Sketch of Lucci

This is a sketch that I did over my latest vacation while my son Lucci took a nap. I just particularly like this one as I think I caught a good likeness of him.

Stationary illustration

This job was done for a couple moving house who had ties to Canada. They requested Canadian geese flying through the air on postcard size cream card-stock. This they wanted to be able to add into an envelope with a letter or send on it's own in the post. The font was required to be Erica's handwriting.

Sincere Deceit Book Cover Illustration

This is the second book cover that I did for John Eidemak. A new book cover illustration for the second edition publication of his book titled Sincere Deceit was needed.

After discussing the author's wishes for the cover, I provided 3 initial thumbnail sketches.

The top one on the left was the one closest to what the author had specified that he wanted. In the end, this was the sketch chosen for me to pursue.










So I worked up a more detailed sketch for the client including some text to indicate where I intended it to be placed.








The final painting was done in acrylic on board. They chose to go with a different placement of the text than I had designed. They really should have let me know they intended to do this because the final cover has the window with missing parts to it's framing.

Book Cover for John Eidemak's Upcoming New Crime Novel

Oil painting on canvas with text added afterwards.

Author John Eidemak hired me to do the art and design for his upcoming new crime novel about a London barrister whose wife and child are murdered. His wife was a ballet dancer and he becomes involved with her sister, another dancer.

This is all I know! We shall have to wait for his book to come out to find out the rest of the story.

Detail of the two dancers.

He has now hired me to re-do the cover of his already published book titled Sincere Deceit. Check it out on Amazon:
John Eidemak on Amazon

Fine China Illustrations for Rude-Chintz

A start-up company named Rude-Chintz hired me to create three designs for fine china tea sets. All with a traditional look on first glance but if viewed closely revealing a "rude" aspect to them. Due to the nature of the work, I can only show one of the designs with an area deliberately out of focus!

Delft inspired Farm Scene for the center of a plate.

Book Cover for Telling Stories in the Dark

My grandfather has written a wonderful book on how to tell "head stories", as my family has always called them, to your children titled Pete Seeger's Storytelling Book. It is out of publication now, and he wants to do a second publication with the new title of Telling Stories in the Dark (the name he originally wanted for it.)
He asked me to illustrate a new book cover for it. I recently completed a version of it. I'm not sure that this will be what goes to print. I put some text in to indicate where I intended it to go. No doubt when an art director is involved, there will be changes requested.

My Wedding Invitation Artwork

Columbine block print

 I

Well, five years down the road, I thought I might post the artwork I made for my wedding.

I've been bidding for freelance jobs on Freelancer, and have come to realize that while my versatility as an artist is pretty broad, in an effort to keep my portfolio consistent, I have not shown a lot of the work I've done in the past on my website. (That said, it's also terribly out of date! I really must get on that one.)

My blog seems like an appropriate venue to showcase some of the other things that I've been up to as an artist!

Columbine block print II

First version of doves that I didn't end up using.

Kissing Doves - part of my save-the-date mailer

Columbine Heart - this had text in the center and was used as my save-the date mailer.

This is the Doves Block Print that I used for my actual wedding invitation. Each one is numbered and is an original artwork. I used an overlay on a semi-transparent vellum with the details of the wedding.

This was the border I created for my Valentine's Day engagement announcement. I had text in the center.

Dryads In The Haze Of Morning- New Drawing

This is a drawing I worked on over the Summer which comes from a series that I've been working on for some time depicting spirits of the elements. I've got two large paintings titled Flamenco and Splash which represent fire and water. This is a preliminary study for a large painting to represent earth. I'm not quite satisfied with it yet, it still needs some work, but I'm pleased enough with it to want to share it. I've also got it in mind to build another series with this style of detailed pen and ink depicting literary and myth subjects.

Moody Moments from My Visual Diary

Here's some of the more personal images over the past couple of months from My Visual Diary project. Self-portraits of various kinds, dealing with some of my darker moments. The assignment: no more than 30 minutes, with no photo reference, only my memory of the day as my guide.

August 17, 2013 Walking on Eggshells

August 20, 2013 Job Interview

September 3, 2013 Strung Out

September 30, 2013 Falling

October 9, 2013 Drawing

Images of Summer from My Visual Diary Project

July 15, 2013 Moths

Well, the Summer has slipped away and I thought I would share some of my favorite pieces from My Visual Diary project that I began on July 1st of this year. The assignment: no more than 30 minutes, with no photo reference, only my memory of the day as my guide.

July 17, 2013 Fireflies

July 19, 2013 Hornets, Wasps, and Bees Everywhere

July 20, 2013 Ashes

July 25, 2013 Hugging Mom

August 5, 2013 First Time Underwater!

August 11, 2013 Our Sandcastle

August 14, 2013 Blackberries Everywhere

August 15, 2013 My Little Friend

Greeting Card Collections

I've been building collections of greeting cards with six different paintings in each. I've been selling them both individually and in sets at my various shows and am thinking about adding them for sale on my Etsy site.

This is the first collection of fruits and vegetables.

I've also done a collection of butterflies and dragonflies as part of my "Little Gem" series with one hummingbird thrown in, but I plan to do another whole series of birds.

My most recent series that I'm still building is my Dancing Dandelions collection. I've got one more to do to have a set of 6 different cards.

 And new on the scene, as of this past week, I started doing abstracted floral watercolors that I showed in my last blog, but I'll add them in again because I'm excited about doing more of these!