I doodled some alpine reference last week from an online drawing challenge called #DrawTheAlps. I thought I'd do a one hour photo study, but I was having fun painting this lovely copse of trees so I let it evolve into something further. 

I just start by analyzing and simplifying the ref into shapes. I want the shapes to interconnect and balance in an interesting way. Or at the very least in a way that makes sense to my mind so I can develop it in a satisfying way. 

There is always a push and pull of trying something and sometimes editing stuff out. And in doing this I generally figure out what I am drawing, like what it is about. Then I usually gain some momentum towards getting it developed further. 

And definitely sometimes ideas just aren't right. I wondered if there was too much space and I wanted to add variety of shapes while filling up that space, but it was getting too weird, lol. I like making these weird puff-ball pine trees, but they feel more Mediterranean I think, not of the mountains. And just in general it was too busy and not focused, but I liked how the magical star thingy is glowing and the glow is catching on the tree foliage, but alas. Oh, and I put in Canada Geese because I used to live in Vermont, so I went in that direction :)

So next up I will need to find a home better suited for the funny puffy pines. XO

I wanted to share some recent sketches that I've been working on recently. 

I left alot of filter visible here, too much? 🧐 Not sure, but it is certainly on my mind when I look at it. 

This is in progress- It needs more stuff, some boats selling fruit and flowers, more dogs, and I wanted a tree hanging over the scene so I could paint the leaves in different lighting conditions. The tree is not quite in the story yet, so that's on the to do list. 

I found this piece of architecture in another painting, but the story was not as beautiful as I thought the forms were. So I remade it and added the correct vibes. I should probably change the character so that it is just very clearly me lying there on that sunny porch. 

Rough sketch coming along today :) Will I get it painted and submitted to my art show invite and posted by Wednesday evening? The power of winter break compels me!

I'll post the update when it's ready

Progress report

A bit messy yet, I'm going to keep refining all the connections, but it's getting there. 

🌙✨

And I think I'm ready to move on from this one now:

This fall I've joined in as a student in Joon Ahn's Fantasy Landscape painting course. And I got to paint Snake Mountain 🐍💀  There was an assigned lighting/mood/layer set-up that was baked in for the assignment, it was new for me so I tried to keep it simple for this first go around. Its a very simple and logical set-up for making a painting, but sometimes I feel like I have complicated ideas and I really wanted to just use direct reference and keep it simple and clean. 

I used the skull from the Dracorex / Stygimoloch to reference for the silly demon face that was originally on the playset. My first instinct is to always go with the Euoplocephalus, definitely my favorite dinosaur, but even I had to admit the Dracorex was the right look for the demon-ish, horned shapes and the overall threatening expression. 

Cool side note: Joon's final process is to blend a piece of an abstract/non objective painting on to the top of the layers to try to discover some interesting texture that you most likely couldn't just pull out of your head and paint. It's a smart idea, and I just so happen to have a folder of non objective paintings and explorations from this year so I get to recycle them into new works and it makes me happy :)

Very early look of my character for my PB manuscript :) Awww, so cute.  

This is what absent minded painting comes out looking like for me. To be clear, I've written the text, story boarded and edited each page, developed character designs, done a bunch of research and planning for the look of the thing, but the touch or the handwriting of the mark making is what is left to work out. I’d like to balance the look of the raw digital and some of the rough edges with something that looks more like paint 🤔

I want it to be both paint and rendered legible form simultaneously. I can chase a realistic texture or lighting scenario, but for this I'd like to ride that moment where it looks exciting like paint balanced together into form. I like this very raw digital, almost reckless sort of approach to just bringing something into view. It helps to get me past overthinking, or trying to figure it all out in my head instead of on the page, and being too precious with the brush marks. But even as someone who likes the digital look, I need to use this as a rough draft to create a more polished image that I'd be happy to explore printed at a larger size.   

I'm liking this direction though. I want an image that is full of things to look at and even discover. I'm want this to be a book that can be opened and enjoyed and explored more than once. They're illustrations, but they're also paintings. 

I don't usually post sketches or WIPs, but I've been working on a larger project lately and I'd like to share a small glimpse. All summer I've been pushing around suuuper rough black and white thumbnails that make up my story about magical creatures in a forest on a bit of a journey. Really I had no clear idea of what the story was until I just started with these thumbnails and their revisions. I've been in the seriously rough, reworking, maybe only I can tell what is meant by that shape, awkward phase for awhile now, so it was exciting to carve in some crisp edges and color :)

Originally I thought I'd be creating a wordless picture book with a single character, but eventually the words arrived and also several more characters. For the character designs I'm just about happy with them.  I design with abstract shapes and marks so eventually I start to feel compelled by a design, but then need to translate it into actual features, or a way to keep the marks abstract and still feel legible and at home within the artwork. 

More than a bit of what is in this thumbnail I consider place-holder marks. A way to design shapes that stand for stuff and the beginning of finding precision, or more considered marks, but still a short hand language and not quite containing all that I'd imagined in my head. More than a start, a foundation I guess.