I found this little metal wash tub in a bag of things I had put in the studio and forgot about.  I came across it last night while I was looking for something and I thought it was big enough to add to my Tinsel stuff.  I picked it up at Michael's last spring when I was trying to find some things to draw.  I think I paid something like a dollar and a half or two dollars for it.  It was big enough to put Tinsel in the wash tub as if he were taking a bath.  So, I put him in there and I did a gesture drawing of it.  He's taking a bath in his wash tub. 

These two drawings were the most fun to do so far.  I put Tinsel in the chair, but the chair really is too big for him, so I had try to scale it down.  After I drew him in the chair I thought of a door, a lamp, and a window to add to the top picture.  In the second picture I added the table with some food on it and Tinsel sitting at the table ready to eat.  Again I thought of the door and window after I did the drawing of him at the table.  I think these two are my favorite one so far.

I wanted to try the chair again because I wasn't real happy with the way the first two drawings came out.  The top drawing I boogered up then crossed it out.  The second one isn't any better than the first two drawings I did on the previous page.  Oh well.  Move on.

Last Sunday, I went to an antique mall with my sister and my niece.  While I was there I found a small table with two chairs and two teddy bears sitting in the chairs.  I bought it thinking that I could maybe do some drawings of it with the bears.  While I was drawing Tinsel, I thought that he might need a chair to sit in.  I drew it from the front first then the side.

I keep wishing that I had more time to sit in the studio and really work on my illustrations, but I have to work to get paid so I can buy art supplies so I can do my illustrations.  Last night, I sat in the studio and I got some work done with my gesture drawings of Tinsel the Mouse.  I think I would like to write a story about him, but I don't have a story in my mind yet, just the idea that would like to write one about him.  I started out doing a couple of gesture drawings of Tinsel sitting.  Then I thought about what he would look like if he were in his bed sleeping, and that is what the second drawing is.

Here is another video of a classic picture book.  Hope you like this one.

Lesson two was loaded with the history of children's picture books.  Then I drew my own picture book template showing how a picture book story is blocked out.  And how the story moves along on the pages.  Next up is to go to the library and get my hands on some picture books and look at how they are actually printed out.  Where is all of the things on my template in this book or that book?  And to understand this, you have to go back to what you learned about story writing.  Your main character has to have struggle or problem to work through and he needs to come out of it changed either emotionally or physically. 

Enter a new little character, Tinsel the Christmas Mouse.  Tinsel is looking for the real meaning of Christmas.  Or he may be looking for Christmas joy and happiness.  I haven't decided what I'm going to have him do yet.  Now I have two fun ideas to play around with!

These are just some random poses of Madeline I did for fun.  What would she look like if she was so happy that she jumped in the air?  What would she look like if she were standing on one leg?  And a side view of Madeline, and Madeline looking for something to draw/paint in her sketchbook.

I wasn't real happy with the easel I did in the previous picture, so I tried to get a better idea of what a simple easel would like by just drawing it as simply as I could.  I like this one better.  The bottom picture is Madeline with her sketchbook looking for something to draw/paint.

The top picture is obviously Madeline's watercolor box (more artist materials) and the bottom drawing is one that I screwed up.  I didn't have anything in front of me when I began to draw and this is what happened.  I really need to have something to work from until I get to know it better then I can draw it from memory.

I did two more doodles of Madeline Bearcasso, and then I decided to give her an easel.  So I tried to show here doing a painting, or drawing.  If she is an artist bear then she needs to have some art materials.

These are just a couple of things I have around the studio.  My fan isn't getting used as much since the weather is cooling down. 

These are two sketchbook entries I did yesterday evening of Madeline Bearcasso and my pen/pencil holder and water containers.  I ended up having a busier weekend than I had intended and I didn't get any drawing done.  I sat down in the studio last night and got a bunch done.  I'm still working on the gesture drawings and learning to basically take notes with my scribble drawings.  They look like scribbles because they are scribbles.

