to do this summer - first at Flume Gorge in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. 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.

We briefly visited both Boston and Battleship Cove in Fall River, MA before finishing our vacation in Newport, Rhode Island where we visited six of the impressive Newport Mansions and finished out the day strolling along Cliff Walk.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!

The Sand Lion

2011-08-12T10:18:00.001-07:00

Here's a sketch that I've just barely started as a digital painting. This was another idea pulled from maybe over a decade ago: I guess I'd be worn out too if I'd spent the day building a huge sand lion!

IF - Obsession

2011-07-29T17:00:00.000-07:00

This week's Illustration Friday topic gave me a good excuse to start a sketch for a painting I've been wanting to create for a while. When I was in elementary school, I was quite obsessed with unicorns. Unicorns were the end all be all for me. I collected them, had my room decorated in all things unicorn, and of course, drew them. I had gathered up a number of my old unicorn drawings a few years ago while putting together a presentation and thought how much fun it would be to take one of those drawings and re-illustrate it today in my current style and technique. I imagine I'll add more detail in the final painting, but for now, here's today's sketch:
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.

Another illustration on the topic - if you've ever visited my Etsy store then you've probably already seen this painting, but since I'm on the subject I thought I'd post it here too:
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.

IF - Perennial

2011-07-25T08:50:00.001-07:00

For this week's Illustration Friday topic, I decided to play with watercolors and created this little painting of one of my favorite flowers - poppies (which I think are a perennial flower, but I could be wrong).
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!

This painting is for sale - here - at my Etsy shop.

The Garden Witch

2011-07-15T12:39:00.000-07:00

This little character popped into my head the other day, so I made a rough painting of her over the course of a few morning sessions:
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....

Springtime Planting Final

2011-07-07T08:57:00.000-07:00

I finished up this one a while ago, but just came back to it this week to add a couple minor finishing touches. It seems like it always helps to step away from a painting for a while and come back to it later with a fresh eye.

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.

IF: Remedy

2011-07-02T13:51:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd revisit the squirrels for this week's Illustration Friday topic in this rough sketch, wherein the remedy is hot chocolate: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?

IF: Swept

2011-06-10T06:46:00.000-07:00

I'm digging way back in the archives for this Illustration Friday. This unpublished pen and ink drawing is over ten years old: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."

IF: Asleep

2011-05-30T12:55:00.000-07:00

It seems I've got myself in a bit of a 'cat rut' due to Illu stration Friday. I thought this page from my book dummy worked well for this week's theme:Hope everyone's having a great holiday weekend!

Springtime Planting

2011-05-26T08:31:00.000-07:00

Here's something I'm working on:
This image is taken from a thumbnail sketched out while at my old job ten or so years ago. I love when I finally get a chance to get back to old ideas. I think I'm going to attempt to paint this one digitally.

IF: Soaked

2011-05-20T09:36:00.000-07:00

Another quick and simple one for Illustration Friday from this morning's warm-up sketches:
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.

On an aside - Over the course of our three years here in Texas, I thought I'd seen all the variety of spring-time wildflowers central Texas has to offer, but this spring proved me wrong. So, I'm back again this year with my annual wildflower season post:
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!

Turtlehouse in the Rain

2011-05-13T10:11:00.000-07:00

I had a chance at the end of last year to revisit my "Turtlehouse" character in a new illustration. This piece accompanied a Langston Hughes poem in a children's magazine:
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.

The original painting is available in my etsy shop. Oh - and also, I had mentioned in a previous post that my "Ducklings on the Move" painting would soon be available - it's now listed at my shop as well.

IF: Beginner

2011-05-06T11:08:00.002-07:00

A couple quick ones from this morning's sketches, both appropriate for today's Illustration Friday topic. And in doing so, I happily got a chance to try out my new Col-Erase pencils:
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!

IF: Lesson

2011-05-02T12:05:00.000-07:00

Here's another really quick sketch I did for this week's Illustration Friday, topic - Lesson:

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.

IF: Bicycle

2011-04-25T11:26:00.000-07:00

I did this really quick little sketch for Illustration Friday. The theme this week is bicycle:

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...

Nesting

2011-04-08T12:07:00.000-07:00

After several truly exhausting days, we're finally all moved in to our new place. We have a lot of unpacking and arranging to do. My studio still appears to have been ravaged by a tornado, but I'm making progress. I'm hoping to have my studio together by the end of today (or at least by tomorrow afternoon!).

It seems we weren't the only ones procuring a new home this past month. The swallows came back again this year and built a brand new nest above our kitchen window just as we were beginning to move out. Their old nest from last year had been removed, so they had to start from scratch. A lot of work for them, no doubt, but it did afford me a great opportunity to watch the new nest evolve over time. I tried to take a picture a day to document their progress: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!

On the Move

2011-03-23T12:45:00.000-07:00

Our final moving date is just a little over a week away and there's still a lot to do. I need to put in change of addresses with various places, set up phone and internet service at our new home, and gather up a bunch more book boxes for our substantial library. But, I do, at least, have my painting all finished and ready to be made into postcards:
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.

Update 5/13/11: This painting is now available here.

Ducklings on the Move

2011-01-27T16:15:00.000-08:00

In anticipation of yet another upcoming move (just a short, local move this time), I started designing a postcard to send out once we're settled at our new address:
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!

Cats on a Fence

2011-01-14T08:45:00.000-08:00

Just yesterday, I wrapped up on this painting for my book dummy:

I think I'm finally (just barely!) starting to get the hang of this digital painting business. I can still use lots more practice though! The cats went pretty smoothly; the backgrounds not as smoothly. Fortunately my husband has been collecting a lot of incredibly varied and useful Photoshop brushes for a quite a while and had taken the time to organize them by type which proved most helpful to me. I think using some of the more organic brushes helped me to feel a little more comfortable with this media.

So now, I've got just a couple more paintings yet to go before it will be ready for submission...

Interview

2010-12-23T19:31:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone's having a great holiday season so far. I just thought I'd make a quick update while I'm on vacation since an interview (my first!) I did for Something We Like just posted today. Check it out if you're interested.

Well, I'm off to wrap some more presents and eat entirely too much!
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

Mexican Hats & Indian Blankets (Applied)

2010-12-10T11:29:00.000-08:00

Drawing inspiration from photos I took a year ago of wildflowers in Austin (see previous post Mexican Hats & Indian Blankets), I drew this little guy who is modeling his Mexican hat and Indian blanket poncho. I love how the common names of so many wildflowers evoke such very specific images:
I mostly just wanted to get the idea down on paper, but I also thought these simple drawings would provide me a good opportunity to play with digital coloring since I am still just barely dipping my toes in the great big digital pond. Something else I did with these drawings that I almost never do was to complete the initial shading in pencil. In my current technique, the painting stage consumes so much time that I never bother to establish lighting in the sketch phase. I'll often work it out in a color study if I can't visualize it well enough to go straight to final. If you notice a difference in texture between the two drawings it's because one I drew on graphics pad paper and the other on bristol paper just to get a feel for how the different media take shaded pencil drawings.

I think this little character is begging for a story. Maybe I'll dream something up for him some day...

Thanksgiving in Prescott

2010-12-02T15:06:00.000-08:00

I might be a little late in saying so, but I hope everyone had an excellent Thanksgiving holiday! My in-laws recently relocated, so we had the pleasure of visiting a new town for the holiday this year. I'd spent one night in Prescott, AZ several years ago, but hadn't really had much time to explore. Four and a half days for this vacation gave us a good chunk of time to check out the area and we rapidly discovered how rich the Prescott region is in hiking opportunities!

We first climbed (and conquered!) Thumb Butte, so named as from the distance it looks rather like the tip of a thumb:
The trail sort of disappears in a jumble of rocks and brush as one nears the top, so we had to do quite a lot of scrambling to make it to the top. And make it we did, but not without facing some harrowing obstacles on the way.

Less than a five minute drive from the my in-laws new home was Willow Lake and the Willow Dells Slickrock Trail Loops.Probably my favorite of all the hiking we did last weekend, these trails involved a great deal of boulder-hopping with stunning panoramic views of the dells and the lake.We finished off our hiking Sunday at Granite Mountain, taking a trail that wound up a lower hill and offered nice views of the mountain catching some late afternoon sun.We'd been feeling a bit starved for good hikes since our move to Dallas, so this vacation was just what we needed. I'm not sure how many miles we totaled, but it certainly felt like a lot. We came back from our vacation feeling pretty exhausted, but for all that hiking it was definitely worth it!

Taking Shelter

2010-11-08T10:57:00.000-08:00

Continuing my string of autumn-themed paintings, here is yet another:

This illustration is another private commission and installment in the "Little Lost Squirrels" story. Here they are mid-journey taking shelter from the storm. We carried a couple details from previous "Lost Squirrels" illustrations over into this illustration to hint at the continuity - the little green beetle has been observing the unfolding events through several paintings as has the watchful owl. I always think it's fun to find these kinds of extras details in artists' work - kind of like you're in on a little secret!

Etsy

2010-10-28T12:40:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd try out a different venue - hopefully one that sees a little more traffic than my usual little corner of the web... so I went and opened an Etsy shop! Several originals from my website and all but one of the prints have been relocated to the new shop. A few new originals have been added to the listings as well.

What's even better is that many of the originals that were previously listed on my site have been deeply discounted for the holidays! Come visit and check out some of the offerings:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/phpeacock

The Cricket & the Ant

2010-10-18T07:22:00.000-07:00

I have yet another autumn-themed painting to post appropriately enough during autumn, however I'd completed this one many months ago. This piece is the second of six paintings illustrating the fable, "The Cricket & the Ant."

You might notice the colors are quite a bit brighter than my usual palette and for me this was a big challenge. I made the colors as bright as I reasonably could using my traditional media and then after scanning, I did A LOT of color adjustment in Photoshop.

Spring Creek Forest Preserve

2010-10-04T10:13:00.000-07:00

After our punishingly hot summer, the weather over the past two weeks has taken a sharp turn toward very pleasant. Not wanting to miss the opportunity, we trekked over to Garland and hiked Spring Creek Forest Preserve this past weekend.
The trail mostly followed along a high-banked creek with many short off-shoots where one could reach the edge of the bank and catch a glimpse of the water. In only a couple places could we actually climb down to the water. The white rocky banks reminded me of the beautiful hill country we recently left behind in Austin. We're hopeful that the nice weather will continue for a while...

Onto the subject of reference from life and nature's little treasures once again... The management at our apartment complex recently decided to repaint everything, including the covered parking. The thorough cleaning required before painting also meant the removal of all of the bird's nests that had been built in the tight spaces between the support columns and the roof. And there were A LOT of them. I found this one on the ground and couldn't resist bringing it home with me:
I have yet to decide if I will actually keep it or just study it for a while before throwing it away. You can't see it in the photo, but under closer scrutiny you can see small bits of man-made objects wound throughout the nest - a length of red string and a fair amount of what looks to be a fine plastic net, possibly for fishing? I think there's a story here...

Trick or Treat?

