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I've been working on a painting that will hopefully make it into greeting card format before the holiday. If not, I'll just have a nice little wintry painting. The sketch above is a little teaser from my Moleskine. I'm completing the finished piece in watercolor, 20" x 16".

The birds, the snow, the icicles, my dogs, the trees, the mountains--these have been my personal solace in what has turned out to be a very challenging time for me. Sometimes life throws unexpected kinks into what you thought was a very well ironed-out plan. There is no way to prepare yourself for these shifts and changes. You may even have believed that you were prepared for them, should they ever happen. But no, you were not. The point of these challenges is not preparation; their purpose is to take you by surprise, shake you around, throw all your pieces up into the air and give you a chance to rearrange, realign. Find your meaning as you evaluate each little torn up piece. You pick yourself, tape it all together again. The result is not a new you but rather a fortified you. One that knows it can be shaken, deconstructed, and still come back together in one piece, stronger than before.

Cryptic, I know. It is to me too.

In my own piecing together I have noticed a few things. I have been feeling very poetic. My senses have awakened to the little details; the swishy sound of snow beneath my skis. The taste of dry powder versus heavy wet snow. The movement of an individual flake as it floats down and lands on my glove, where at just the right angle I can see all of its crystalline facets in the light of a street lamp. The smell of wet pine smoke rising from chimneys. The feel of cold below zero as it freezes the tiny hairs in my nostrils. I become overwhelmed by it all and scratch lopsided verses in my journal until I drift off to sleep and dream of my winter wonderland.

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I had a dream the other night about a bear opening our kitchen window and sticking his nose inside. It's that time of year when the last of the bears are frantically fattening up for winter--their footprints are everywhere in the surrounding woods, and their incidents of breaking and entering are all over the news. It's certainly enough to give anyone nightmares, and the heebie jeebies when taking out the trash at night. I'm hoping any bear that attempts to visit our cabin is the friendly sort.... or at least friendlier than the scary bear in my dream. Henceforth, my friendly doodle bear.

Tis also the time of year that my most frequent client is preparing for snow in their own feverish way. The result--I'm a busy busy bee. Holy graphic design in a hurry. Thank goodness because I could use some new warm wool socks.

Oh, and BTW, I am totally enamored with Pitt Pens. Especially my big fat set of brush tips in every color imaginable. Great fun.

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Hi, my name is Kate Hamilton. Jeff found me (or I found him) whilst Twittering one day which led to his eventual invitation to join SFG. Two weeks later... here I am.



So let's see, my name is Kate and I am a visual artist by profession. I'd call myself an "Illustrative designer" but I'm pretty sure someone else has coined that phrase.... Let's just say that I'm a creative. A designer/art director/illustrator dabbling in fine art and snow sports.



I am a former Philadelphia area resident now living in Winter Park, Colorado where there are two seasons: Winter and July. (Joke courtesy Eric Cartman). Seriously, it has snowed 8 inches since Saturday. The ground will remain white until May. Autumn ends in a blink. Luckily I love winter and I'm looking forward to the ski resort opening in a few weeks.

This is my website: Penguinart.com
I first registered that URL ten years ago when I left the U of Arts with lofty goals of illustrating children's books about penguins for the rest of my life. Long before the March of the Penguins made my favorite birds "trendy." It was also long before I ever knew I'd be moving to a ski town with 11 months of winter. I have been paid to draw penguins but not a whole book of them and certainly not enough to cover the rent, so I have adapted. And this month I have been officially 100% self-employed for 2 years and I love it more than anything.



You can see more of my work on my flickr page, and I am a contributor to the Illustration Friday Blog, however infrequently. On Twitter I'm katesnowbird, on Facebook I'm Kate Garchinsky Hamilton, and bah who cares about MySpace. Follow me around the web and you'll soon learn that I am very un-cool, I'm crazy about my two dogs, Maggie and Butters, I enjoy pastimes usually favorited by the elderly such as birdwatching and plein air painting, wine tasting and watching the National Geographic Channel. I think that in a past life I was a British landscape artist in the time of J.M.W. Turner. I find inspiration in the Wyeths, Audubon, Parrish and Pyle.

There. It's nice to meet you!

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