Christmas 2014

I worked on some art for this year's Christmas card - Paper collage and gouache on cardboard.  I ordered cards from both Moo and Tiny Prints.  I'll post when they arrive!

My First Mosaic

At our Goddess Retreat at Linda Levison's in Klamath Falls, OR, we played with mosaic - my idea.
I am planning a large mosaic mural for outside of my studio apartment rental and thought I'd better try a small piece to get a feel for it!

Phase Two

These three paintings followed the mixed media exploration.  Simply gouache and chalk paint and some watercolor on cardboard.

Burst of Creativity in 2013!

In 2013, when Molly went to live in Colorado for 4 months, I had a windfall of creativity.  After focusing on illustration for years, I went through an extremely experimental and prolific phase.  I never would have believed I'd become so obsessed with still life painting... it started with painting and stenciling my dining room floor and then continued some playful mixed media on cardboard.   These just represent a few out of about 25 mixed media paintings which were a combination of watercolor, gouache, chalk paint, stencils and decorative paper.   So much fun and so addictive!

 Sweet Treat

                                                                   


This is a one of my mixed media paintings, a combination of watercolor, gouache, chalk paint and decorative paper on cardboard.  It was included in the 2014 North Light Books publication called "Incite 2: Color Passions". 

Next Assignment

My favorite assignment in this class, was to create a fully developed picture book character. Before I left California, I pet sat for children's book author Q.L. Pearce, who I had hosted events for over my years at Borders. Q's pet family consisted of 3 dogs, a parakeet, and a rat. I was initially appalled at the idea of taking care of, and possibly touching a rat, but who knew it was possible to fall in love with a rodent? I and my daughter Molly, soon came to adore her. Lacey was polite and tolerated us, but would immediately wash her hands after being touched. She lived in a large cage with several stories. Lacey appeared to have a craft project going on in each room, leaving weaving and macrame projects half done before moving on to the next endeaver. I always thought she would make a fabulous picture book character - here was my chance!

New Work

I just finished a great class at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland. The class was called Children's Book Illustration Portfolio and was taught by Writer/Illustrator Victoria Jamieson. It definitely gave me the push I needed to getting moving again with illustration. I had never actually taken an illustration class before, so I learned a lot and the critiques were very helpful.



The first assignment was to illustration a fairy tale of our choice. Here is what I came up with.