2010-09-15T13:37:00.000-07:00

It's almost officially fall now. Although it's not quite time for Halloween, I think it's almost appropriate for me to go ahead and post my autumnal painting today. I did see a very diverse selection of pumpkins and gourds on display at the grocery store this morning, so if they say it's okay then it must be okay:
Halloween might possibly be my husband's favorite holiday. Every year he looks forward to checking out the local haunted house offerings and I'm sure this year will be no different. One thing I will always remember about our years spent in LA was the enthusiasm with which some of the locals celebrated Halloween. 'Yard Haunts' were not uncommon and were often incredibly elaborate, frequently rivaling and surpassing some of the more commercial enterprises. The most impressive one I remember was "Hallowed Haunting Grounds" which sadly had its "final manifestation" in 2005 after an amazing 33 year-long run. A list of LA 'yard haunts' can be found here.

I wonder what Halloween goodies our new city will have to offer.....

A Visit to Wisconsin

2010-09-09T14:17:00.000-07:00

Summer in Texas lasts a very long time and finding that by September we've had quite enough of it, we departed for a short trip over the holiday weekend to southern Wisconsin in the hopes to escape the heat. I'd been to Wisconsin once when I was very young and hold almost no memory of it, so with little idea of what to expect, I was pleasantly surprised by the beautiful rolling hills and generally bucolic landscape. Not to mention the perfect weather!Our vacation turned into something of an architectural tour of southern Wisconsin as we visited Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin, the Pabst Mansion, and The House on the Rock, the last of which I suppose is more of an incredibly bizarre experiment in sensory overload than a representation of any particularly well-regarded architecture, although still fascinating in its own unsettling way. Check out the photo gallery on their website to get a better idea of what the place is about - it is so strange and random that I really don't know how to describe it.

As we've been rather hike-starved for months now due to the heat and we lucked out with the beautiful weather in Wisconsin, we made sure to spend a significant amount of time outside. We visited Pewitt's Nest near North Freedom, WI which is a short, but stunning slot canyon in the Baraboo Hills.And for a more rigorous hike we visited Devil's Lake State Park and hiked up the very steep Balanced Rock Trail and back down the equally steep CCC trail.

We had never seen rocks quite so purple on hikes we had done anywhere else. Perhaps this is what "purple mountains majesty" refers to? Although I think our "mountain" would probably be more accurately described as a very grand hill.

We have only to wait a few more weeks before the Texas heat dissipates and we can get outside and explore our new city. I'm looking forward to it and I think our little adventure in the north will tide me over until then.

Reference from Life

2010-08-13T12:06:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-06T12:09:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-25T17:05:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-07T07:26:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-30T08:07:00.001-07:00

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

2010-06-23T08:39:00.000-07:00

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 pos t) - 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

2010-05-11T12:34:00.000-07:00

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!

Moving! (again)

2010-04-14T14:31:00.000-07:00

After a relatively short bout of unemployment, my husband has landed a job in Dallas, which means, of course, that once again we'll be moving very soon. And so, the whirlwind of frenetic activity inherent to moving has fallen upon us again. With his start date looming only two weeks away, we drove up to Dallas this past weekend to search for an apartment. As I've mentioned previous years, springtime in Texas proves to be an excellent time for long drives as the wildflowers burst into their full glory from March to May. This year's wildflower season appears to be the best of the past three, most likely due to the heavy rains last fall. This picture was actually taken along the highway right near our home, but fields like this dotted the highways along the drive up to Dallas.

As with most moves, I both dread and look forward to it at the same time. I love exploring new places as well as the feeling of a fresh start in a new home, but aside from the hassle of moving, there's also the sadness of leaving a familiar place. We've only been in Austin a little over two years, but I am really going to miss it. Ah, well, looking forward...

Pythagoras Translated

2010-03-05T13:59:00.000-08:00

I just brought in my mail and much to my surprise found a copy of What's Your Angle, Pythagoras? (Charlesbridge Publishing) translated into Arabic! I knew there was a coming translation, but I didn't expect to receive a copy since an overseas company purchased the sub-rights and handled the translation. I can't read a word of it, but from what I can discern the publisher that issued this version appears to be Al-Balsam Publishing. The book opens back to front and all the illustrations have been flipped to read right to left. Very exciting! I guess I can now say I'm internationally published!

Goodwater Trail

2010-03-01T20:48:00.001-08:00

It's crazy to think it was warm enough for short sleeves this past weekend after it had just snowed the Tuesday before. I was grateful for the warm weather though. Between work, chilly weather, and allergy season, it seems like forever since we've spent any meaningful time outdoors. So taking advantage of the pleasant weather before it changes again, we got in a long-desired and much-needed hike this past weekend, this time at Good Water Trail in Georgetown.

The trail is apparently a whopping 25 miles long and encircles Lake Georgetown. Being much out of practice with hiking and in far less than tip-top shape, we did only a very short segment of the trail. The trail follows along the edge of the lake, but at enough of a distance that we couldn't see the water during most of the hike which we found a bit disappointing. Even so, the weather could not have been more ideal for a hike. I'm hoping for more of this perfect weekend weather in the coming months...

Snow in Austin!

2010-02-24T12:45:00.000-08:00

It's been so long since I've lived anywhere that gets regular snow that I can't help but get excited when we have even a little. Yesterday I sprang out of bed when my husband said, "Hey, it's snowing!" I threw on some clothes, grabbed the camera, and ran out into the cold to take a good long walk around the neighborhood. For the first hour or two, this snow-storm was pretty steady with those big tissue-paper flakes. After it tapered off we had a sprinkling of flurries throughout the afternoon.

The unusual weather seems so strangely appropriate to me since the painting I'm working on at the moment happens to be a snow scene. I'm grateful for the reference and inspiration (and that I didn't have to drive anywhere in it)!

Pythagoras & the Ratios

2010-02-05T13:01:00.000-08:00

I'm very pleased to announce the release of my most recent book, Pythagoras and the Ratios from Charlesbridge Publishing. I posted a couple interior illustrations in a previous post - you can see them here. You can see another interior page if you visit this image viewer at Barnes & Noble and a couple more also at Amazon.com if you use the "Look Inside" feature.

If you have/know any kids learning or struggling with ratios then this is the book for them. Here's a excerpt of a review from the School Library Journal:

"Gr 4–7—This picture-book introduction to ratio and proportion also explains the connection between math and music through a story featuring young Pythagoras and his family......."
".......The story is amusing and offers a glimpse into life in ancient Greece. Acrylic and colored pencil cartoons depict the clothing and lifestyle of the period in a pleasing palette. A historical note and an experiment in which readers are challenged to use Pythagorean ratios to create a musical instrument with six glasses of water in varying amounts are appended.—Barbara Auerbach, PS 217, Brooklyn, NY"

Happy 2010!

2010-01-05T11:12:00.000-08:00

I hope the new year is finding everyone very well and I hope everyone had a very peaceful and relaxing holiday season. We had a good visit with Chris' family in Arizona. Our excitement for the trip was during our drive up from Phoenix to Winslow, when we hit impassable snow in Payson, AZ and ended up having to stay the night in a hotel. It was quite strange - there wasn't one bit of snow on the southern approach to Payson, but as we passed through the town (which really isn't very big), we came into steady snowfall and positioned at the northern departure of the town were several police who were discouraging drivers from continuing on. So, we stayed the night, bought chains for our rental car in the morning and made the very slow trek toward Winslow. It was a very beautiful, but somewhat nerve-wracking drive.

As with most gift-giving holidays, I usually receive a good number of children's/art books for my ever-expanding collection, but this year I was also able to add some original illustrations to my collection. My husband gave me two original paintings by Omar Rayyan, of whose work I'm a huge fan. You can see these paintings here and here. I think he is just brilliant with watercolor!

The new year also brings with it a new video game project (to be disclosed in the future) for my husband who spent the last several months of 2009 working long and hard on the environments for Darksiders which just came out in stores today! Tons of video clips here.

As for resolutions for the new year, I think I'm just going to recycle last year's resolutions and give them another shot considering the only one I can say I really succeeded at was gaining some weight. Maybe I should add to that list to try to update here more frequently!

Little Lost Squirrels: Safe at Home

2009-12-07T12:47:00.000-08:00

This painting brings the "Little Lost Squirrels" series to a happy conclusion with all the little squirrels sleeping soundly after their troubling adventures away from home and Mother Squirrel.

I was a little concerned that I might end up using to much brown in painting the interior of the squirrels' tree home, so I made a solid effort to bring a lot of color - pinks and purples - into the wood walls and floors and I think it worked out pretty well. Given the chilly weather we've been having as of late, I think the Mother Squirrel's got the right idea having a warm cup of tea after a long day.

On a personal note, I just took a short break from another project while my parents were in town visiting. We all had a good visit and in continuation of our occasional hobby of staying in supposedly "haunted" hotels, we took a couple days to drive down to San Antonio for an overnight stay at the reputedly haunted Menger Hotel. We also took the opportunity while we were in town to visit the Witte Museum and the McNay Art Museum. Sometimes I find that I like the architecture and design of the buildings of art museums as much as (or sometimes better) than the art collections housed within. I found this was somewhat the case with the McNay where a portion of the collection was housed within an old mansion. The mansion encircled a lush courtyard full of decorations and interesting architectural details. Patterns similar to those on the stairs in these pictures were repeated on ceilings in a couple rooms of the mansion - a nice reward just for looking up!

It was nice to recharge for a couple days, but now I have to get back to work. But just maybe I'll put on some Christmas music and wrap a few presents before I dive back into painting.....

Little Lost Squirrels II

2009-11-26T09:19:00.000-08:00

I suppose this piece would be more appropriately titled Little Lost Squirrels 0 as it's actually a prequel to Little Lost Squirrels:

It may be hard to see in the picture, but the two little lost squirrels can be seen in the distant landscape as two tiny silhouetted shapes traversing an open field. It's always challenging for me to maintain a good level of color saturation in twilight and night-time paintings. I think using a lot of purple in the shadows helps keep some color in areas that might otherwise fall into grays and blacks - it's a subtle thing, but I think it helps.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! I hope all my readers have a very relaxing holiday today with friends, family, and lots of turkey and stuffing..... followed by a nap perhaps...

McKinney Falls

2009-09-24T10:29:00.000-07:00

The rains finally came to quench our parched land here in Texas. The air cooled, and by the time the weekend rolled around I thought how wonderful that it's finally cool enough to go outside and do a little hiking. So on Saturday, which was quite cloudy in the morning, we drove down to McKinney State Park to finish up the trails we hadn't yet hiked. After about ten minutes on the trail, the sun came out from behind the clouds and that nice cool hike I'd been looking forward to for so long became a hot, sweaty hike. Even so, it was good to get outside for a while.

The longer trails were a bit ho-hum, walking through the same landscape for a long time without many points of interest aside from the remnants of an old homestead and grist mill. But the trails around the water were quite picturesque.

It seems that the butterfly migrations are beginning again. There were so many butterflies fluttering along the trails, especially this kind. I'm not sure what type it is, but they were everywhere.

