Participating in Bitter Fruits Show

I'm very excited to say that my painting "Country Gardens" is going to be included in the Bitter Fruits exhibit at the Altered Esthetics Gallery. The show opens January 31 in Minneapolis, MN.

Also, I'm working on giving my website a face-lift for the new year. I'll be putting up a bunch of new work, so keep your eyes peeled. It'll be up sometime in January.

Illustration Friday: Backwards

The enthusiastic but garbled backward chamber players

Country Gardens

The finished product

On My Desk Right Now

Do you remember away back in April I posted a sketch I made of a girl with a great big garden-hat? Well, the other day I was looking through my sketchbooks and ran across it, and I decided to make it into a painting. So here's a sneak peek.

Snow White and the Dwarfs

This is another image from the Snow White group I painted for Core Knowledge. I thought it could work for this week's topic on Illustration Friday, "little things."

Red Riding Hood the Second

This is the second incarnation of Red Riding Hood on my blog; this being the first. I think the second is a little younger, a little more helpless, and a little bit more likely to be eaten.

Home

Snow White finding the dwarfs' house in the glade
Well, I finally feel like we are settled in Ottawa now that we have internet service. It's wonderful to not have to go anywhere for awhile, and to be using hangers again, and especially to feel productive again. It's been snowing regularly, and I'm looking forward to a long winter and lots of new paintings. Good to be home.

Snow White and the Woodsman

It's been pretty quiet around here lately. We are still waiting for our internet service to become active, so I'm relegated to coffee shops and the library. I'm working on a new project for Core Knowledge illustrating the story of snow white.

Gone

I had a bit of heartbreaking news yesterday. My husband and I are in the middle of a BIG move from Washington state to Ottawa, Ontario, and we've had to make multiple driving trips across the Sates and Canada. We left quite a bit of our things in the basement of our Washington house and just came back for them, only to find that much of it had been set out for by the road to be taken for free. I was hoping I had already taken a couple large portfolios full of watercolors to Ontario, but found out that I hadn't, and that they have disappeared. They contained almost every watercolor I've ever made. Everything from college, every personal piece I've made since are gone. I'd been very careful to keep everything together so that nothing would be lost while moving, but that seems to have ensured that everything was lost. I hope I feel better when I am finally settled and can paint some new pictures. I'll miss the old ones though.

Fishing Hole

Just a little somethin' somethin' for the blog. I've got quite a few ideas for oil paintings bubbling in my head, but they are going to have to keep on bubbling for a little while longer. It's very difficult, almost impossible really, for me to get out my oil painting things right now, while things are so unsettled. Moving is always a chore, but moving across a continent into another country is more like the end of the world. So I'm very much looking forward to finding our own little place and settling in for a good long stretch of going nowhere.

Alice

a recent sketchbook item

Goldilocks

Here is a last minute contribution to the Illustration Friday topic of the week: alphabet.

Sketchvolution

Here is a great example of how most ideas for pieces are generated. While working on a commission, I chanced to look up at the light fixture above me, and saw it had a neat pattern of lines radiating from its center, and I wanted to draw the pattern (you can just barely see it in the scan). After I drew that I thought it would be fun to draw one of those old-fashioned circular mouldings. Then I thought I'd make it into a full room and draw the tops of walls. I thought the effect of looking up so steeply was interesting and drew a face looking down, then immediately thought it felt like lying on the floor. So I thought I'd draw the person lying on the floor.

It would be nice if I could just pick an idea straight out of my head, but most of they time they come from this type of meandering doodling. Even when I feel like an idea pops out from nowhere, I can usually trace it back from mental "doodling". Making pictures for me is usually a lot like a free-association game.

Cats in my pencils

It's funny, I'm more of a dog person really, but I absolutely love drawing cats. They are just about the most fun thing to sketch. If I feel like drawing but don't really have anything specific I want to draw, I'll usually end up drawing a cat. They just seem to come out of my pencils on their own.

So here's my cat for the day. He's a bit ugly and fat, and I bet he's a drooler, but he was fun to make. Tabby cats are the best for drawing; the lines really help define their bodies, and you've got to love that eye-liner look they so often have.

Illustration Friday: Captain

I think this captain is a freelancer, brave enough to captain and man his own ship, albeit a small and possibly leaky one.

Todd

I'm working on a set of illustrations for an easy reader book about a boy named Todd. The book will be from the Core Knowledge Foundation, a non-profit educational materials company. It's a really fun project. Here Todd is getting ready for a yard sale.