The top drawing is just my pillow on my bed.  The bottom drawing is the wild thing stuffed animal that I picked up at the bookstore last week.  Now that Maurice Sedak's book "Where the Wild Things Are" is a movie, they are selling the little characters in bookstores.  When I was in first grade, we got to bring home the Scholastic Book Club flier that our teacher handed out to us once every month.  We had just moved to Kansas from Indianapolis that summer and this was my first time getting to pick my own books to read.  I picked "Where the Wild Things Are" because I liked the picture on the cover.  I wanted to know what the wild things were and where were they?  That was the first book I got to pick by myself from the Scholastic flier.  That became my favorite book for a long time.  I loved how when Max was wearing his wolf suit it helped him escape a punishment from his mother, and he goes off to an imaginary place where he is crowned King of the Wild Things.  When he got back from his imaginary journey, his mother had dinner ready for him, "and it was still hot."  All was right with the world again.  This week I am going to get Max in his wolf suit.

I didn't do as much drawing tonight because I had a really long day at work and I am pretty tired, but I want get more done tomorrow.  I'm still looking for a story to do a gesture drawing with.  I have to find one this week end and do the drawing. 

Here is a video of Where The Wild Things Are.  Enjoy!

I must be getting more tired as the week goes on because these don't look anything like they should.  The first one is my eyeglass case.  Boring!  The second is my flash light radio that keep by my bed for when we have storms in the middle of the night and the electricity goes out-I hate that!  That's the bigger shape, the smaller cylinder was Mom's flashlight that she kept by her chair in the living room for the same reason.  Now its mine.

Top picture is the stove top and the salt and pepper shakers on the back of it.  The rectangle above the stove is the light we use when we need to see what we are doing on the stove.  The bottom picture is my left hand.  People have always told me that if you want to learn to draw hands, draw your own.  That was pretty stupid to me because I could only draw my left hand since I'm right handed.  So I only know how to draw my left hand.  If you want to learn to draw hands, you need to draw other people's hands.

The potato brush is this round brush that Mom always used to clean the potatoes before she cooked them.  Now I use it when I make baked potatoes for me and Dad.  This thing has been around the kitchen for as long as I can remember.  I keep where Mom always kept it, hanging on the cabinet door over the stove.  The second one is the microwave oven and the paper towel holder sitting next to it.  I tired to show some of the stuff that is piled on the microwave, and its the only thing that looks like cooked spaghetti.  So I think I did that part right.

I didn't post anything last night because I was too tired and it was too late to post, but I did get some gesture drawings done.  I sat in the kitchen last night and found some things to draw.  The first drawing is the paper cup dispenser we have in the kitchen which has SpongeBob Square Pants cups in it ( this is mainly for my little nieces and nephews who come over and want some water or kool-Aide)  I think that was a paper cup in front of the dispenser.  The second drawing really looks like cooked spaghetti.  That was the can opener and the coffee maker on the counter.  You can't even tell what that is!  

The top drawing is my pink baseball hat that I have hanging on my bedpost in my room.  It was a gift from dad last summer.  The bottom drawing is my desk chair with my pillows stacked on it in my room.  They don't really look like cooked spaghetti yet.  I wish I could have done more drawings today, but I had to work, and that always seems to come before the things I want to do each day.  I hate that.  Tomorrow I will get more gesture drawings drawn in my sketchbook and posted here on my web page.

These are the plants we have in front of the picture window in the living room.  The bottom drawing is dad sitting in his recliner watching television this evening.

This is something that has been in my house since I was a kid.  It's a little black and yellow camera guy with a K on the camera.  Dad said that it is the Kraft Camera Guy.  Way back when, this little guy was on T.V. during commercial breaks because Kraft sponsored  a lot of T.V. shows in the fifties and sixties. 

This is my build-a-bear that I created this summer, Madeline Bearcasso.  I made her with the idea in my mind that I want to write stories about her, and then illustrate them.  I haven't done that yet, but I am still thinking about what kind of stories I will write and illustrate about her.  She is an artist bear that I created.  I think that when I do these drawings again, I will do them in pen so that they will show up better on the page.  I also did some gesture drawings of her ear ties and the clothes I have her in.

I am going to spend the next one to two weeks working on doing these gesture drawings so that I can get better at them.  The cool thing with this is that you can do them with anything, a landscape, object, person, or something from your imagination.  My homefun assignment is do try this with a story I am interested in, and to continue looking for the movement in things.  I am going to work on actually doing the drawing work.  This should be fun!