In the Woods at Christmas Time

2009-09-18T10:49:00.000-07:00

I've noticed in the last couple weeks the grocery stores have been putting out pumpkin displays and I couldn't help but think that it's a bit early to be decorating for Halloween. If it's too early for Halloween, then it's probably way too early for Christmas, but that didn't stop me from painting this Christmas scene during the dog days of late summer. Some wishful thinking during the sweltering heat perhaps...

This piece was another private commission. I took special inspiration from Susan Wheeler's beautiful greeting card art for this painting. Her website seems to have disappeared, so a link to one of her books will have to suffice. I love the warm, inviting woodland world she's created and populated with happy rabbits and mice.

Squirrels in Autumn

2009-09-10T20:47:00.000-07:00

Well, I was able to come back and finish up this painting (see entry Squirrels & Stick Insects) much sooner than expected:The butterfly in the painting is very loosely modeled on an American Painted Lady. When I was growing up, I had the opportunity to raise a painted lady from caterpillar to butterfly. It was so exciting as a child to watch the caterpillar spin its chrysalis and then emerge as a beautiful butterfly. I named him Pillarpoofer in a nod to my uncle who I was told in his early childhood years referred to caterpillars as "pillarpoofers."

Little Lost Squirrels

2009-09-01T16:52:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've posted anything, much less a new piece of art, but I'm finally back with a new illustration. This painting was a private commission. As I worked on it, I was reminded of one of my old favorite picture books, Owl Babies in which three baby owls await nervously for their mother to return home. I love the simplicity of the characters in the book and am amazed at how much expression the illustrator was able to convey almost entirely through the eyes and subtle gestures. I'm hoping I was able to similarly capture some of the sense of relief and recent distress the two little lost squirrels are feeling as they run toward their mother's outstretched arms:

On a personal note, a dear art school friend came to visit last week and we took a few days to explore Austin and get in a dose of adventure, trying out some new activities, among them river tubing and ziplining through the trees. Following are a few pictures of our hike around Hamilton Pool - we first hiked along a trail that followed a creek all the way to the Pedernales river:
Due to drought conditions, the river was quite low. I'm quite tempted to go back and hike along the dry parts of the riverbed to see what there is to see before the rains come and fill the river back up.

We then took the short trail to the pool itself which is partially sheltered in a large grotto. According to texasoutside.com, "The preserve's pool and grotto were formed when the dome of an
underground river collapsed due to massive erosion thousands of years ago." It was such a striking and unusual setting, that it almost looked like a man-made resort. The water looked so inviting on such a hot day, but sadly, we didn't have time to go for a swim. Perhaps another day...

More art soon...

Lilies in St. Louis

2009-07-14T12:07:00.000-07:00

I just came back from a short trip to St. Louis to visit my parents. Much to the surprise of our family, my Mom had decided to participate in the Ms. Senior Missouri pageant, so I joined her cheering section for the show. Did she ever wow the audience with her dancing and amazing baton-twirling skills!

While Mom was busy with day-long rehearsals, my Dad and I went on a long bike-ride around Creve Coeur Lake. He took me to some wetlands along one portion of the trail. The water lilies were in full bloom and blanketed a huge portion of the water. I'd so love to take a little boat out on the water and paddle my way gently through the lilies:

Tall grass prevented me from getting closer to the water's edge, so this was the best 'close-up' I could take:

I've had an idea for a painting nagging at me for some time that just so happens to feature water-lilies. I'm not sure when I'll get around to actually painting it, but at least I'll have handy reference when I do.

Squirrels & Stick Insects

2009-06-25T13:00:00.000-07:00

They say everything's bigger in Texas - and when it comes to the local bugs, they weren't kidding. This little (or not so little) guy was hanging out in front of my neighbor's front door for about a day:He's a giant stick insect. It's probably hard to tell from the picture, but he was about 5-6 inches long. Seems he wandered a little too far away from his forest home where I'm sure he's most excellently camouflaged. Hopefully he's since found his way safely back to the trees following his little adventure amongst the man-made.

Realizing I hadn't posted anything in such a long time, I scrounged around a bit for something and came up with this drawing:
This was an unused drawing for a private commission. We opted for something larger and with more characters, which I'll post in the near-future. I still like this drawing and I've got the color well-visualized in my mind for it, so maybe I'll come back to it some day...

Mexican Hats & Indian Blankets

2009-05-13T12:59:00.000-07:00

The wildflowers are still exploding here and the blues and pinks seem to have given way to yellows and reds. I don't remember them being quite so spectacular last year. Perhaps the weather conditions are more favorable this year? Or maybe I just wasn't getting out much around the same time last year. On a morning walk, I stumbled across a steeply sloping field of Mexican Hats:
Indian Blankets quite literally blanket the ground along my husband's drive to work. He also located another large field of the flowers on a different road much to my delight:

I can't think that I've ever lived somewhere where I could walk through such a picture postcard flower-scape until we moved here to Texas. Scattered throughout the dominant Indian Blankets are various other flowers. I think these are coreopsis:

Sadly, my very amateur photography skills fail to do the landscape justice. But flowers always brighten my day, so maybe they'll brighten yours too.

All Finished!

2009-05-05T16:11:00.000-07:00

Well, I've finally finished my most recent book project and just shipped the art off to my publisher this week. The book is due out Spring 2010 from Charlesbridge Publishing. Here are a couple pieces from Pythagoras and the Ratios - the first one will be the title page and the second is an interior page:I'm really looking forward to seeing it in print!

Field of Flowers

2009-04-24T15:13:00.000-07:00

I'm just wrapping up on the tail-end of my book project, so hopefully I'll have some art to post soon. In the meantime, more photos...

It's wildflower season here again in central Texas and although I really haven't had much time to get outside lately, we did take a quick jaunt a couple of weeks ago to shoot a field of pink evening primrose. Chris happened to spot this distant field as we were driving on the elevated highway you can see in the background and figured out how we could reach it using back-streets.

The ground was a bit marshy, but well-worth the mud to take some good reference photos.

Hopefully we'll get outside for a bit this weekend before the summer heat sets in. We've already had some uncomfortably warm days this spring - just a prelude to what's coming...

Studio

2009-02-24T08:52:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time since I posted anything. Between work being very busy for both my husband and myself and the dreaded cedar allergy season from which Chris suffers, we've not had a spare moment for hiking or anything else of the sort, so I still haven't much to post. I'd been holding off posting pictures of my studio for just such a lack of blog content, so now seems like a good time to go ahead and post them.

I love seeing other artist's studios and work spaces. I'm always fascinated at seeing how other people decorate their homes. I guess it's just a small glimpse into another life or way of living and that's always interesting to me. I picked up a book some time ago off a Barnes & Noble clearance shelf called Where Women Create which showcases beautiful workspaces of women in a range of creative professions. My studio is much more functional than beautiful, but hopefully some day I'll dress it up a bit.

Here's a before and after picture -"After" being the after the bomb of a large project explodes in my studio and order gives way.... It feels like a mess when I'm there working, but I think it probably doesn't look so bad in the photo:

After

I'm crazy-particular about my lighting. I always keep the natural light to the left of my desk so that my painting hand won't cast a shadow across my work. And I always have a swing-arm lamp directly over head - "working in a spotlight" as my husband would say.

And, I've a bit of good news to share - I received a "Letter of Merit" this past weekend in the SCBWI Magazine Merit contest for an illustration completed for Highlights last year. It was quite a nice surprise!

2009

2009-01-12T10:32:00.000-08:00

I realize I'm a bit late in wishing everybody a Happy New Year, but I do hope 2009 is off to a good start for everyone! It never occurred to me in the past to make resolutions, but this year I have a few, pretty ordinary ones:

- Get up in the morning at a reasonable time. I'm not at all a morning person and my hours tend to become more and more bizarre over the course of large projects. So I'm going to attempt to drag myself out of bed earlier than usual and get on a more 'normal' schedule.

- Get some regular exercise every day. I was doing pretty well with this until the holidays and then fell off the wagon and have yet to jump back on...

- Gain about seven pounds or so. That's right. I said gain.

- Art-wise, I'm still trying not to over-work paintings, painting too thickly and what-not. And trying to loosen up a bit.

So far, the first twelve days of 2009 find me failing miserably at the first three resolutions and showing spotty results with the fourth. But it's early still, plenty of time to right myself...

And I'm really late posting these pictures. These were taken on the side of the highway on my husband's drive to work:

Decorating this particular copse of trees along the 360 appears to be an annual tradition here in Austin.

Well, it's back to work for me now. A belated Happy Holidays to all!

The Umbrella Boat

2008-12-05T15:57:00.000-08:00

Well, I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. We spent a few days with Chris' family in Arizona which was relaxing, but seemed like an unusually short vacation... I guess vacations always seem too short once they're over. We spent an afternoon in Sedona and the night in Jerome at the reputedly "haunted" Connor Hotel. I'd been to Sedona when I was a teenager and remembered how beautiful it was, but even good, clear memories (or even photos for that matter) don't do the place justice. These were taken from the vantage point of The Chapel of the Holy Cross:

Here's a drawing done while awaiting sketch approvals for my current project:
I haven't yet drawn in the rocky wall in the background, but I thought I'd go ahead and post it anyway since it may be a while before I get back to it. This is drawn up from an eight-year-old or so thumbnail and related to this painting.

Only three more weeks until Christmas and we will be off to St. Louis to visit my family. I hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season! I wish everyone a belated Happy Thanksgiving and an early Merry Christmas!

SCBWI Event in Austin

2008-11-07T15:42:00.000-08:00

Next Thursday, Nov. 13, The Austin Society of Children's Book Writer's & Illustrators is holding a celebration at Bookpeople. I'll be there signing three of my books along with over twenty other authors & illustrators. Here's a glimpse of the evening's schedule:

6:30 Social Time - Second Floor
Visit and enjoy refreshments

7:00 A Holiday Reading - Amphitheater
Join us in the amphitheater as Philip Yates (in full pirate costume) reads from his latest book, A Pirates Night Before Christmas (Sterling, 2008)

7:15 Picture Book Panel Discussion - Amphitheater
Featuring: Greg Leitich Smith, Philip Yates, Don Tate, & Emma Virgan. Moderated by Brian Anderson.

Middle Grade/Young Adult Panel discussion - Second Floor by the Stairs
Featuring: Lila Guzman, Shana Burg, P.J. Hoover, Helen Hemphill, and Jo Whittemore. Moderated by Tim Crow.

8:15 Young Adult Panel - Third Floor
Featuring: Jennifer Ziegler, Cynthia Leitich Smith, April Lurie, Brian Yansky, & Varian Johnson. Moderated by Julie Lake.

6:30 - 9:00 pm @

Bookpeople
603 North Lamar
Austin, TX 78703
512-472-5050
800-853-9757

Hope to see you there!

Happy Halloween!

