Still making lots of drawing decisions, but I think I'll start painting tonight.

Watercolor and ink!

If you don't know, Labeouf, Rönkkö & Turner started a live stream in New York on Inauguration Day, inviting the public to say "He Will Not Divide Us" into the camera and microphone. In under a week, I had collected several screenshots of things I found interesting or funny, and I knew I had to draw what I saw.

People come to the camera for all kinds of reasons. Some people sing, some people stay silent, some people shout vulgar things, and some people say the five words at the center of the project. Through it all there is bad weather, wild costumes, possums, dogs, and lots of food delivery. Just seeing the ebb and flow of this segment of 36th street has been fascinating.

I've been invited to participate in a fundraiser auction for a local gallery. Without giving too much away, here's a picture of some of the development. This is about 20% of the tracing paper I've used so far (by the time I realized I needed a photo, I'd thrown much of it away). Good ideas, good flow, I like where this is going. Color palettes next week, but I'm not gonna overthink it — don't have much time this month so I gotta get moving on the finished piece pretty quick.

I can already tell this is gonna be one of those projects that I jump out of bed at 5:30 to get at!

I wish I could have gotten started on this painting earlier in the week, but so it goes!

So far so good, I already see where I'm going to need some corrections. I don't know how dark I want to go with the foreground, so I'm thinking I'll go ahead with what I have for now and maybe glaze it over with some deep purple tone at the end.

No kidding, I just got called in to work so I'll have to cut this short.

See? BUSY.

So this is it, at least until I let it stew for a few weeks and see what I think by mid-March. CHANGES WILL BE MADE!

I like to make oil paintings because it's one of the most fun mediums I can think of, but I do lack polish. I really haven't worked with oils consistently since 2013, but enough excuses! I had fun with this.

This photo's not so good because the lighting wasn't great, but don't you worry - I'll be posting great photos of this piece to my blog in the coming months.

Okay, it's officially crunch time. I need some new portfolio pieces to show off for the SCBWI summer conference, so why not start now hahaha RIGHT?? I'm insane. Anyway I've been sitting on this idea for a bit and I'm jumping on it. I've blurred the photo because it's straight up spoilers. I gotta show you what I mean. Next week, sketches or maaaybe even line work if I get too excited (which would be awesome).

I love this project too much. I spent all week drawing ideas for alien creatures and not enough actually working. Thank goodness for this streak thing for reminding me to GET GOING!

Thank goodness for my gramma's light box — graphite transfers were always my least favorite part of the process. I am loving this project! Not really much to say, I guess...it's getting to be crunch time though if I want this colored!

AUGH! I lost my streak for no good reason. Had it on my to-do list and then FORGOT TO LOOK AT THE LIST. Nothing huge to report, just continuing the ink biz.

Boyyy let me tell you! So I finished inking and after waiting the agonizing hour I gave it to dry ran over to my scanner to find that my clever plan to tape two papers together to make it simple to scan would not work - my scanner was an inch short on all sides. DROVE TO MY FAVORITE LOCAL SHOP IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT to scan it there, I was so excited. Got the PDF files, set it up in Photoshop to color the line art and conked out. WAKE UP, IT'S TIME TO COLOR.

Color color color LAYERS like an ogre I tell you, more coloring! Cintiq display gettin' fuzzy - WHAT'S GOING ON NO no no, no technical difficulties, willed that biz away REAL quick (the power of denial, man, the next day the screen was clear)

DONE. Love it. Gorgeous. Maybe tweakage? Likely. Not now though, it's DONE!

I don't know what I'm doing.

Feelin' it out, thinkin' it through. They're pretty cute, huh?

Haven't really nailed down the characters or the plot, but that's alright for now. Had some fun on this one!

Okay so I guess I don't have much visual flash to show for my work this week, but I'm pulling together a loose script/book map for an old story I'm adapting into a kids media project. Got the character designs more or less nailed down.

This month, I got some solid character designs finished and completed illustrations for two different concepts. Upon reflection, I'm particularly pleased with Hansel and Gretel's visual design. I'm still developing new strategies for working digitally.

This week I finished revising a book I'm printing, attended an art auction I contributed to, and started a new job.

These are my excuses.

I did settle on a preliminary character design for Clem, but I should have more to show for this week.

More actual work in the coming week — no excuses.

HOW has it been a week already???

But I did do this:

Gonna get this done by June one!

Working away

Have to do some baby portraits to pay the bills! I NEED THREE OF ME to get what I want to get done DONE!

A group-o-pups

Printed, trimmed, and all set to show! Pretty proud of this curation, especially considering how spread-out I am — not always working on kid-lit-related material.

The internet was not fantastic at the Marriott, so take a late submit.

This was my second conference and once again I learned so much. This year I participated in the Portfolio Showcase. I made myself proud!

It's nice to sit and reflect for a moment on where you're at.

Busted out the ol' light box to transfer the sketch to the final 8 x 10" paper.

I hoped to be finished by tonight, but I wasn't. Distracted. No good. Better tomorrow!

Deciding on a few things...putting off choices...values to be tweaked here and there...but 80% finished!