This is my first lesson from "Make Your Splashes, Make Your Mark" illustration course.  The whole idea was to work with gesture drawing.  You don't spend a whole bunch of time on these drawings becasue you are just getting the basic feel of the object, scene, or model on to paper.  I have done gesture drawing before, but when we did it in college in was the traditional kind of gesture drawing; you draw the object in a few seconds without worrying about the details and if it looks right, just get the feeling of it down.  I never spent much time on this kind of drawing because I was taught that it was more of a warm up exercise than anything else.  But it is a way to observe and get your ideas down on paper first before you do any serious drawing.

Not only can you make a wide range of tones by adding the queen color, blue-green- to you other two colors on either side of your dominant color, but you can leave the blue-green out completely and just mix your dominant color with one of it's BFFs.    These two colors will always be bright and not darkened when they are mixed together. 

And I have tell ya, when I was in Design Color class in college, we never learned this.  We did the really basic stuff like the primary colors, and the secondary colors and how to get them, and the tertiary colors and how to get those, but we never learned that you could actually paint a picture using only two to four colors on your color wheel.  And when I took Watercolor Painting in college, I had to paint a traditional color wheel on large watercolor paper.  It looks really great, but then what do you do with it?  That kind of education means that you have a very basic understanding of colors, but you don't really know what to do with them, or how to use them in final piece of work.  And that is not as helpful as this information is.

The important thing to remember about this color selection is that when you add blue-green to any of these colors, you will get wide range of mid-tones.  Red is king, and blue-green is the queen.  When you pick your dominant color for you picture, you will be using the color opposite that color on the color wheel to get your other tones.  Then you use those tones in the painting you are going to paint.  And these tones can be very extensive depending on how much mixing you want to do.

My last lesson taught me that I can create a whole picture using just two colors and all the ranges of color in between them when they are mixed.  Now we are adding two more colors.  When you do a painting, you want to pick a dominant color such as red.  This color has two BFFs, and they are orange, and red purple.  This means that red and orange will look good together, and red an red purple will look good together.  The color opposite the red on the color wheel is the blue-green. 

I am not sure if I have done this exercise right or not.  I sort of did the same thing with red and blue green as I did with the orange and the blue on the color wheel.  I made red my dominate color and then added blue green to the red as I made my darker shades.  I tried to get as close to a shadow color as I could for the cast shadow.  I also chose to do one of these without and outline and one with an outline to see which one looks better.  I usually do my drawings with a black line then color them in with watercolors or colored pencils, but I'm not sure if that would be considered the same as adding another color (black) to the picture.  It's just that sometimes I feel like I have more control over the drawing when I do it in a black outline then color it in.  But this also looks a little too stiff, and rigid.  The bigger drawing looks more relaxed.  I'm not sure which one I like better.

This was my painting I did in two colors.  I was trying to make most of the painting in orange, but I'm not sure if I succeeded at that.  The colors look more even to me than that.  To do the eyes and nose, I mixed the Cadaminium Orange and Cobalt Blue together until I got a blackish color.  For the shading, I mixed the Cadiminium Orange and Cobalt Blue in different amounts to get the shading I thought was right.  Another thing I wasn't sure about was whether or not I should have used a black pen for an outline like I do in some of my sketchbook entries.  For me, that defines the subject more.  I didn't have a story, and I didn't have a photograph that I liked to do this assignment, so I drew from the actual subject.  I realized that to do a painting in two colors and take into consideration the shading of the object, you have to mix your two colors in various amounts.  I'm not sure if I like this painting, and I'm also not sure if I did it right.  But I tried.

I haven't posted anything on here in awhile because I have been a little busy here at home.  At least I finally got something on here again.

Actually, this was Lesson 11 of my color course from Mark Mitchell.  I put one brush stroke against the other to see what would happen.  I tried to do this with each of the colors and their compliments, and I did a couple of them more than once because I thought I had used too much paint and I simply ended up making a puddle that didn't seem to do much color-wise.  I'm not sure if I did these correctly or not.  But, I tried.