2008-10-31T10:34:00.000-07:00

I hope everyone has their candy ready for trick-or-treaters tonight! This is our first Halloween in our current apartment so I don't know if we'll have any kids stopping by or not. We live on the third floor, so they'll have to make a little extra effort to get some of our candy!

It was so long ago that I can barely remember the last time I carved a pumpkin. But this year we attended a pumpkin-carving Halloween party, so we got a chance to relive that childhood experience. Somewhere along the way our pumpkin turned into a Totoro-esque jack-o-lantern. Unfortunately, one day sitting in the sun on our balcony was enough to flatten his ears and widen then gaps between his teeth. So he his toothy smile is a bit diminished in this picture, but you get the idea:
Autumn is my favorite season and I love all of the trappings of the season - colorful leaves, gourds, pine-cones, etc. I stumbled across this "pumpkin tree" (also known as Solanum) at our local Central Market the other day and just couldn't help myself. Apparently it's a relative of the eggplant!Well, now I think I'll go finish off the last of the pumpkin pie. Hope you all have a good Halloween!

Autumn Migration

2008-10-24T14:36:00.001-07:00

We must be in the flight path of the monarch migrations to Mexico here in Austin because I have seen so many of them over the last few weeks! A couple weeks ago we hiked Commons Ford park which is west of the city and everywhere I looked I'd spot a monarch. They seemed especially fond of one particular type of flower which were quite plentiful in the park. I've seen a a good number of the other 'big butterflies' around too, swallowtails and such. Monarchs are a real childhood favorite of mine!

Every so often I discover that my husband has, unbeknownst to me, lent his hand to my work. Sometimes his little additions go unnoticed for days or weeks until I've come back to the drawing for reworking or reference. I always get a good laugh from these unexpected contributions:
And so I continue to labor under his corrupting influence...

Sneak Peek

2008-10-08T20:26:00.000-07:00

Well, after a blistering summer it's finally starting to cool down around here. It still gets a bit uncomfortably warm around mid-day, but mornings have actually been a bit chilly. So the past couple weekends, we took advantage of the pleasant mornings and went out for a bit of hiking. First stop was McKinney Falls - three miles on the Onion Creek Trail ending at the falls which were more of a trickle, but with very neat rock formations.

And last weekend we hit three really small parks that all happened to be in the same area. The tower in the picture was at Mayfield Park which seemed to be a popular site for weddings. A young brood of peacocks occupied the grounds. The males seemed to revel in practicing displaying their tails which were not all that grand yet since they were still quite young, but that didn't discourage them in the least.

And the last picture is a view from the top of Mount Bonnell which seems to be something of a tourist site.

Lastly, for the sneak peek of what I'm working on - a couple character design sheets for my current book projects - a follow-up to What's Your Angle, Pythagoras?:

Octavius is only twelve, but he is very big. He's a nervous, worrying type.

Amara is nine years old and somewhat bossy. Her name means "eternal."

Yet Another Orphan Works Update

2008-10-03T08:17:00.000-07:00

For those following the issue, I received this e-mail alert this morning:

From the Illustrator's Partnership:

According to our sources
THE HOUSE WILL TRY TO PASS THE ORPHAN WORKS BILL TODAY

10.3.08

If this Bill is only meant to help libraries and museums, why did they draft it behind closed doors?

Why have the doors been opened wide for commercial infringement of the work of living authors actively licensing their work?

Why do they want to pass it when nobody's looking?

Why do they want to re-write copyright law without an open debate?

Stop this effort to give content to Big Internet firms by undermining copyright law.

Get the word out.

· Light up Washington and home offices of your Congressman.
· Contact the media.
· Deny them cover. Do not let them hide.

Tell them we will hold each of them accountable.

THE MESSAGE for your Congressman, Key Leaders, Aides, Media

· The "Dark Archive" - where infringers can register their paperwork in secret - will not protect our copyrights.

· An "Open Archive" - with orphaned work exposed to to the public - would be a come-and-get-it bank for plagiarists and infringers.

· Artists cannot monitor tens or hundreds of thousands of images every day to see if somebody somewhere has infringed their work.

· There are more than a trillion images subject to orphaning each day.

· If someone can't find me, that doesn't mean I've orphaned my work.

· An unsuccessful search for a property owner should not be a license to steal.

· Artists should not have to digitize their life's work at their own expense to comply with a law they don't want or need.

· The high cost compliance would make compliance prohibitive.

· The loss of exclusive rights would undermine contractual agreements with clients.

· We cannot sell exclusive rights to clients if others can publish our work without our knowledge or consent.

· The loss of exclusive rights would devalue our entire inventories of work.

· Small business owners should not be forced to subsidize the business models of Big Internet firms.

· No rational business owner should have to give access to their inventory, metadata, client contact information, etc. to outside business interests.

Tell lawmakers to prevent passage of this bill until it can be subjected to an open, informed and transparent public examination.

Tell them this is no way to re-write copyright law.

Tell them it will affect millions of rights holders worldwide.

Tell them you would support a true orphan works bill, but this is not it.

Tell them to to consider the amendments presented by the Illustrators' Partnership, Artists Rights Society and Advertising Photographers of America

Phone, fax, email these Congresspeople immediately

DELAHUNT Phone: (202) 225-3111 Fax (202) 225-5658
Phone: (617) 770-3700 Fax: (617) 770-2984

CONYERS Phone: (202) 225-5126 Fax: (202) 225-0072
Phone: (313) 961-5670 Fax: (313) 226-2085

NADLER Phone: (202) 225-5635 Fax: (202) 225-6923
Phone: (212) 367-7350 Fax: (212) 367-7356

BERMAN Phone: (202) 225-4695 Fax: (202) 225-3196
Phone: (818) 994-7200 Fax: (818) 994-1050

PELOSI AmericanVoices@mail.house.gov
Phone: (202) 225-4965 Fax: (202) 225-8259
Phone: (415) 556-4862 Fax: (415) 861-1670

HOYER steny.hoyer@mail.house.gov
Phone: (202) 225-4131 Fax: (202) 225-4300
Phone: (301) 474-0119 Fax: (301) 474-4697

YOUR REPRESENTATIVE
To find Washington and District Office phone, fax and web forms for your Representative
http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/dbq/officials/
and enter your zip code

YOUR LOCAL MEDIA
To find the contacts for your Local Media go to
http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/dbq/media/
and enter your zip code

- Brad Holland and Cynthia Turner, for the Board of the Illustrators' Partnership

Please post or forward this message immediately to any interested party.

_______________________________________________________________

For news and information:
Illustrators' Partnership Orphan Works Blog: http://ipaorphanworks.blogspot.com/

Over 75 organizations oppose this bill, representing over half a million creators.

U.S. Creators and the image-making public can email Congress through the Capwiz site: http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/home/ 2 minutes is all it takes to tell the U.S. Congress to uphold copyright protection for the world's artists.

INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS please fax these 4 U.S. State Agencies and appeal to your home representatives for intervention. http://www.illustratorspartnership.org/01_topics/article.php?searchterm=00267

CALL CONGRESS: 1-800-828-0498. Tell the U.S. Capitol Switchboard Operator "I would like to leave a message for Congressperson __________ that I oppose the Orphan Works Act." The switchboard operator will patch you through to the lawmaker's office and often take a message which also gets passed on to the lawmaker. Once you're put through tell your Representative the message again.

If you received our mail as a forwarded message, and wish to be added to our mailing list, email us at: illustratorspartnership@cnymail.com Place "Add Name" in the subject line, and provide your name and the email address you want used in the message area. Illustrators, photographers, fine artists, songwriters, musicians, and countless licensing firms all believe this bill will harm their small businesses.

STOP THE U.S. ORPHAN WORKS ACT NOW.

Orphan Works Passed in Senate

2008-09-27T11:29:00.000-07:00

For those interested, I received this e-mail last night:

"FROM THE ILLUSTRATORS' PARTNERSHIP

Orphan Works Opposition: Plan B

SEPT 27 Yesterday, in a cynical move, the sponsors of the Senate Orphan Works Act passed their controversial bill by a controversial practice known as hotlining.

With lawmakers scrambling to raise 700 billion dollars to bail out businesses that are "too big to fail," the Senate passed a bill that would force small copyright holders to subsidize big internet interests such as Google, which has already said it plans to use millions of the images this bill will orphan.

With the meltdown on Wall Street, this is no time for Congress to concentrate our nation's copyright wealth in the hands of a few privately owned corporate databases. The contents of these databases would be more valuable than secure banking information. Yet this bill would compel creators to risk their own intellectual property to supply content to these corporate business models. That means it would be our assets at risk in the event of their failure or mismanagement.

As David Rhodes, President of the School of Visual Arts has said, the Orphan Works bill would socialize the expense of copyright protection while privatizing the profit of creative endeavors. Copyright owners neither want nor need this legislation. It will do great harm to small businesses. We already have a banking crisis. Congress should not lay the groundwork for a copyright crisis.

--Brad Holland and Cynthia Turner, for the Illustrators' Partnership

NOW FOR PLAN B

We MUST try to stop the House Judiciary Committee from folding their bill (HR5889) and adopting the Senate version.

PLEASE EMAIL CONGRESS TODAY.
If you've done it before, do it again!

It takes only a minute to use our new special letter.
Click on the link below, enter your zip code, and take the next steps.
Thanks to all of you who heeded the call to action yesterday.

http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/issues/alert/?alertid=11980321

_______________________________________________________________

For ongoing developments, go to the Illustrators' Partnership Orphan Works blog: http://ipaorphanworks.blogspot.com/

Over 70 organizations oppose this bill, representing over half a million creators. Illustrators, photographers, fine artists, songwriters, musicians, and countless licensing firms all believe this bill will harm their small businesses.

The Capwiz site is open to professional creators and any member of the image-making public. International artists will find a special link, with a sample letter and instructions as to whom to write.

If you received our mail as a forwarded message, and wish to be added to our mailing list, email us at: illustratorspartnership@cnymail.com Place "Add Name" in the subject line, and provide your name and the email address you want used in the message area.

Please post or forward this email to any interested party."

You Know You Live in Texas...

2008-08-22T11:25:00.000-07:00

when you find a lizard in your house. Last week I found a tiny lizard skittering up the wall next to the fireplace. Fortunately we were able to catch him in a paper cup before the cat had any idea of what was going on. I tried to take a picture of him, but it was dark outside and he was rather camera shy. I think he might have been a Mediterranean Gecko. It must be lizard-hatching season or something because another baby lizard had taken up residence in my fern for a while. He was a little less camera-shy:

Well, I’m just beginning work on a new book project, so I probably won’t be posting much by way of art for quite some time. I’ll give out more details about the book when I’m closer to finishing and when the title is finalized and such. In the meantime, here are a couple of illustrations I painted for Spider last year. The (true!) story was about some beavers that found a bag of stolen money and used it to construct their lodge. I was particularly pleased with the way the water turned out on the second piece:

By the way, if you happen to be in a bookstore check out the September issue of Highlights. I painted a rooster to accompany one of the articles!

Also, for those following the Orphan Works Issue - here's the SBA Orphan Works Roundtable Webcast.

