I set a business goal for myself this year: to have a simple art show in summer 2023. I wanted to have a theme to it: a cohesive group of works that are stand-alone but also say something in combination. The medium I chose was graphite, because pencil is my first love: the drawing process flows smoothly and my mind can focus on it extensively. I chose the subject of people because it is my favorite one to draw and because my portraits receive the most positive feedback of all my artwork. All of the new portraits will be either from reference photos that I personally took, or that I directed. I want it to be of regular, ordinary people. Individually, my goal is to have each portrait express an emotion or emotions that are subtle and not necessarily indicative of personality. I hope that they will be as timeless as possible and relatable to a wide variety of people. I'm not interested in making pointed political statements or moralizing, but I hope to evoke an emotional response that will lead to further important reflection on future life choices. This portrait of a lady from my church is a taste of the coming show. 

        October was a busy month! I finished the Inktober challenge, which is always challenging and fun. During the same time, I was working on this prop for a stage production of Oliver Twist put on by A Passion for the Arts. They are an artistic organization that works with homeschool families to expose children to acting, literature, stage production, character development, etc. Every new performance improves on the last. I fully support what they do, and have been privileged to occasionally volunteer to work on props for the director, Caryl Lipnick.


         I inherited this beast of a prop and asked to make it look like a storefront for a bookstore. Before I started, Caryl, the props manager, and I went over style, font, color temperature and feel of the prop so the result would mesh with the look of the whole production. Physically, the work was more than I had expected, because the canvas was so large and heavy. I had to carefully lug it in and out of the prop room and then straddle it at odd angles and squat or kneel in order to reach areas to paint without ruining the paint, my clothes, or the ground. Also, an unexpected difficulty was deciding which part of the bookstore to paint first. If I got it out of order, the work would take much longer, and I didn't have that kind of time. But by now, you know how much I love a good challenge, and those problems made it more interesting. I had estimated 18 hours of work; it turned out to be 24. There are two things that I would do differently next time I have a similar project. I would use a stencil for the title, and I would leave more time for the precise structure of a building. Instead of a stencil, I had found a font I liked, measured and spaced the letters, drew each letter, and then hand-painted each one with 3 or 4 layers, which took a long time. Also, in the past, I've painted more abstract or natural subjects which can be fudged if I made a mistake, whereas with this storefront, everything was right angles and sharp, hard lines, which meant I had to mask the shapes with tape and keep a steady hand if it was going to look crisp. 


            This picture is the final look of my prop. Although I was hoping for more time to add details to the books and window reflections and font, I'm proud of what I did and proud of the quality of the play. 

Here are a couple of my sketches from Inktober 2022. Inktober is a drawing challenge during the month of October begun by an ink artist in 2009. Each year, he releases a list of 31 drawing prompt words, which artists then use to create original artwork. His original purpose was to challenge himself to draw every day. I heard about Inktober from two artist friends and since 2020 I have also been challenged to create more original, quicker artwork. Interestingly enough, the first year I participated was during the research and development period for my first book, Otters on the Sea. I decided to use sea otters as the theme, so it became an opportunity to stretch my drawing, creative, and research skills. Not only did Inktober allow me to be in a short-term community of friends and artists, but my book was the better for it. Last year, my Inktober theme was emus, of course, and this year it is foxes, skunks, and opossums. In 3 years, I saw improvement in linework, humor, composition, and design. This year, it's also been fun to meet new online artists through Inktober and to be inspired by their creativity. If you're on social media, you can follow the hashtag #inktober2022 for some beautiful artwork! My latest sketches are on my second instagram: @explorationsincartooning. 

People have always been one of my favorite subjects. Portraits or images of people tell a story, and I love a good story. For a long time I avoided drawing portraits because I dislike using photos for reference. Also, the photos that interested me were taken by famous photographers in Vogue magazine or by professionals online, which meant using them would be a copyright issue. But the fall of light on skin kept seducing me, and I decided to do some research about copyrights. I discovered that the one who takes the photo has the rights to it. As long as I had the permission of the model, I could also use the photo for reference to create works of art without getting sued. This meant that whether I liked it or not, if I wanted to draw portraits again, I had to learn about taking better pictures and staging my model volunteers. When I was visiting my sister, she and my nieces gave me permission to take a few shots. This model is my niece Abby, an artist herself. She chose to wear a cloak and I chose her positioning. I draped the cloth around her and told her to look serious. I had her put her hand out and hold her cloak shut. I was delighted with the outcome of the photo! I'm also mostly pleased with the drawing. But I'm not discouraged, rather I'm encouraged because this is only the beginning. With more practice the drawings will become more accurate, polished, and faster. The photos and staging ideas will come more quickly and give me more of what I need. And as my skills grow in portraits, they will grow in the other kinds of art as well. I'm a firm believer in using what you have and continually learning. 

