I don't know how so much time can go by between my posts when it seems like I just updated it yesterday! Like last year, one of my new goals for the year is to post more often, so let's see how I do this time. Hopefully better!

This is a new personal piece I've started. I got the idea when I was at the beach a few months ago. It was a cold day and hardly anyone else was there. It made the beach seem very private and personal. For some reason, the idea of a son and father sharing a day at the beach like that popped into my head. It's been rattling around for awhile and is finally coming out on paper. I'm trying to play with adding more texture to my digital paintings, so I'm keeping some of the texture of my value rough underneath the painting. This painting is turning out much softer and realistic that my illustrations normally are, but I'm really liking it. I'm going to tighten it up a little, especially the figures, but definitely want to keep the softness.

It's been a crazy holiday season and I'm too late to wish you all a Merry Christmas, but not too late to say HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

The topic for IF this week couldn't be more perfect for a children's book artist:-) No one is better at pretending than children! Here is an illustration from my book Circle of Three where the main character is PRETENDING to be in Hawaii.

I thought the topic this week for IF worked pretty well with my new book, Butterfly Kisses, since it has to do with the wisdom of grandparents and also the wisdom of little kids:-) It's amazing what you can learn from children!

I haven't been getting much illustration done lately, I've been busy with some floral paintings. I've never done flower paintings before, which may surprise a few people since I'm pretty much as girly of a girl as you can get. But I have to say, I'm loving doing them. I think I may have to do these more often. I finished this magnolia I'm showing you a couple of weeks ago and am in the process of doing a red gerber daisy. It's coming along pretty well, but trying to do all of those tiny little petals that a gerber daisy has is definitely a challenge!

This is my submission to Illustration Friday this week. I'm finally getting to share some of the artwork from my most recent children's book! This is the opening double page spread. The book is called Butterfly Kisses for Grandpa and Grandma. The author of the book is Alayne Kay Christian. Its a really sweet story that is perfect for grandparents and grandkids, especially those that have to deal with living far away. In this opening spread, the main character is enjoying some ice cream at grandpa and grandmas. One of the reasons she likes to come to see grandpa and grandma is all of the SUGARY sweets she gets to eat:-)



The book is not yet released, but can be pre-ordered at the publishers website, www.bluewhalepress.com. I hope you enjoy this spread, I'll be posting a lot of Butterfly Kisses in the next few weeks!

For this IF word of the week, I chose a painting I did for my book Circle of Three, published by Magination Press. It's an illustration of the three main characters making a mess and lots of CLUTTER while doing their art project together. This was definitely a fun illustration for me to do being an artist and remembering how much fun it was to do arts and crafts in school!:-)

This is an older painting that I already posted on my blog, but I really want to start participating in Illustration Friday again and this painting matches the word for the week the best, so I'm recycling:-) This is a painting I did of Sophia doing a dance ROUTINE to use for thank you cards. I always wanted to be a ballerina when I was a little girl but never got to try it. It was fun living through Sophia while I did this illustration!:-) Make sure to click on it so you can see it better. It's hard to read in this little box.

I just realized that I never put on my blog my big news about Sophia! I don't know how big it is now since it happened almost a year ago:-P It's amazing how fast time goes by. Those of you who have read my blog or have seen my website I'm sure know who Sophia is. Sophia started out as my logo but after awhile became more of my mascot. I put drawings of her all over my website and always used her on the cover of my promos I would send to publishers. I always hoped something might happen with her but wasn't sure what. And than about a year ago I got a call from a stamping company called Paper Pretties. They said they loved my style and wanted me to be their illustrator for their new line of stamps. And the best part was that they wanted Sophia to be their main stamping image! I was thrilled of course and it's been going great ever since. We've come up with a few other characters since than but Sophia is definitely the main image that I draw for them. She's evolved quite a bit from the little girl in the green dress and polka dotted hat that she started out as. She's gotten to be quite a bit of other things, such as a cowgirl in this image:-)



So when I was trying to think of an image to put on my new promo going out, I decided to do Sophia and bring her back to her roots a little bit. So these are the images I came up with. I had an idea to dress her up in Sherlock Holmes fashion awhile ago and thought I would include her green dog as well. This first image will be on the cover of the promo and the second image will be peeking around the edge of the last page of the promo. I'm liking how the promo came out and am hoping the publishers will as well!





And last but definitely not least, a HUGE HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my friend Piya who is an amazing illustrator:-) You can check out his blog or website on my sidebar. HAPPY BIRTHDAY PIYA!!

Here is another painting that I did for the penguin project that I mentioned in my last post. The interesting thing about this one is that the art director gave me a sketch for the composition to follow. I've never had an art director do that before, but I actually didn't mind because I think the composition is fantastic. I'm definitely storing it away in my head to use some other time. In my own compositions, I tend to feel like every corner of the page needs to be filled with something, so to leave so much white was new for me, but I think it came out really balanced. As I said before, I had a blast doing this book, I loved giving all of these penguins their own personality:-) Hope you all are having a good week, weekends almost here! Until next time:-)

Wow, it has been a long time since my last post! Trying to get my book done pretty much dominated all my time for awhile. But now it is finished and I'm hoping I'll get to share some of the illustrations with you soon! While trying to finish my book I'm afraid I kind of got out of the habit of blogging. But a couple of days ago I decided to start another blog to post all of my crafty hobby projects on and realized how much I missed blogging and how much fun it can be! So now that I'm back in the swing of it, you should be seeing this updated much more regularly:-) For now, I'm going to share an illustration I did awhile back for EECI. They are a publishing company that does a lot of educational material. The assignment was to do a short book, about 15 pages long, all about penguins. I have to say, I had so much fun doing this book. The publisher gave me a lot of freedom in what I wanted to add to the art. I loved creating my own little penguin village, and just painting all of those penguins was a blast! If anyone else needs a penguin illustration, I'll do it in a heartbeat!;-)

When I saw the word for IF this week, it reminded me of a painting in my new book and its about time that I post again! In this part of the book the main character is feeling very sad because she thinks that her friends have FAILed her. This book is really great for girls at the preadolescent stage. Remember being that age and trying to figure out who you were and always so worried what your peers would think of you? Sometimes it feels like it would be great to go back but when you remember those times, I'm happy to be where I am:-) I'm busy working on my next book now. It should be finished at the end of next month, so I should have some new paintings to post in a couple of weeks!

