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At a recent SCBWI Illustration Workshop I had the opportunity to get tips and advice from inspiring illustrator Eliza Wheeler. Her presentation left me eager to get back home and experiment with watercolors some more. Watercolors are tough. They require a lot of patience and planning. These are two traits that I have a limited supply of and always need to work on integrating into the illustrator part of my life. Watercolors however, are one of the beauties in life that can inspire me to give … [Read more...] about Being Drawn Into Stories

One of my favorite illustrators is Norman Rockwell. He often illustrated children in their most awkward and vulnerable moments. I believe it's in those moments that we can find out the most about ourselves. And it is in those findings that we can see truly how we need to relate to one another. For if we see that we are weak, strong, brave, or unsure, then certainly others are as well. To know how we'd like others to respond to our propensities, we can then ascertain how we should respond to … [Read more...] about The Simplest of Moments Provide Profound Insights

I spent all day yesterday gardening in the great outdoors, so today as it poured outside, I brought some of the memories of working outdoors on the farm to my blank page. I'm still struggling with markers so I figured the more I work with them the better I'll get. I had some photos that I'd taken a year ago as the fields yellowed and vibrant color dressed the trees. Then there was a morning where frost blued the remaining green grasses and sparkled on the heads of brown weed stalks at the … [Read more...] about Famous Cattle Art

Collecting wild things was an exciting part of my youth. My siblings and I were collectors of frogs, field mice, dandelions, acorn caps, and a few edible items like raspberries along the fence line and hickory nuts from the pasture. Of course we had to watch out for the ones that were crusty with cow leftovers. These are the memories that I draw from for my art and in my writing. Author Bruce Handy wrote in his book, WILD THINGS The Joy of Reading Children's Literature as an Adult, about how … [Read more...] about Wild Things

Before we tore off the old porch on our house, I would bring the last few harvest items from my yard and leave them there in the cool evening shadows of the porch. The last apples from the tree were now handy for a quick apple pie. Carrots, crusty with dirt, could be scrubbed up and steamed to savor like fresh picked jewels, for at least a month after the garden had been closed down. This last fall I brought the few remaining beets from the garden, into our new, smaller porch, just as all the … [Read more...] about Apple head Dolls