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Este bichito nació de un ejercicio que estoy haciendo. Dibujé todas la letras del alfabeto y a partir de sus formas básicas ilustré personajes. Este es el primero y está basado en la letra A. Eventualmente tendré una familia completa de bichitos raros.

This creature was born from an exercise that I´m doing. I drew all the letters in the alphabet and from their basic forms illustrated characters. This one is the first and it´s based on the letter A. Eventually I´ll have a complete family of weird creatures.

This is a drawing for a project I´ve been working on.

Este es un dibujo para un proyecto en el que he estado trabajando.

A few weeks back I had some time to kill and just happened to be right near the Denver Zoo. Armed with sketchbooks and the new water-soluble colored pencils I was itching to try out, I bought myself a ticket and ventured forth to find some likely subjects.

As you can see from the sketch below, everyone looked a little bored. Or maybe they were just relaxed by the balmy spring sunshine?

Less exotic species were still fair game for my sketchbook. Here is a family of wild primates who were busy observing other wild primates:

The Okapi spent most of their time eating, but didn’t seem to mind posing too much. They had pretty nice digs, which meant that they were rather far away from the nosy humans, but I did my best to get some detail in.

These African penguins were full of energy. A little girl was using a mirror to reflect a spot of light into their pen, which resulted in a frenzy of excitement as the penguins chased the light around their pond as though it were a fish. (They were probably sorely disappointed that it was *not* a fish.)

Eventually it was time to leave and go back to my own habitat, but I couldn’t depart without sketching this guy. He was universally adored. He certainly seemed utterly satisfied with life as he dozed in his little mud puddle. Whatever the secret to happiness is, I believe hippos have found it.

Last month the good people at the Montana Skatepark Association invited me to create work on a skate deck for their annual fundraising gallery show called ON DECK 7.

The money raised will go towards construction and maintenance of  Missoula’s MOBASH skatepark. The art decks will be displayed on May 4th, at the Brink Gallery in Missoula, MT where they will also begin the silent/online auction. So lookout for that come May! Visit the MSA website for more information.

Anything that keeps us active and off the streets is A-OK with me! 

I was super psyched to be given the opportunity to create work on a skate deck since I’ve never worked on a surface like this before. Prior to receiving the skate deck I had a few ideas in mind but nothing sounded as fun as creating a tree house and possibly a place where Animal Chin lives! (Special thanks to the BF, for telling me the Legend of Animal Chin.)

Here’s the fun process of finding Animal Chins House:

Step 1:  I started out with a quick sketch of the tree and a faint mapping of where I’d like to see the leaves.

Step 2:  I painted a thin layer of gesso on top of the sketch.
Step 3:  Laid out some color for the grass and painted layer of green as an underpainting for the tree.

Step 4:  Started to lay in some actual color for the tree trunk..There goes my boss…micromanaging.

Step 5:  Once I got the trunk texture down, I worked on the house, and added a thin layer of gesso on the stairs for later.

Step 6:  I started to work on the stairs, and the little look out point on the middle left making sure to use a slightly different wood tones for the stairs so the tree and wood wouldn’t blend.

Step 7:  I was really planning to keep the natural wood exposed for the finish but it was looking too brown and very monochromatic. (Boo.) So I placed some contact paper on the tree hou

Happy Monday! Here’s a quick watercolor to start off the week. This is a wolf I met at a place called Mission Wolf.

“There’s a Polar Bear
In our Frigidaire–
He likes it ’cause it’s cold in there.
With his seat in the meat
And his face in the fish
And his big hairy paws
In the buttery dish,
He’s nibbling the noodles,
And munching the rice,
He’s slurping the soda,
He’s licking the ice.
And he lets out a roar
If you open the door.
And it gives me a scare
To know he’s in there–
That Polary Bear
In our Fridgitydaire.”
― Shel Silverstein, A Light in the Attic

I sketched these little bubbies a while ago. I'm prepping for my big annual trade show and I decided that i needed to bite the bullet and watercolor them so they could go on a banner.

That's what I'm doing this week, designing banners, this is number five of six. I was hoping I'd be done Wednesday. Tomorrow for sure! Back on the horse ;)

This illustration appeared in last May's issue of the children's magazine Clubhouse Jr.
It's now available here in my Etsy Shop.

I don't know if I have any local readers, but in case I do I thought I'd bring up something very cool that's happening here in Dallas. Storyopolis Entertainment has established a speakers series featuring various children's book luminaries. The speakers give their presentations in both the Ball Park in Arlington and the Allen Public Library. Here are links to the list of speakers at both locations:
Ball Park: http://www.storyopolisentertainment.com/texas-rangers
Allen Public Library: http://www.storyopolisentertainment.com/allen

I went to see Raul Colon last month in Allen and really enjoyed the presentation. I'm going to try to see them all!