IF: Brave

"She often thought herself a fairytale princess, held captive and forced to go to bed against her will. And while the stairs to her bedroom tower seemed friendly enough in the light of day, by nightfall they had grown into something more dark and ominous."

All colored pencil....let me know what you think!

Finally finished!

It seems that I've been working on these two drawings forever. I finally got them finished and then had several weeks of messing with them because I didn't like how the colors came out when they were printed. I LOVE teal and aqua colors, they are finding their way into a lot of my new stuff....but it's quite hard to make the printer show teal and aqua. Everything comes out blue. Blue is nice, but teal is AWESOME!

Turtle Girls of Summer (8x10 available in my shop)

Monkey Parade with Personalized Banner (8x10 available here)

Cards and Magnets...ooh la la!

I just added some great new crafty items to my shop! Check 'em out if you're interested in stationery and magnets. I'm still in the middle of craft fair season here. The hard part about being an artist/crafter is that every weekend I attend a craft fair I think I'm ready for the next one....but in between the fairs I'm making more art and of course want to bring the new things along! So I'm never ready! It's a lot of work but also a lot of fun. At the Scarecrow Festival a couple of weekends ago I met so many great families and amazing kids. One in particular kept coming back to visit me (if you're reading this...Hi Leyah!!!) and bringing people with her to exclaim over my work. To see kids spend their dollars on my prints because they love them so much certainly warms my heart. Now if only I could hire Leyah as my spokesperson on these crafting weekends so I could shop around myself! (Leyah? Wanna be an artists' apprentice?!)

We are enjoying fall in New England as everyone should with hayrides, apple crisp, walks in the leaves and head colds! If you're in the area come by Colchester green for the Pumpkins and Pooches fair this Sunday and visit me....or at least check out all the pooches in costume! Happy Autumn everyone!

Illustration Friday: Impossibility

After a bunch of ideas and sketches that didn't seem right, my brain stumbled upon this idea. My own version of "when pigs fly" which everyone knows is an impossibility. What do you think?! These are some resourceful and creative hogs.....I don't know where they're going, but they're determined to get there!

Interesting topic this week...it's easy for creative people to imagine all the beautiful, visual impossible scenarios they could illustrate. It's much harder to face all of the things in real life that seem impossible. My heart is often troubled by the impossible things that I want to see happen. A loving family for every child. An end to world hunger and violence. This week it ocurred to me, what if it's not impossible? What if I can do something and do it now? If I could come up with as much creativity and determination (coupled with God's direction) as these flying pigs, maybe seeming impossibilities could become possibilities.

"Everything is possible for him who believes." Mark 9:23

Something old, something new...

You might recall the original sketch I posted of this guy a long time ago:

Done way "back in the day" when I first started the turtles...I had to put him aside as my first Craft Show approached and I didn't have time to finish ALL of the turtle ideas. Here he his all festive and bright, coming to help you celebrate!

Besides trying to work on a couple more Love Turtles, this past week we celebrated my mom and one of my sisters' birthdays. In honor of my mom I started a birthday card doodle that turned out way better than expected. Here it is for you to see, but mom gets the original!

Notice how different it looks from the others. Only two things changed here, I used a different paper and overlayed the colors. All of the other turtles I'm using a vellum bristol which is very rough. I'm not pressing down hard and covering up the whole paper which gives it a textured look. This smooooooooth paper makes the pencil lines look completely different, adding some colors on top of each other made it come alive and I was very happy with how it turned out. This is a little closer to children's book illustration in my opinion. Every once in a while everything just works! So Happy Birthday to Mom and Cristi, I'm so glad to have you in my life.