2008-07-30T14:40:00.000-07:00

For those of you following or interested in the Orphan Works issue, I've just received this e-mail from the Illustrator's Partnership:

"FROM THE ILLUSTRATORS' PARTNERSHIP

ORPHAN WORKS BILL HOTLINED

THIS MEANS IT COULD PASS THE SENATE THIS AFTERNOON
PLEASE CALL YOUR SENATORS IMMEDIATELY

ASK THEM TO PUT A "HOLD" ON THE BILL:
S2913 THE SHAWN BENTLEY ORPHAN WORKS ACT OF 2008

TELL THEM YOU OPPOSE THIS CONTROVERSIAL BILL
ASK THEM NOT TO PASS IT WITHOUT A FULL AND OPEN HEARING
WARN THEM THAT IT WILL DO GREAT HARM TO SMALL BUSINESSES

To find your Senators' phone numbers go to the Illustrators' Partnership Orphan Works site:

http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/home/

At the top of the home page, click on "Elected Officials"
You'll find a US map:
Click on your state,
Then "Senators,"
Then click on each Senator's name,
Then click "Contact."
This will give you their phone numbers.

Please phone and fax them both."

Squirrels in Summer

2008-07-21T09:51:00.000-07:00

We've had the most blistering heat for weeks and weeks here. So we've been pretty much confined to the indoors as of late which I suppose is just as well. Less time outside means getting a little bit more time for work.This piece was a private commission. The buyer was particularly fond of an older painting of mine, "Cherry-picking Mice," so we created a design very similar to that one. It's intended to be the first of four small seasonal paintings. How appropriate to paint a summer scene in the summer! It seems I'm usually painting Christmas scenes in the spring and summer scenes in the winter, for once I'm painting 'in season.'

Illness, Orphan Works, & Some Flowers

2008-07-02T06:58:00.000-07:00

Where does the time go? I just noticed that my last post was in early April - and now it's July! Where did I disappear to for so long? Well, I fell quite ill in the end of April and did little more than stay home, sleep, and watch tv for several weeks. I've never been so sick in all my life and hope that I'm never so sick again!

So, since then I've spent massive amounts of time researching and implementing a new crazy-strict diet that I'm trying out in the hopes that it will help to keep me healthy. Unfortunately (or fortunately), carrying out the diet requires a good deal of home-cooking, label-reading, and searching for obscure ingredients. This is not so bad to me since I like cooking, but my goodness, it has been a time-sink recently.

Anyway, I do have a new piece of art to post, but I'm holding it for a future post. I'd meant to post months ago about the Orphan Works Act that's currently in Congress, but sleeping on the couch seemed much more important (and unavoidable) at the time. So I know I'm really late on the subject, but in the off-chance that there's anybody left out there who still doesn't know about this - There are currently two bills making their way through government - the Senate version, S. 2913: Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008 and the House version, H.R. 5889: Orphan Works Act of 2008. The bills set out to free up "orphaned works" (those which are no longer covered by copyright or whose copyright owners cannot be found) for use by cultural institutions, museums, libraries, etc. Sounds nice in principle, but the bills have been drafted in such a broad, sweeping manner that living copyright owners' work may be considered "orphaned" simply because an infringer/user could not locate the owner.

Most artists are upset about this legislation for many reasons -
- If someone else is using our work, without our permission/knowledge, than the exclusivity of our right to exploit the work (as set out in current copyright law) is null and void. We would lose a degree of decision making power regarding our own work. For those that don't know - it's very important to maintain exclusivity of the rights to one's works especially when licensing work to companies, as many arrangements are for specific exclusive rights, i.e. exclusive greeting card rights, etc.
- the possibility of needing to register our work with multiple (currently non-existent) databases to avoid unwanted use at unknown expense to the artist and potentially large amounts of time uploading art that would be better spent on making new art.
- the limitation on damages for unauthorized use
- violation of international copyright law
And so on.... Brad Holland of the Illustrators Partnership explains it in this audio interview. He's speaking in 2008, but referring to the 2006 versions of the bills since the 2008 versions were not available at the time. All the same, it is still relevant to the current proposals:

http://www.sellyourtvconceptnow.com/orphan.html

The Illustrators Partnership has tons of articles on the subject. The most current ones are at the bottom of the page. This one is set up as a Q & A.

For an opinion not directly from an artist, here's a letter to the House of Representatives from a lawyer who works with creative industries.

So, what to do - if you want to oppose these amendments, there are several pre-written, editable e-mail letters here. All you have to do is choose a letter, fill in your name and address and you're done.

For people outside the U.S. wishing to oppose the amendments, there's a letter here. Scroll to the bottom to find addresses where to send them. International voices are very important in opposing these bills as they will affect artists and creators globally.

And lastly, there's a petition, albeit not the most well-written one, here.

The broad manner in which these bills were written seem, to me at least, to be the product of a society and/or people that regard art & its inherent bundle of exclusive rights as something other than personal private property (which is exactly what it is - the "P" in "IP") and what artists do as something less than work. I'm all for cultural institutions getting access to truly orphaned works - just not at the expense of the living artists who create the content that will fill their halls in the future.

So, that's the last of my activism for today. Now, to happy-it-up around here with some pictures of wildflowers taken back in April pre-illness. These pictures were taken off the side of the highway on my husband's drive to work:

Road Trip!

2008-04-08T14:37:00.000-07:00

Wildflower season isn't over yet, so I thought I'd try once more to find the sweeping fields of flowers that I'm so longing to see. I'd read that Marble Falls is a wildflower-heavy location, so we took the hour-long drive northeast out of Austin to see what we could find.

I can honestly say we did not find a shocking amount of wildflowers on the drive over, nor did I notice any wildflowers to speak of in Marble Falls - most likely because I don't really know where to look. It seemed that the best patches of flowers were along the highways right in and around Austin. But all was not lost - I planned ahead such that in the event we did not discover the desired wildflower treasure at the end of the journey, we would still have something else to explore. We drove just a little beyond Marble Falls and visited Longhorn Caverns. The picture is the entrance to the cave - all the pictures shot inside the cave were too dark to bother posting. It was a pleasant 70 degrees inside the cave - very nice respite from the warmer weather we've been having. Pretty neat place - during the prohibition years, the cave had served as a speakeasy complete with a dance-floor in a sizeable 'ballroom.'

After touring the cave, we took a hike along a short nature trail at the end of which were some old buildings. They were very sturdy buildings and looked surprisingly new for the age. One had a spiral staircase which you could climb to the top of a tower and lookout over the land.

Though I was a bit disappointed not to have found my long sought-after fields of wildflowers, I was glad we'd been able to explore yet another interesting part of Texas. But we weren't finished quite yet - just as we entered Austin, Chris noticed a side-road just off the highway that was lined with dense patches of bluebonnets. We quickly turned around and went back so I could take some pictures. It was just what I'd been looking for - lovely patches of blue dotted with the red of Indian paintbrush. A perfect end to a pleasant road trip.

Wildflower Season

2008-03-27T11:37:00.000-07:00

Here's a couple pictures we took at the Lady Bird Joh nson W ildflower Center:

I was hoping for sweeping fields of bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush - I didn't quiet get that since this year's only an 'average' wildflower years as opposed to a 'spectacular' year, but even so, it was a nice place to visit. It's quite an attractive facility and even features a rain collection system that stores something like 10,000 gallons - very eco-friendly. So, I am still on the hunt for sweeping fields of bluebonnets. I hear the best spots are often to be found alongside highways.

After I caught up listening to the entire archive of "This American Life" over the last year or so, I started listening to the archives of "Speaking of Faith" which I'd occasionally hear on public radio in LA. They don't seem to play it here in Austin... But I just listened to this one a couple days ago and it is just so good I thought I'd share. If you're looking for something moving, here ya go:

http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/wisdomoftenderness/index.shtml

The Harpist

2008-03-21T16:08:00.000-07:00

Seems I'm not yet finished with my long hair kick or maybe, rather, it isn't finished with me. This sketch is somewhat vaguely inspired by some Japanese fairy-tales I was reading not long ago:I think this is going to be an experiment in style and technique. I'm thinking I'd like to ink the line work, paint it in watered-down acrylic for more of a watercolor look and then slap in some brighter, more opaque color in the sky and flowers. Might be tricky... It's hovering between two styles in my mind's eye and I'm not entirely sure how to approach it yet. We shall see how it turns out...

We intended to hike a 2.5 mile trail last weekend, but it somehow, magically turned into nine miles! We started out at Barton Creek - South Gus Fruh Park and ended up somewhere far, far away. The trails followed along both sides of a broad, dry creek-bed (looked wide enough to be a river to me!) We were pretty tired when we hit the half-way point and completely worn out by the end of the hike.

Wildflower season is nearly upon us and I am so looking forward to it! I hear the bluebonnets are quite a sight to behold. Now I just have to find all the bluebonnet fields!

The Crane's Captive Revisited

2008-03-13T14:31:00.000-07:00

My, oh my - seems I've been a bit neglectful updating here. Has it been a month already? Well, I haven't loads of news or anything, just the usual weekend hiking and, oh yes, a finished painting. It's been more or less finished for some time, but I've been picking at the details on and off for a while and therefore stalled in posting it online:The major problem I see with this one is in the closeness of value between the girl's face and the background. They just kind of blend together when the image is small, but it's actually looking a bit better since I added a touch for color to her pale face. This was a nice, relatively quick piece for me since I managed to leave the backgrounds very washy and really only build up the paint on the characters. The scan here is looking a bit warmer than the original for some reason. The original's just a bit cooler in the grays.

I am still debating whether this piece can be a print or not since it's a rather unusual size. Maybe a magnet or sticker... Well, either way, that will have to wait until our new computer is 100% up and running! Yes, we have a new computer! We decided it was time to replace our ancient seven-year old machine after many blue-screens-of-death, full scratch disks, and myriad other bizarre behavior. "Hobbes," the computer, still clunking along even today, was a loyal machine for a long time and will enjoy a quiet retirement in our closet.

Chris has been itching for a trail with ruins and 'urban decay' these days, so last weekend we trekked over t0 Balcones Park which is a green space that runs behind and between apartment and office buildings. Hopefully his urban decay cravings were satiated with the several bridges, tunnels, and battered concrete paths we came across in the park:

There was a nicely designed path starting at one of the office buildings and trailing off into the forest to join up with the rougher paths. Seems like it'd be such a lovely way to go to work - trekking through the forest!

Well, I think I'd best be off. The plants need watering, the laundry needs put away, and my husband will soon need picked up from work!

The Crane's Captive

2008-02-12T09:11:00.000-08:00

I have a new sketch that I'm about to start painting:

I had a dream wherein I saw dozens of pink flowers drifting lazily along a stream and then an overhead view of a boat. So, that's where the idea for this started. For a while I had only the girl in the boat, but it seemed like something was missing. I thought about adding a raven to the prow of the boat, but that still didn't seem quite right. I've been reading a book of Japanese fairy tales and one of them made mention of a crane and I thought, that's it! A crane is exactly what this picture needs! I did consider other tall water birds like herons and storks also and for a while it was kind of a toss-up between a crane and a heron, but the crane won out in the end since they are a bit more delicate and seemed more fitting for the illustration. Looking at all those pictures of herons makes me want to paint one though. They look a bit mean and rather unkempt - definitely a bird not to be messed with...