I don't spend a lot of time studying other artists or collecting their work, but being an artist invites people and social media sites to tell me about other artists. On Instagram, I happened to see one of his landscapes with his name tagged, checked him out, and started following his hashtag. He was known for engravings among other things, but I'm inspired most by his landscapes, which he did later in life. These four paintings were free to use on the internet, but if you're curious, please look up his other landscapes, because these are not my favorites of his. His engravings were black and white with stark shapes, and his landscapes have a similar aesthetic. My favorites have simple shapes that lean abstract but maintain enough reality to be interesting. His colors are fresh and flat, but again, realistic enough to be engaging. The paintings speak a mood. He says about his landscapes:

 "I would like to be able to re-create landscapes only with the help of the emotion they have provoked in me. A few large evocative lines, one or two details, chosen with no thought for the exact time or light".

"I dream of a painting entirely disengaged from any literal concern about nature. I want to construct landscapes entirely based on the emotions that they have created in me, a few evocative lines, one or two details, chosen, without a superstition of the exactitude of the hour or the lighting". (quotes taken from www.theartstory.org)

This is similar to what I want to do with my landscape paintings. 

Since I last wrote, my art practice and business have been coming along at a snail's pace. I have wanted to come back to my creative calling several times in the last couple months but it's not until now that the ball can start rolling again. Thankfully, I have another business as my day job that pays my bills. But with that business comes responsibilities to it that have taken my attention away from the artwork. Also, since January, I've been dating! Although it is a positive change, it took me away from my previous art schedule. Now, I am trying to regain a new balance of work, relationships, rest, and art. 

​My next children's book, Daddy Emu, is closer and closer to completion. I recently bought the barcodes and ISBNs for both a hardbound and electronic version. I bought a font that complimented the artwork and added the text to my illustrations in the GIMP program. It's called Cinnamon Cake, and you can see an example in the above illustration. The next step is to put my illustration files into two Adobe inDesign files which can be sent to Ingramspark. Update: I finished watching the tutorials on inDesign! 

Everything about writing and illustrating a book takes a long time. Case in point, this last week I finally received the formal copyright letter for my first children's book, Otters on the Sea, which I sent to them in the middle of 2021, which brings the US government's response time to nine months. I can't complain, though. The entire process has united my artistic talents and interests in a remarkable way which has intensified, rather than discouraged, my joy in creating. 

I'm looking forward to sharing future failures and successes with you!

I recently decided to subscribe to Adobe InDesign in order to put my book together more professionally. While I'm looking forward to learning something new, I don't know how long it will take to learn the program. I'll keep you updated here! Thanks for reading. 

Happy New Year! On January 3rd, I finished all the illustrations for my next book! I'm posting them on my instagram @explorationsincartooning if you'd like to see them now. I will be editing them, adding text, etc. in the coming weeks. If I made them the correct size this time, and if I can figure out the tech side of things then they'll be ready for print-on-demand sometime this year. I will post more soon....

My next children's illustrated has 6 more pages before it's done! Of course, that's only one stage of the book, because next will be editing them all and then getting them onto the internet. But here is one of the characters: Daddy Emu. I'll re-edit him on the colored pencil page because he came out too warm. 

One of my greatest pleasures is drawing plein air: in other words, going on location to draw without touching up or redoing the artwork at home. All the work is done live, usually within 1-2 hours. There's a freshness and immediacy with plein air that I can't achieve while working from a photograph or even with an indoor still life. The light changes, sometimes quickly. I'm forced to develop a quick eye for what the final visual will be so that I can make informed, economical strokes during the drawing process. The thrill of it is that I never fully know what the outcome will be. The weather could change, or the lighting, or a car could park right in my line of vision. It's always an adventure!