Wow, its been a busy couple of weeks! The deadline for the final art on my book is just a couple of weeks away and I'm painting like crazy to make it in time! I can't believe I'm almost finished, it doesn't seem very long ago when I posted that I had gotten my first book job, and now it's almost over. It's definitely been an experience:-) Hopefully one I will be repeating over and over! Here is one of the paintings from the book, written by Elizabeth Brokamp and published by Magination Press. In this chapter the main character is having to CHOOSE between two friends, I thought it would be perfect for IF this week. Better get back to painting, thanks for stopping by!

This has definitely been a much longer break from blogging than I was planning on taking! But I am back, and it's my new years resolution to make sure I keep it up! We'll see how I do...

I didn't have anything recent for IF's topic this week, so I'm posting an old painting from art school. Its hard to believe it's been over two years since I've graduated! Time really does go by faster the older you get. This is a painting I did from an old Japanese folk tale.

I don't have anything new for IF this week, so I'm recycling:-) I did this illustration for Picture Bookies Showcase theme Time Out a couple of weeks ago. Being a nanny, I've always understood how much parents need their 'time outs' as well. It's funny how the same expression can have such a different meaning to an adult as it does to a child!

Here is a painting I just finished. I always thought it would be fun to do something with the Red Hat Society. Who wouldn't want to try and draw some of those red hats and purple dresses. So this is what I came up with, three ladies enjoying tea and especially gossip!

Here is my contribution to IF this week. Unfortunately, this painting doesn't have a lot to do with the moon, its more just an afterthought. But I wanted to post something on IF since its been so long and I'm afraid I don't have the time to finish an entire new painting. So this will have to work for now, maybe I will think of something more original next week:-)

Wow, I think this is the longest I've gone without posting! I've been caught up in lots of family activities lately, but hopefully now I can start posting on a regular basis again. But the good news is, I've been asked to do my first book! I'm so excited, it seems like I've been waiting for a very long time for this:-) I think it's not scheduled to be finished until the end of the year or next year sometime, so it will be awhile before I can show any of it. But as soon as I can, I will definitely have it up here! I don't have too much to show as far as new artwork unfortunately, but I am putting together a new sample booklet to send out and this is the cover of it. Sophia will be on the cover and the dog will be on the back. And inside the back cover will be the illustration of just the dog. Hopefully the publishers will see everything and read the story in it. I still haven't thought of a good name for the dog, if anyone has any suggestions let me know. Maybe I'll just call him Dog:-)

Here is my new submission for Illustration Friday. When I saw the word this week was suit, I had to do a penguin suit:-) I thought it would also be a good time to do some black/white work since I've been getting a few requests for it lately.

Here is my finished version of the last value rough I showed. I had fun doing this painting. I've never done anything the least bit spooky, so it was a nice change for me. I had someone ask what the story is behind it when I posted the value rough. Its not a story I made up, it was from a novel I had read awhile ago. There was a scene in the book when these three boys are camping out in their backyard and decide to sneak out and go searching in the woods for the family ghost that has haunted the house for generations. What illustrator wouldn't want to draw that! The ghost in the book was blond and always wore a white dressing gown. I stuck true to that, but used my imagination for the three boys. Anyway, as I said, it was fun for me to do and I hope you like it!

It's been so long since my last blog! My time got a little taken up with other things, some art related, some not:-), so I am still working on the last piece I posted. Its getting close, but not finished enough to actually show anyone. But in the meantime, here is a piece I just finished for a girls magazine. They needed a new illustration for their advice column, and here it is!

Here is the new drawing I'm working on. I finished this value rough last week, but haven't had the time to paint it. I'm planning on doing that tomorrow, so hopefully I can show it finished soon. As for now, let me know what you think!

Here are the finished paintings of the dinosaurs. They were done awhile ago, I just hadn't put them up yet. It was fun to get to do something completely different from what I usually do. I wanted to try to keep my style in it even though the subject was different, and I think I really accomplished that on the first one.

Here is my new Sophia painting as well. Piya, the dragon is coming next!

Here is my late, as usual, submission to Illustration Friday. I wanted to do something that would work for IF as well as my other blog, Picture-Bookies Showcase. The phrase for PBS was 'change of plans'. When I read this, it made me think of a cancelled baseball game on account of rain for some reason. So here is my version for both, an Un'fortune'ate Change of Plans:-)

I got a commission to do two dinosaur paintings for a boys room. Since I really know next to nothing about dinosaurs, I had to do a lot of research. You learn a lot of strange things being an illustrator, an extra bonus I guess:-) Here are the value roughs so far, I should have the paintings done in a couple of days. They're a little more realistic than I normally like to do, but its always fun to try something new. And the great thing about dinosaurs is I get to make them any color I want:-)