The weather's been so nice lately, so of course, we took advantage of it this past weekend and got in our weekly-when-possible hike over at St. Edwards Hill. This was one of those parks where there are dozens of little trails not shown on the map and therefore very easy to get lost. We managed not to get lost, but sometimes it felt like we weren't so sure where we were going. The most interesting feature of the park was a low dam where the water cascades over in a couple spots. It's such an odd sensation to stand on top of the dam and look out over the creek - almost like walking on water!

Amongst the Mangroves

2008-02-04T12:01:00.000-08:00

At long last I have a new finished piece of art to post:

I suppose I'm reasonably satisfied with this piece. It seemed like it went a little smoother than usual and I managed to keep the paint fairly thin on the background which helps to cut down on time spent on the piece. What bothers me a bit is this isolated pool of red-orange that is the squirrel/boat. The warm yellow of the dragonflies was intended to balance out the orange of the squirrel, but I think they are too small to be as effective as I'd like. I did push some orange-ish color around in the background, but maybe not enough... All the same I think it came out okay.
Prints are in my Shop.

Not only have I finally gotten back to painting, but we've also gotten back to our frequent weekend hiking. We had a good long walk at nearby Bull Creek this past weekend. This trail was about three miles one way meandering back and forth across the wide creek. Where in LA we could clearly see the extremely parched condition of the land in the form of dry creek-beds and trickling waterfalls, here we could see the opposite - an abundance of water. We've heard the reason for this is that the soil's quite thin and underneath lies a layer of rock, so the water can't really soak into the ground and therefore channels into the many waterways that wind around the hills here. You can see how rocky the land is around the water in these pictures:

The trail came to an end in a small dog park. I have never seen so many happy dogs together in one place at the same time. It was fun to watch them splashing around in the water so exuberantly. I think they had the right idea too - it was surprisingly warm that day and the water looked so inviting!

Post-Holiday Post

2008-01-22T07:46:00.000-08:00

I hope the New Year's finding everyone well and that you all had a relaxing holiday season. I'm just beginning to settle back down into something of an art-routine after a pretty busy holiday season. We spent the week of Christmas in Winslow, AZ with husband's family. Since changing our plane tickets was ridiculously expensive, we ended up making the fifteen hour drive (straight through on the way there!) . As much as I'm not one for long car-trips, I do enjoy the change of scenery and seeing parts of the country that I'd otherwise never see. There's something strangely reassuring about seeing vast undeveloped tracts of land - it's nice to know that not everywhere has been paved over and built into mini-malls! Our visits to Arizona are always so relaxing. I usually manage to get in some solid chunks of reading - this year it was Urchin of the Riding Stars - Book #1 of The Mistmantle Chronicles. I'd picked it up mostly for Omar Rayyan's illustrations, but I enjoyed the story too.

Toward the end of the week we drove over to Jerome, AZ which has got to be one of my favorite places to visit. It's a tiny town situated along a switchbacking road on the side of a low mountain overlooking a wide, open valley. The town consists of this odd mix of boutique shopping and crumbling, decrepit buildings. I guess back in the day it was a booming copper-mining town. I think the mine is still there, but no longer active. Now it's a tourist attraction. The first time we visited several years ago, we spent the day just roaming around taking pictures. This time, I decided to check out the shops while Chris hijacked the camera and shot reference photos for his work. If you ever make it over to northern Arizona, check it out. It's such a truly unique place.

Shortly after we came back to Austin, my parents came to town to visit. It gave us a good opportunity to check out some of the local attractions since we still haven't done much around here since arriving from LA. Unfortunately, everyone was sick at one point or another during their visit, so we had to keep our activities low-key. We did manage to visit a couple museums and walk along the river. All in all, it was a very relaxing holiday season.

I have a traditional painting in progress right now and otherwise not much to show, but I'll post this little digital piece that I whipped up the other day:

This isn't too far off from what my usual color studies look like, although my color studies are even sloppier than this piece. I saw some trees on my drive to church the other day and noticed how extremely dark the shadow was under the trees and how bright the grass was comparatively. So, this little painting was my attempt to capture that image before I forgot all about it. Can't say I'm too thrilled with it - the color throughout is just not very unified, but it was a quicky - another minor effort to get a little more comfortable with digital media.

Oh! And I finally picked up the last Harry Potter - I know, everybody's already read it but me. I've just barely started, but just like the ad campaign, I can't help but wonder - friend or foe? Friend or Foe?!

All Settled... Finally!

2007-12-13T14:47:00.000-08:00

It's been such a long time since I've updated that I'm just not sure where to start... So, we're finally all settled here in Austin after our big move from LA. It's hard to believe we've been here for about a month and a half. The time just flew by and now it's nearly Christmas! I had forgotten how all-consuming long distance moves can be. During the move there are these long stretches where we're just waiting around, but at the same time there are so many little loose ends to take care of. It seems like I've done everything but art lately, although I did manage to scribble down a first draft of a very simple early reader that's been swimming around in my head for a while.

We spent our first two weeks here in an Extended Stay on the east side of the city which was . . . okay. We managed to find an apartment within our first four days here which I thought was very efficient of us! So I was able to call in for delivery of our possessions pretty quickly. Unfortunately, the mover scheduled the delivery for the Tuesday before Thanksgiving which was the same day we were supposed to fly out to visit my parents. Try as I might to reschedule, I couldn't reach the moving coordinator, who, as it turns out was sick with the flu for an entire week, so we had to cancel our trip lest our things be left on the curb or shipped around the country for a while before they made their way back to us again. Needless to say, none of us were to happy about any of this.

One of my big concerns regarding the move was not knowing how the cat would handle it. I've never traveled with a cat before so it was uncharted territory for all of us. He actually did surprisingly well on the flight over and in the hotel. There was a bit of growling and slinking around, but he took it all really well. Where I made my mistake was when I took him with me to the empty apartment one day to do some cleaning. He was fine all day - really interested in checking the place out and then in the very late afternoon something in his little brain snapped and he started dashing around madly and frantically washing, twitching his fur and shaking his head as though there was something on him that he was trying to shake off. It was very disturbing to watch him in this state. We took him to the vet to see if what was bothering him was something environmental. The vet seemed rather baffled by our description of his behavior and suggested we just keep an eye on him for a while. He did gradually get over the problem, so we can assume it some kind of bizarre stress response. Thankfully, he's all back to normal now.

So far, I'm really liking Austin. It's very pretty - very green - not at all the stereotype of the dry, dusty Texas I'd always imagined. And I am so happy to have forest the reaches right up to our back balcony. It's quite an improvement over our last view of the building next door - the typical LA 'view.' We have a nice big picture window in the master bedroom which makes for really great bird-watching. The cat and I are both loving it. There seem to be a couple pairs of cardinals that frequent the juniper nearby. They are just so pretty to watch flitting around, nipping berries off the branches. Must paint a cardinal... The wildlife is just great around here and we haven't even started hiking the local wilderness yet either. The forests must be teeming with deer since we see them all the time. They are pretty brave. They come right up onto the lawns and you can get pretty close to them without spooking them at all. I know a lot of people have deer in their backyard, but I never did so it is pretty novel to me. Oh - and I saw a little owl the other day! It was just so cute! Must paint an owl...

And here I was worried that I wouldn't have any pictures to post since we all know pictures are the best part, right? I went outside, thinking maybe I'll see something interesting to shoot. Shot a couple pictures of berries for future reference and on my way back to my apartment I spot three deer grazing on the lawn just like I was saying:
Well, most important of all, my husband is very happy with his new job which is a very good thing since we did move all the way here for it after all. He's working on a next-gen game called Darksiders. It's set in a fantastical post-apocalyptic future with angels, demons, etc. and you play as one of the four horsemen. It's still in it's early stages, but what they have so far looks really great. There are some trailers here (yes, you have to sit through a commercial if you want to watch them) :
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/21723.html
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/21562.html
This one's an interview/trailer:
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/22357.html

Well, I think I've yammered on long enough today. It's almost time for dinner anyway. Since I probably won't update again until after the holidays (we'll be in Arizona!), I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! See ya in 2008...

Moving!

2007-10-10T14:01:00.000-07:00

So it's official - we're moving to Texas. My husband accepted a job in Austin and just put in his two weeks this past Monday. It's such a strange feeling. We had a few weeks of anticipation and mild uncertainty and now, suddenly we're in the thick of preparations. We're out of LA in exactly two weeks, so it's going to be quite a whirlwind. I'm really excited to be moving - trying out a new city in a different part of the country, but the moving itself can be such a dreaded experience. We had a pretty horrid experience six years ago when we relocated from NY to LA and I'm not at all eager to repeat it. Fortunately, I have a bit more time to do better research on moving companies and the like this time around, so hopefully it will be a somewhat better situation. We shall see...

I've never been to Austin myself, but every one we've spoken to seems to really like it, so I have high hopes that we will too. The cost of living is very attractive and I hear it's quite green and boasts spectacular thunderstorms. I so miss thunderstorms...

Here's a sketch a did last week:
I've had a thumbnail of this idea waiting around in my sketchbook for years, so I'm glad to finally have a chance to tackle it. I'm not sure where the idea for it came from - instruments as boats just seems like a neat idea to me. I've got a color study finished for it, but I have a feeling I'm not going to get to touch it again for a while, since my current job is now 'moving coordinator.'

So as we're preparing to move, going through our possessions and trying to figure out what we can do without, we managed to gather up a few stacks of books that we were willing to part with - a lot of them duplicates that we both had before we got married. I remembered a small used bookstore right around the corner from us, that I'd walked past many times, but never really ventured into before. So I headed over there, arms full of books. It's one of these places I wish I'd discovered sooner - a really nice store with good selection and the owner's just nice as can be. They even had a copy of Castles by Alan Lee - quite a find! I love the big bookstores, Borders, B&N as much as anybody, but there's something to be said for the charm of the smaller independent bookstore. So, if you happen to be passing through Canoga Park, stop in and see what you can find - address is on their website: www.nextchapterbooks.com.

Also, I mentioned sculptor Vicki Banks' beautiful animal sculptures in a previous post - seems she does indeed have a website: http://www.vulturesculpture.com/

It's time for me to dive back into the madness of moving - many phone calls to make. Anybody know a good pet-friendly hotel in Austin by chance?

Deer Season?

