college years...

I was going through some things in my office today, trying to organize, and I ran across this drawing from college. It was for my Color & Design class my freshman year. Our final project was to create a color image of a fruit or vegetable using ruling pen, which is a truly horrific
device that many universities use to inflict pain and endless hours of agony upon young students (see the second picture). This drawing was just a preliminary sketch/study we had to do in pencil of our chosen fruit or vegetable. I chose a radish.

Looking back on it, there are things I would handle differently. Especially the leaves. They're so stiff, and kind of flat looking to me. The delicate nature of them doesn't appear to be conveyed in the drawing. But, I guess it wasn't too bad for an 18/19 year-old baby college student. Man, time sure does fly.

project for later

Dear Ehron,

Some of my family used to live in Germany for years. I visited them there with my mom and dad when I was young, about 4 or 5, and I surprisingly remember a lot of it. My oldest cousin, Ehron, even took me into her class for show-and-tell.

After the visit, Ehron and I became pen pals for a while. I saved all the letters and such. I found this and thought I would share it; its a picture of a unicorn that she drew for me. I think its pretty cute.

Old Illo

This is an illustration from a few years ago. It's a self mailer I did to get freelance work. I was just thinking about it today because I love my kitty so much. She's so cute!!!!! And that's my tiny robot clock too. Yep, its real folks.

Brittany

I was looking through some old sketchbooks today after work. There are a lot of things I started but for one reason or another, abandoned. One of them was a book about my little sister, Brittany.

My sister was born with a cleft lip and palate. She has been through a lot in her life even though she is only 25, including more than 10 surgeries(if my count isn't off). She went through speech pathology and hospital stays, 5 years of painful braces, kids taunting, teasing, and staring. She is strong.

Regardless of what she might say, she was the most adorable little kid. She was such a funny little tom boy, running around with more energy than imaginable in her pink 1980's running shorts.

A few years ago I wanted to write and illustrate a book about her experience growing up with a cleft lip and palate. How it was similar to and different from that of other children. I am currently working on a completely different childrens book though, which I have developed much much further along.

Maybe one day I will come back to this project though. Maybe if I get a book deal for the one I am currently working on(I can only imagine!) I will be able to create the book about my sister.

I scanned in and posted one of my sketchbook pages. It has some quick drawings of her face & her in a swimsuit(cute chubby baby legs & belly!) and some ideas I had for pages.

paper doll

when i was young, almost every year for my birthday my grandparents on my mom's side would give me a card that folded out and had a paper doll in it with all sorts of outfits to go along. i loved it and always wondered what she would look like each year.

so one summer day when i was staying with them, i decided it was time for me to make my own paper doll and
outfits to go with her.

i think for my age, around the same time period as "Bo-Bo", she didn't turn out too badly. lets call her sally. except that sally's feet are unusually large. and i didn't really know what a bra looked like yet, so its all wrong, as i later found out. but i'll let you judge for yourself!

so we have all the traditional things little girls think of. ballerinas, bunny slippers at night, fancy dresses, swimming, yada yada yada. if i made sally at this point in my life, she would have a very different wardrobe. maybe a brain surgeon, a special effects creator for scary bloody movies(my favorite!), an auto insurance adjuster, you know, the average womanly occupations of today's world.

p.s. if you zoom in on sally, you can see she has brown & green eyes like me!

Bo-Bo

I used to go over to my grandparents' house during the day in the summer while my parents were at work. My time was usually divided between playing outside with the kids down the street, and staying in drawing and sewing for hours at a time.

I recently came across a stack of drawings that I made one of those summers. I think I was about 8 or 9. I created this little character named Bo-Bo. I made 35 drawings of him doing different things, in different roles. They're pretty funny to look at now. So I thought I would share a few of them with you guys.

When looking at these, its pretty clear certain words, such as musician, were not in my everyday vocabulary yet. Its also evident I didn't know how to spell flying. And night time Bo-Bo looks high. Geese.