New website & blog launched!

Ta-da! I now have a new website that has my blog included. I will be posting updates there for now. If you don't want to miss out on anything please click over and have a look around. Feel free to leave me a comment on my new blog and say "Hi!"

At the Color Stage

Last week I began painting color on the mural and wanted to share the progress with you. I started with the muted green color and painted all of those shapes in the design. Since the majority of the  wall is still white I found it helpful to then paint all of the black shapes so I could see the darkest color as well. It is exciting to see it coming together!

Working on an exciting project!

Here is a sneak peek of what I have been working on lately…
a mural at the Millcreek Senior Center in the Millcreek Community Center on Evergreen Avenue. I just finished painting the lines of the design and am thoroughly enjoying the process.
The next step is painting in all of the colors.

Paintings In-progress

I have been working on eight new acrylic paintings in my "Metamorphosis" series for my exhibit in May. Usually I work on two or three at a time — but never this many simultaneously. It has been interesting to work this way. At first I just wanted to get the color brushed on all of the surfaces (which is how I begin with these). Then I began in earnest on one piece moving my brush strokes from that random stage to making more deliberate decisions allowing my inspiration to guide me. As that piece dried I moved on to another one and so forth. We'll have to see if progress continues this way or if I end up focusing on one or two at a time until complete.

Art Framed for Exhibit

I just picked up some of the art for my upcoming exhibition in Ogden at the Gallery at the Station (in the historic Union Station). These are some of my gouache paintings. I still have paintings in process but it feels so good to have some finished and ready for the show! The exhibit opens on Friday, May 3rd with an Artist's Reception from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.

Practicing Picture Books With A Pro

I recently attended a regional SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators) conference and learned some new things about what makes a great picture book. Of course the pictures have to be beautiful and visually compelling and have an entertaining story told in simple language, but creating a wonderful book is so much more complex than just the combination of those two things. A magic mixture of elements has to come together to create a really good picture book.

I also participated in a workshop lead by Martha Rago Associate Creative Director at HarperCollins Publishers. It was a challenging project focused on picture book character development, putting the characters in a setting in their world and creating a jacket image for the cover. Martha provided a synopsis of a story under development entitled "Princess Cupcake" for us to work with. She reviewed in-progress sketches, made comments and then critiqued the finished work. Here is the cover and two finished spreads that I created for the project. I couldn't resist giving the princess a cat friend and also threw in some of my hand-lettering.

Happy Thanksgiving!