2007-09-30T20:29:00.000-07:00

I know some time ago I mentioned that I could probably do a blog just about hiking and I guess I really wasn't kidding. So, because a good half of my blog focuses on hiking, I thought I'd add the word "hiking" to the subtitle. Anyway, my husband had the last week off work and I got absolutely no work done, but, naturally, we did do quite a bit of hiking . On Monday, we went to Topanga State Park and hiked the Santa Ynez Canyon Trail. The trail starts out high up in the hills and gradually winds down into a heavily wooded canyon. Taking a left at a fork in the trail, the path leads to a waterfall. We strayed off the beaten path a bit and followed the stream, boulder-hopping to reach the waterfall. At one point in the creek, the boulders are just high enough that we needed to use some knotted ropes that had been left there to help pull ourselves up to higher ground. The waterfall was no more than a trickle just like every waterfall we've encountered this summer, but unlike the many creek-beds we've seen, this one did run with water.
Taking the same trail, we made our way back to the car. As we came over the crest of the last hill, the land opened out into dry, grassy meadows. We spotted a lone deer grazing not too far away. I tried to get as close to it as I could without alarming it, shooting pictures along the way. When that deer disappeared from view, we continued on our way, but stopped again shortly when we heard something sizeable crashing through the brush. Another deer came into view! And another and another - a herd of eight deer in all wandered out from the cover of forest into the open meadow. We shot many photos, but the deer were so well camouflaged that they are difficult to see in the photos. When they finally slipped out of view, we made our way through a live oak grove back to the car. We'd been so tired from the long hike, but after we paused and watched the deer for a while we felt energized all over again. It's so exhilarating to see wildlife in their natural habitat.

Malibu Creek
On Friday we went hiking again, this time we started out at the parking lot for Piuma Ridge. There seemed to be endless little side-trails that led to who-knows-where. We made our way north, entered into a smallish live oak grove, and got a glimpse of a water reclamation facility. After nosing around for a bit, we decided to try to find our way through Tapia Park and into Malibu Creek State Park, intending our final destination to be the Mott Adobe Ruins. We took a trail that seemed logical, but turned into a dead-end at a locked gate. So we had to double back, find a trail not marked on the map and carefully pick our way across a narrow strip of the creek. We had made it into Tapia and ended up hiking right next to a long road/parking lot which then ended abruptly at a camp. According to the map we had, the camp appeared to have been plunked down right in the middle of the road we wanted to take and of course it was gated, so the desirable road was completely off-limits. We were so lost we even asked for help. Unfortunately the person we asked wasn't all that familiar with the trails, so we took a guess at which trail to take. And we guessed right! We took a segment of the Backbone Trail that traversed up the side and over a mountain right into Malibu Creek State Park. Not too far into the park, we spotted six deer grazing on a patch of green grass. We were as close as we'd ever been to the creatures and shot a lot of photos. The buck seemed to become a bit unnerved by us and bounded gracefully away across the road. It was as if he was telling his herd that he wasn't terrified, but thought it best to move on. The rest of them seemed unperturbed, but gradually followed him. We did finally come across the Mott Ruins. There wasn't much left of them, save the chimney. It seemed a bit of a disappointment after spending much of the day being lost in trying to find it. On the way back we crossed a broad meadow were a whopping fifteen deer were grazing. This sight alone made the trek well worth while!

Temescal Canyon
So then yesterday we went back to Topanga State Park and hiked Temescal Canyon Trail which is on the southern side of the park in Malibu. It was a really beautiful location, but it was just full of people - probably the most we've ever encountered during a hike. With all the people there was no chance of encountering wildlife. The trail leads out to a meager California waterfall and then loops back to the parking lot switch-backing along a mountainside. At the top of the mountain, there's a path that traverses the ridge and ends at Skull Rock. Usually look-out points in these various parks offer sweeping views of the ocean or more mountains, but this trail featured views of the city. Very pretty, but a bit too busy.

On a more artistic note, last night we watched the anime movie Tekkonkinkrete. Even if you're not really into anime it's definitely worth a watch for the backgrounds alone. They are just stunning. I would never in a million years have the patience to paint such amazingly detailed backgrounds. Wish we'd caught it on the big screen...

The Woodland Post

2007-09-23T22:47:00.000-07:00

A mysterious thing happened the other day - drops of water starting falling from the sky, soaking into the ground and forming puddles on the streets. I thought - I remember something like this from long, long ago. I think it's called "rain." And rain it did - for the first time in I can't remember how long. I had to walk to pick up my take-out dinner from a nearby restaurant and in order to get there had to cross a section of the LA River. Usually the water meanders slowly, finding its course around patches of mud and plant life, but Friday evening the water was rushing like I'd never seen. It was a strange sensation standing on the bridge, watching the water rushing out from under. And later that evening I even heard some thunder, which clapped loudly enough to set off several car alarms. I think I've only heard thunder maybe three times in these six years that we've lived in LA. Being a California native himself and very much unaccustomed to any weather other than sunny, the cat did not like any of this at all...

So after setting it aside in great frustration sometime ago, I picked up "The Woodland Post" again and finished it off:
This one was a bitter battle to the end - a good deal of repainting elements that just weren't working. I think part of the problem I had initially was that I fell in love with the color of the sloppy digital color-study I painted for it, knowing full well that I can't possibly reproduce the exact color from the study in a traditional medium. I'm pretty content with the color overall, but there are all kinds of other problems with it. For example, the rather ambiguous lighting and I've never been happy with the leaves on the trees. Regardless, it's a personal piece that I'm ready to be done with - I need to move on to something else! Well, for those that are interested, there are prints at my Shop.

Update 5/13/11: This painting is now available for purchase here in my Etsy shop.

Point Mugu

2007-09-17T14:54:00.000-07:00

I know I just wrote in my last post that we weren't going to go to Point Mugu until October so we could catch the sycamores in their full glory, but we've sort of run out of coastal parks to visit, so this past weekend we caved in hiked part of Point Mugu. It's gradually getting cooler, but it's still just warm enough to prevent us from doing some of the more inland hiking. Fortunately, Point Mugu is a huge park, so we'll likely come back to hike more of the trails and maybe we'll get another glimpse of the sycamores.

So we started up Big Sycamore Canyon Trail, thinking we'd try to keep to the shade that canyon trails usually offer and then we took a right a a fork in the path onto the Serrano Canyon Trail. It was a good choice as the trail was heavily wooded for a long way and offered much shade. Eventually, the trail winds up out of the canyon and opens onto a vast, grassy meadow surrounded by mountains on all sides.

I generally think that I prefer hiking through woods, but I always find myself so contented trekking through open grassland listening to the wind rustle through the dry grass - it's one of my favorite sounds.

The trail began to climb up out of the valley, back into the mountains. We took a left at another fork in the road, thinking this narrow path would take us back to the main fire road. As it turned out, we were very much off-the-beaten-path on what resembled a deer path cut through dense short, woody trees. My bare arms took quite a lashing from those dry branches. A machete would have been very handy at this point! We continued on the trail despite misgivings just to see where it would take us and ended up on a promontory with a great view, but no way down to the fire road. So we had to make our way back through the brush to the more well-worn trail. After quite a bit more trekking we made it back to the fire road. We still had another two or three miles to go to get back to the parking lot and we were pretty tired already. But, at least the fire road was pretty flat - no major hills to climb. I think this was our longest hike yet. I'm estimating it at seven or eight miles. We were really feeling it by the end! I really liked this park - maybe we'll come back and hike a little more of it next weekend!

Corral Canyon

2007-09-11T14:09:00.000-07:00

I got a new camera - yay! It's my early Christmas present - I just couldn't wait that long to have a working camera, so we broke down and bought a new Canon PowerShot A570IS. And I was able to try it out a bit this weekend. We went to Corral Canyon in Malibu. For us, the hike was kind of 'been there, done that' - almost indistinguishable from some of the other coastal trails we've hiked before. It was a 2.5 mile loop with great ocean views for a good half or more of the hike. The coolest part of the trail, to me, was toward the finish, down in the canyon where there's a chimney standing alone, jutting out of the ground. I love stumbling across remnants of civilization past both ancient and modern.

I'm looking forward to a cooler fall and winter so we can tackle some of the non-coastal parks. I've been saving Point Mugu (which is partially coastal) until the fall since I hear it has beautiful sycamores come October. Autumn's my favorite season and I plan on making an effort to seek out the little pockets of Fall where they can be found in this arid climate that is LA.

Spot Illustration

2007-09-07T12:38:00.000-07:00

I just finished up a spot illustration for the newsletter Daughters: for Parents of Girls. I can't show the finished piece, so I'll post the unused sketches:

The accompanying article is about celebrating girls' coming of age. I think this might be the first piece I've ever painted for an adult publication. It was very interesting to do a piece that was a bit more conceptual as opposed to narrative. I drew on the mother-daughter aspects of the article and symbolic imagery to come up with the designs. The finished art is scheduled to appear in the Nov-Dec. issue, so watch for it if you receive the newsletter!

The Blackberry Princess

2007-08-29T17:35:00.000-07:00

I guess I'm fairly content with this piece, although my humans always seem to look a bit off. It's a bit on the monochromatic side which is somewhat unusual for me. I was going for a kind of barren yet wild feeling with this piece. If she's the princess of blackberries her dress would be stained and torn after all that running around through the brambles, right? I think I probably should have made the figure a bit more angular in her features to emphasize her other-worldliness. She's a bit too soft and round, but then again she is a "princess."

5x5" and 8x8" prints are available through my DeviantArt account here.
Greeting cards, note cards, and decorative boxes are available at my Cafepress shop.

The Injured Sparrow

2007-08-20T16:15:00.000-07:00

So after reading through several other artists' tutorials, I've been wanting to try out some techniques in Photoshop. Here's the final result:

I really didn't know where to go with the color on this one. I just couldn't visualize it very well. The only thing I was sure of was that her hair needed to be blond. Then I started thinking about John Bauer's work and figured a dark, earthy background with a pale, glowy figure might work out all right.

I'm not so sure about this piece... it's not quite there. Maybe it's just the bright, isolated figure and/or the fact that there's not much color pushed around throughout the background that's bothering me... I was kind of going for a faux watercolor look, but I don't think it really worked out that way at all - it looks pretty digital to me. Either way it was primarily a learning experience for me, considering how seldom I produce art digitally.

Every element (hair, trees, etc.) except her skin has a different texture overlay with painting done underneath. Some of the textures came from Mayang's Free Textures and some came from other free online libraries.

I've got my other painting, The Blackberry Princess, in progress and that's probably what I ought to go and do now, but all I want to do is sit down and finish reading The Golden Compass. I'd been told it's a really great read and when we were at the Comic-Con, I noticed a lot of promotion for the upcoming movie and thought I really should read the book before the movie comes out. So with gift-card in hand, I picked up the book at Borders last week. I just started reading it on Saturday and I've barely been able to put it down since. It seems like it's been a while since I've really gotten hooked on any books (haven't read the new Harry Potter yet) and this one's got me thinking about my next fix already. I still have credit on my gift-card... looks like I'll be walking down to Borders sometime later this week to pick up The Subtle Knife....

On the Theme of Tangled Hair...

