I was offered an opportunity to do a show with my husband at a downtown gallery. Not having any paintings did seem like a bit of an obstacle. After a year without touching traditional media I steeled my nerves, quashed my insecurities and dipped a toe back in. I now have three new works in watercolor.

2011 was a busy year and in spite of the personal and national economy, not too shabby. It was a year filled with art, music, and general and miscellaneous creativity for my whole family. Tim the Husband achieved some great success with his art and his bluegrass band The Hey Brothers. The High Schoolers immersed themselves utterly in marching band. The Odyssey of the Mind team went to World-Freakin-Finals. I started playing euphonium in the Town Band, had a great big birthday party with great friends and music.

Oh, and I did some art. I finally became fluent in Photoshop and my web portfolio is now completely digital. I did lots of personal development pieces and some very rewarding assignments. I can't wait to see what comes next. Shine on you crazy 2012!

In this month's issue of Highlights For Children, some of the art for How I Became a Halloween Hero by Sandra Breswetherick.

My newest developmental piece took an insane amount of time, a staggering number of layers, sketches, revisions, backtracking, and some of the bugs are still missing arms! But I am glad that I have finally done a line art piece at this scale. I never would have believed this was possible even just two years ago, thank you brush and ink, thank you Photoshop and Wacom.

Trying some textured and colored line. Eh, not sure if I like it.

I was able to get back to this sample last week and finished it off. I always hated pen line art - too scratchy, too permanent - but a few years ago I discovered brush + photoshop. Oh brush, how I love you. Oh photoshop, you complete me.

I've had the pleasure of doing a lot of work for the wonderful folks at the National Fire Protection Association for the ongoing fire safety awareness program featuring Sparky the Firedog. He's a real hero! I did much of the artwork for their new Sparky the Firedog Birthday Party Kit. They also have a fun interactive website for kids here.

My phone doodle became a chef.

So this is the complete page from that last very sad drawing I did. It really isn't any more uplifting. Welling up a bit here...but there is hope! This story doesn't have a sad ending!
And this is from earlier in the story. I found myself myself chuckling a bit as I worked on it; just one of the benefits that come with the job (but not paid vacation, 401K, health coverage, diversity days, sick days, maternity leave, dental insurance, or disability insurance, sigh...)

I needed to draw to bring a little joy into my day and this is what I came up with...

New website announcement/holiday greetings. Multi-tasking mailer.

I've been expanding my portfolio and my skills lately. Here's another anthropomorphic animal image in the new style. It is a pencil drawing, scanned, digitally colored in Photoshop. This is just the bottom portion of the image; I'm still fooling around with the top. I love doing these though still insecure about where exactly I am going. Tim is building a new portfolio site for me - just a splash page so far but I love it: www.karenleeillustration.com

From my own project. I still need to add a figure to the upper left and upper right.

No, not me. Another sample: pencil with Photoshop.

I'm going to call this one a success. It flowed a bit - it was painless, almost entirely fun to do, and super quick - start to finish in about ten hours. But come to think of it - shouldn't start have been on the left, finish on the right? Aggh, back to the drawing board (thank goodness for Photoshop)

I recently spoke my rep Maggie Byer-Sprinzeles about ways I could expand my portfolio. She suggested trying to reach a younger market, adding anthropomorphic animals, perhaps doing something more painterly. This is my first stab at it and it has been incredibly fun. After a few little thumbnail character sketches I dove into the full sketch - maybe it took three hours - then scanned and tweaked in Photoshop. I am coloring it digitally - Photoshop as well. I have finally achieved enough ease working digitally that it has become a right brain process and not the mental torture it used to be for me.

Poem: "One reason I like opera," by Marge Piercy, from Colors Passing Through Us (Knopf).

One reason I like opera

In movies, you can tell the heroine
because she is blonder and thinner
than her sidekick. The villainess
is darkest. If a woman is fat,
she is a joke and will probably die.

In movies, the blondest are the best
and in bleaching lies not only purity
but victory. If two people are both
extra pretty, they will end up
in the final clinch.

Only the flawless in face and body
win. That is why I treat
movies as less interesting
than comic books. The camera
is stupid. It sucks surfaces.

Let's go to the opera instead.
The heroine is fifty and weighs
as much as a '65 Chevy with fins.
She could crack your jaw in her fist.
She can hit high C lying down.

The tenor the women scream for
wolfs down an eight course meal daily.
He resembles a bull on hind legs.
His thighs are the size of beer kegs.
His chest is a redwood with hair.

Their voices twine, golden serpents.
Their voices rise like the best
fireworks and hang and hang
then drift slowly down descending
in brilliant and still fiery sparks.

The hippopotamus baritone (the villain)
has a voice that could give you
an orgasm right in your seat.
His voice smokes with passion.
He is hot as lava. He erupts nightly.

The contralto is, however, svelte.
She is supposed to be the soprano's
mother, but is ten years younger,
beautiful and Black. Nobody cares.
She sings you into her womb where you rock.

What you see is work like digging a ditch,
hard physical labor. What you hear
is magic as tricky as knife throwing.
What you see is strength like any
great athlete's. What you hear

is still rendered precisely as the best
Swiss watchmaker. The body is
resonance. The body is the cello case.
The body just is. The voice loud
as hunger remagnetizes your bones.

The kids are back to school and I totally needed some fun in my life today. Found some in Photoshop.