New Mexico, Canada, Hawaii and the Big Day

It's been awhile between posts. On June 15 I was married to David Kwan, and since then we've been in a frenzy of traveling. It has been very exciting and I've gotten to see a lot of places I'd never seen before. Most recently we visited my family in New Mexico where I did a very little drawing. Now that we're home I hope I can start catching up with some of the things that have gone neglected in the past month and a half.

Illustration Friday: Your Paradise

This isn't me, but when I sit it my chair and scratch my cat: paradise found.

Bo Peep

Here is an illustration I just did for the Core Knowledge Foundation to illustrate the poem Little Bo Peep. As you can see, it is based on a drawing I made in March.
Link

Gardening on my mind

Someday I will make a painting of this girl in her immense, garden-hat.

Community Gardens

I recently finished this piece for The Park Slope Reader. The article is about community gardens and food co-ops in different areas of New York.

Cat in the Sink

My cat Vinnie likes to sleep in the bathroom sink. He even sleeps in there if the faucet is dripping; his back gets all wet. It seems like whenever I'm brushing my teeth he wants in.

Here is my obligatory procrastination sketch. Now to start painting.

Sketching in the Park

This last weekend David and I went to Pioneer Park to have lunch and sketch or read or whatever. There are the most amazing trees at Pioneer Park; they have wonderfully gnarled and exposed roots. I wanted to draw them from close up, but we sat too far away. Oh brother. We'll have to go back.

David graciously let me sketch him, and held relatively still too. I thought he looked a bit like a communist in this one (he is a Canadian after all, haha), and we decided it was the combination of the way his hat and collar looked. So we thought the sickle, hammer, and star would be a nice finishing touch.
Do you think he looks a little like a cow in this one? I do.

Cat

Awhile back I had some fun making these drawings of a cat. Yesterday my boyfriend came across them on the computer and thought I should post them, so here they are.

Toxoplasmosis

Bidding has opened on Toxoplasmosis! It is a lovely watercolor diptych, and it's hot off the desk.
Bid on E-bay

Thunderstorm

Bo Peep

Illustration Friday: Hide (Tiger Girl)

Posted this yesterday, but I thought it would work very well for this week's Illustration Friday theme: hide. Tiger hide. So just a sketch this week.

Procrastination Station

And now back to work.

Leda and the Swan

More sketching fun. I think that when I have a deadline approaching, I tend to sketch more often and more elaborately, as a procrastination technique. I don't know if that is good or bad.

Illustration Friday: Communication

A little interspecies communication for this week's Illustration Friday topic.

Miss Muffet

A sketch of Miss Muffet. Nursery rhymes provide such a fun way to sharpen skills, and a great channel for doodling away nervous energy.

Mary Mary Quite Contrary

A sketch of the infamously contrary Mary of gardening fame.

Red Riding Hoodie is Completed

Little Red Riding Hoodie is all painted. In a way, I like the little sketch better; it always seems to turn out that way. There is something about the pencil lines, their scratchiness, the way they are bold and subtle at the same time when they are enlarged, that simply doesn't come across in the painted version.

Illustration Friday: Sprout

Red Riding Hoodie

A little sketch of Red Riding Hood(ie) for a watercolor.

Hair Sketches

Some sketches I did today on the theme of extreme hairdoes. Maybe I will make these into a triptych of watercolors sometime.

Tub Cats

Lester loved to hang out in the tub all day. Sometimes Noreen (my other cat) would join him.

After I finished the painting and was looking at it and feeling pretty good about it and especially about how the knobs turned out, I realized I had forgotten the spigot. I think my train of thought was, I especially like the faucet. Wait! There is no faucet! How annoying is that? Oh well. One small caveat: this painting is inspired by my cats, but my bathroom does not necessarily look this grimy.

Illustration Friday: Red

Here is my piece for this week's topic on Illustration Friday: red. It's been very cold the last couple of days, and this is pretty much what I look like when I go out.

New Painting

So, my boyfriend has been gone to Canada for a little while now, and I've been busily painting in all my free time. Here is my latest watercolor.

Goodbye Lester

My cat Lester died recently. He was a lovely, delicate and immensely stupid black cat who liked to eat anything-my paint, lint, and unfortunately string, which is what ultimately did him in. I painted this picture of him the day after he died. Goodbye Lester, you will be missed.