2007-08-13T12:27:00.000-07:00

So, we got some hiking in this weekend and since the camera seems to only work for my husband nowadays, I had him shoot all the pictures this time. And it worked - well, sort of. A good number of the pictures turned out, but several just turned out black. Fortunately, I don't feel like we're missing too much though. We went to Zuma Canyon this weekend and I'd say it was one of the more ordinary hikes - nothing really unusual about this place. I suppose the defining feature was a broad, dry creek-bed that criss-crossed with the path several times.

We really wore ourselves out on the "Ocean View Trail," not realizing that it would be straight uphill for a long time with no shade. It was pleasant as always, but I think we probably won't go back to this one to finish up the other trails. I'd really like to go back to Malibu Creek and finish the rest of the trails there, but it's just been too hot to do more inland hiking recently.

On the art side of things, I have a couple of pieces in progress right now:
This one is The Blackberry Princess. Some time ago, Chris read a fairy-tale to me titled "The Blackberry Princess," and although I can't recall at all what took place in the story, the title stuck with me and I've wanted to illustrate it ever since. I've only just recently came up with the visual to go with the title.

And this one just popped into my head while I was working on The Blackberry Princess. I have no idea what's going on in this one. I guess I just really wanted to draw more tangled hair. I've tentatively titled it The Injured Sparrow, but who knows if that sparrow is really injured or if he's just a diversion so his buddies can make off with strands of her hair for their nests. Or maybe they're the ones who tangled it up in the first place. Either way, she'd better not pull...

Playing with Photoshop

2007-08-06T13:30:00.000-07:00

I've been pretty frustrated working on my "Woodland Post" painting, so I decided to set it aside and work on some other things for a while - preferably less time consuming things. So I pulled up a photo we shot at Descanso Gardens here in LA and did a quick, sloppy painting in Photoshop:

While I use reference in my work where needed, I normally don't like to work so directly from photos. But, since I'm just trying to get more comfortable with digital media, I thought it might be a little less involved to just work straight from a photo. Anyway, the texture on the path is from a photo my husband shot somewhere else. I'm thinking I probably should have added textures to some of the greenery as well for the sake of consistency...

I enjoyed painting this in Photoshop because it was so much faster than traditional painting, but I think it will be a while before I'm really comfortable with pen and tablet. I just feel a little less in control with digital as opposed to traditional - except for that lovely undo button! Gotta love the undo button.

I know I really should start developing a digital portfolio since a lot of publishers seem to favor digital art these days, but so many of my ideas just look like traditional paintings to me. Not to mention, it's also kind of nice to have an original painting after all that work!

I've got a couple sketches for fantasy paintings in the works too, so hopefully I'll be posting those next week.

San Diego Comic-Con 2007

2007-07-30T09:29:00.000-07:00

We're back from the Comic-Con and just as I thought, my camera is definitely broken. I just off-loaded the few salvageable shots. Strangely, the only pictures that turned out were shots my husband took from the ninth floor balcony of our hotel. I shot only a few at the convention so, I didn't actually lose very much. I had a feeling this would happen, so I didn't bother to take may since I was pretty sure they wouldn't turn out anyway. So, sadly, no pictures of men in colorful spandex to post. Based on our very critical assessment of cosplayers, what's hot this year seems to be Naruto, Bleach, pirates, and Star Wars, (well, Star Wars is always hot with this crowd). There will probably be some photos at the official website though, www.comic-con.org and elsewhere online.

The convention was fun as usual. After attending four prior years, we've gotten pretty efficient when it comes to scouring the exhibit hall. We kind of know what we're looking for and more or less where to find what we want. I bought a couple Charles Vess illustrated books which are very cool, but I have to say my purchasing highlight this year was three French import books that we found at Stuart Ng's booth: A La Recherche de Feerie, Tomes 1 & 2 by Jean-Baptiste Monge and Erle Ferronniere and Carnet de Croquis (more of a sketchbook) by Jean-Baptiste Monge.

They are absolutely beautiful books. The two Feerie books are essentially the French answer to Faeries by Brian Froud & Alan Lee - very similar. Import books = $$! I think they may be the most expensive books I've ever bought for myself. I wouldn't normally do something like this, but I thought it's possible that I'd never find these books again and if/when I do they could be even more expensive. So, I broke down and bought them and I'm so happy I did! They're arguably one of my best Comic-con finds so far - like uncovering buried treasure! After this purchase though, I forbade myself to buy anything else. I saw a very tempting copy of Golem by Trina Schart Hyman and an old unicorn picture book by Michael Hague, but I resisted.

The art and used booksellers are definitely my favorite stops in the exhibit hall. I usually send Chris off on his own while I'm browsing because I meticulously comb through the shelves and this can take some time. My favorites sellers - Stuart Ng, Anne Hutchison who appears to sell through www.abebooks.com, Bud Plant Comic Art (a lot more than just comics), and Margaret Mannatt Fine Books to whose website I can't seem to find any working links. I always strike gold at one or more of these booths every year.

Comic-con has grown so much and so quickly over the last couple years that it seems like the massive convention center in downtown San Diego can barely manage it any more - although I can't imagine a facility any larger than this convention center. I heard last year there were 100,000 attendees. So I would guess that this year was similar especially since tickets were sold out so quickly. With such huge attendance come problems - namely, lines. Last year was the first year we ever had to wait in a line to see a panel, but we did manage to get in. This year was all about waiting in lines for panels we never got to see (and we were in line an hour before the panels were set to start!). I had really wanted to see the panels for Heroes, Joss Whedon, and Supernatural, but we couldn't get in - very disappointing. We did get to go to some panels featuring various comic artists and those are always interesting, so that was good. I'm hoping the good people who put together the Comic-con can come up with some sort of solution to all of the line issues - perhaps a ticket system... I'm not the sort to wait in a long line just to buy or watch something. It just seems a shame to sit around for an hour or two for nothing when there are so many other things to do. Frustrating...

Frustration aside, we did learn our lesson from past experience and now we make dinner reservations in advance and we've had some truly memorable meals in San Diego. They have really great restaurants in the Gas Lamp Quarter right near the convention center. This year the highlight was Confidential which had kind of a Vegas atmosphere - way over-the-top dramatic setting. Sometimes the atmosphere of these kinds of places overpowers the food or serves to disguise that it's not really that great, but the food was really good. Small plates. Very eclectic. Just a really good experience all around. Last year, it was Chopahn which serves Afghani cuisine which, of course, I'd never had before. It was quiet, kind of off-the-beaten-path with really good food too.

I should get paid for all the advertising I just did! Or at least a store discount or something, don't you think?!

So now, we're back in the real world and back to work. I love taking this little mini-vacation. Seeing all of these working artists really helps to energize and motivate me. They make me want to work faster and be more productive. Hope to have some art to post later this week...

Autumn Chickadee ACEO

2007-07-21T13:07:00.000-07:00

Chris has to work this weekend and last weekend he was sick, so we haven't been able to get outside and do any hiking or much else for a while. I did manage to finish up my commercial work this week, so yesterday, I sat down and painted up my little chickadee ACEO. I know I haven't posted any art in a while so here you go - it's not much, but better than nothing - I hope!

I'm not sure how I feel about this one. Looking at it now, I think I should have made the leaves larger. I could not decide for quite a while what to make the color scheme. I knew I wanted an autumn theme, but I couldn't picture the background colors very well. I finally remembered a beautiful orange-green color scheme from an illustration in Helen Cooper's Pumpkin Soup and drew my inspiration from there. I'll probably put it up for sale/auction eventually, but not for a while. If/when I do, I'll probably re-post it here.

Next weekend = San Diego Comic-Con! I'm so looking forward to it! I think this will be our fifth consecutive year attending it. Oddly enough, in the past, it's never occurred to me to take the camera with us. So I'm going to try to remember it this year and actually use it while we're there. Although, I'm a little worried because I was just off-loading pictures a few minutes ago and it looks like the camera may be broken. Several pictures showed up black and the LCD display shows nothing but static. How can I get it to work by next weekend? I guess I'll have to have Chris take a look at it...

Solstice Canyon

2007-07-09T12:36:00.000-07:00

Well, a belated Happy 4th of July to all those celebrating. Hope everyone had a relaxing day off. We lazed about the house, watched neighborhood fireworks from our balcony, and finished the evening off watching "Miss Potter" which I very much enjoyed. As a children's illustrator, I'm somewhat mortified to admit that I think I've only read one or two of Beatrix Potter's books, although I adore the illustrations. We have a book that's a collection of a few stories, but I think I'd like to get the entire collection in the small format in which they were originally printed. I think I'll add it to my Amazon wishlist...

Still no new art to show - hope to be back with some soon. So I'll post some pictures of this past weekend's hike. The beginning of the trail in Solstice Canyon (Malibu) was paved and followed a spring-fed stream. The scenery was nice, but kind of ho-hum - nothing we hadn't seen before. After a while we came upon the ruins of the Roberts' house and things started getting interesting. The house was just about completely gone, but patios and portions of walls and a ridiculous number of fireplaces dotted the landscape:

Just beyond the ruins, and upstream, the creek consists of a series of multi-level rock-pools and small waterfalls decorated with maidenhair fern. We decided to boulder-hop our way upstream to see what we could see.

After a long walk along the creek took a couple different side trails both of which traveled up out of the canyon and along the mountainsides into dryer terrain and sweeping views of the land and ocean.

We traveled back down into the canyon, boulder-hopped a portion of the stream that we hadn't seen yet and then, exhausted, took the next opportunity we had to get back onto a level trail to head back to the car. I'd love to go back after some rainfall - some people we ran into said the water level of the stream used to be significantly higher in the past and that there used to be really great swimming holes all along the creek. There's also supposed to be a 150' waterfall at the end of a different trail - maybe we'll come back some day for that one!

Castro Crest

2007-07-02T13:58:00.000-07:00

I'm busy working on illustrations for a magazine assignment right now, so I don't have any art to post this week, but as usual, we did go hiking this week and I have a few pictures. We tried to go to Solstice Canyon in Malibu. I figured a park along the coast would be cooler than inland and a canyon would be shady, so we could avoid the heat that we've been experiencing here in the valley. When we got there, the parking was completely full so we left, unsure of what to do. We remembered that the trail head for Castro Crest was at the end of the road we were currently driving. So after a long, winding, and slightly harrowing drive high up into the mountains, we ended up at Castro Crest.

So much for avoiding the heat. Just a little ways inland from the coast and it's significantly hotter. We arrived around 2 pm, so the sun was pretty brutal for a good part of the hike. I think the trail we hiked was a segment of the Backbone Trail which runs through Ventura County and Los Angeles - really long! The first portion of the trail which is a slow decent to a canyon appeared to have burned within the last year or two. The undergrowth was growing back, but the trees were blackened. From certain angles, you could see the bark peeling off the trees and the white wood underneath looked almost like silver in the sunlight.

The trail crossed a dry meandering creek-bed several times. We noticed a lack of wildlife. We didn't see as many lizards as usual at this park. We did see three small rabbits on our way out, though. Perhaps they become more active late in the day when the sun is going down.

If the sign-posts were accurate, I think we did about six miles all in all. Exhausting! We went and got some Jamba Juice and kicked back at home for the rest of the evening.