Illustration Friday's topic this week was refrain. I needed a break from working on my children's book app (no title yet) so I decided to just submit a drawing. I have always loved this trick and know how much restraint it takes to not eat something you really want.

Secret

Illustration Friday's topic was "Secret." To me a good secret is always shocking, I wonder what her secret is?

Loafosaurus

There are a lot of frustrations that come from having Celiac disease. Always checking to see if what I'm eating has gluten (wheat, barley, etc...) in it. Even eating out has its hazards because of cross contamination, I have gotten sick many times from not being cautious enough. I did this piece to have fun with some of those frustrations and here is the result.

Entangled

New Illustration Friday submission. Topic "Entangled" 

When I was playing in the backyard with my daughter I tied Roxy (my dog) around a tree. I pointed out a squirrel to my daughter. We then watched it run around the branches of the tree. Roxy was also following the squirrel and she got tangled up. The entangled topic reminded me of this event and I decided it would be fun to exaggerate it. 

Secret Admirer

When I first started dating Ashley I brought her flowers for helping me with a paper. She wasn't home but her mom answered and looked at me weird and said "are you sure you want to give these to her?" I hesitantly said yes. Later I talked to Ashley about it and she told me that whenever a boy gave her flowers she immediately dumped him.

I am grateful that she stuck with me, and I haven't bought her flowers since. j/k

Picky Whale

I had the idea for this painting for a long time now and just got around to executing it. This was so much fun to work on and I cant wait to hang it in my daughters room.

I spent another 2 hours tweaking this painting. I think this is the best plein air painting I have done. It was really fun to get back to oil paints, I hope to go out more especially in the winter (my favorite time of the year).

Regi the Rhino is FINISHED!

I just finished my first book! Here are two of my favorite pictures that I worked on. If everything works out it should be available toward the end of November. So here I am crossing my fingers that it actually happens that way.

Me and my daughter were scribbling in church today. I saw this in her drawing and decided to try painting it on my phone. I am terrible at drawing with my finger but this turned out to be the only presentable thing I have done on it. Overall I think this was about 20 mins. I love watching Ady, who just turned 2, draw and adapting her images into what I see in them.

Back to Oil

This is my first attempt at oil painting after about a year absence from the medium. This was a 2 hour on site study. I cant wait to finish other projects so I can finish this one up! I painted this on top of ceder mountain, in Emery County, looking over window blind canyon. (I am helpless with names of places, and people too for that matter, so I could be way off.)

P1- Regi the Rhino lived in a tree. P2 - Well it wasn't actually a tree. P3 - It was a Treehouse!

I am almost finished with Regi the Rhino! This book was written by Emily Huntington and should be out sometime in mid November. Ill post the date when things become more concrete. This book has been a blast to work on!

These portraits, from the Jane Austen app, were a great challenge. It was refreshing to work in a new way and style. There are 16 portraits all with their own frame. 

The biggest thing that threw me while working on this app was how time consuming it was to re-size each painting to fit the particular format of the screen. 

I have been really busy this summer. I spent most of my time working on this Jane Austen app. This is the main page of the app.

A school just recently asked me to help with their Anti-Bullying campaign. I left off all the contact information, but this shows the concept.These posters will have a text line as well as a website that students can report unfair treatment to.
I don’t consider myself to be a typographer or a typophile in any way, far from it in fact, but it is nice to experiment with type once in a while.