I am still working on the power color course I am getting in my e-mail.  I decided to not just read about mixing complimentary colors, but to try it myself and see what I get.  I used Cadaminium Orange and Cobalt Blue because those are the only two colors on my color wheel that you don't have to mix.  You can use them straight from the tube with a little water.  I learned that depending on which color you are adding to, you can different shades of brown and muddy brown.  In the first line of colors, I added the blue to the orange and I got different shades of brown.  But when I added orange to the blue, I went from a slate blue to a muddier brown color.  I got to thinking that maybe if you had just about the same amount of each color and mixed them together you would probably get two different outcomes.  I was right.  I started with orange again, and then I tried to add about the same amount of blue and I got a brown color.  When I started with blue and added about the same amount of blue I got a muddier brown color.  You will get two different outcomes when you mix the same two colors together because of what color you dominated/or started with.

My next homefun assignment is to paint a picture using just two colors from my color wheel, and using the different shades of each mixture I come up with.  Something tells me it is easier said than done.  I have to decide what it is I am going to paint, and then go for it.  Wait until tomorrow.

I read through lessons 5 through 9, there wasn't a lot to do in the way of painting, but I went back and re-read lesson 5 and I decided to see if the colors oppisite each other on the color wheel actually did brighten up when they are placed next to each other as Goethe had discovered.  I ran into a couple of problems here.  My colors were washier than what I came up with on the color wheel because the colors I squeezed out on my palette have hardened, so I wasn't using globs of color to mix my colors.  They were really more like washes.   Also, I used the remaining colors that I had already mixed on some of the colors,  so when you add water to revive them, they got washier as well.  When I was doing my color wheel, I noticed that I was having trouble getting my purples right.  On my completing colors, my purple and red purple look too much alike.  Since I used a cheap piece of water color paper for this experiment, I think that may have had an effect on the paint as well.  I may try this again in a day or two.

This was my next lesson in the Power Color course.  I had to do a homefun assignment (homefun not homework because if you are doing art and it seems like you are working at it, then you probably shouldn't be doing art.) which was to do a color wheel I could be proud of. (Basically, do the color wheel again.) I used a ruler this time to get my lines straight, and I drew around the bottom of a small bottle to get my circles looking the same size.  The only color that really seemed to give some trouble was the blue purple color.  If I added to much Alzirian Crimson to the Ultramarine Blue, then would be more of a purple red color.  If I added too much Ultramarine Blue then it was more of a purple color.  I really had to mess with that one for a while, but I think I got it right.  This color wheel didn't take as long as the first one I did.  I think it might be because I had better idea of what I was trying to accomplish.  I like this color wheel a lot better than the first one.

I did this wheel last night.  I was dead tired, but I really wanted to get on to the next lesson, so I stayed up a little later than usual to do it.  I was planning on getting pleanty of sleep last night, but my dog, Calvin, kept waking me up to go outside.  At least I thought that was what he wanted until I tried to put him out at 3:30 this morning.  I opened the back door and he just stood there and sniffed the air then turned around and went back into the kitchen.  I closed the back door and went back to bed.  At 4:30 this morning, Calvin was right there scratching on the side of my bed wanting to go out.  I stumbled into the kitchen with my dog right behind me, and this time he went out.  Good.  I thought.  Now I can go back to bed and get some sleep.  Next thing I know it's 6:00 in the morning and Calvin is not only scratching on the side of my bed to get my attention, but he is also barking at me.  I looked over the side of the bed and all I see are these two little black eyes staring at me and a little black nose sniffing the air.  This time, he wouldn't follow me to the back door.  By this time, that dog was getting on my last nerve.  He was terribly active, so I got dressed and we went for a quick walk around the block.  It was still dark outside; cool and quiet.  After the walk and a shower, it was off to the grocery store this morning.  When I got back, I was so tired all I wanted to do was lay down and sleep.  I slept for a few hours then got up again.  Because of all of that, I didn't have the energy to go on to the next color lesson.  I wanted to do something, so my sketchbook entry was it for today. 

I can't wait for summer vacation!

I came across a web site that I am very interested in.  It's called howtobeachildrensbookillustrator.wordpress.com.  I happened on it while I was reading the posts on the EDM (Everyday Matters) web site.  This is a really cool site!  This man who has illustrated children't books and magazines runs this really cool web site/blog on illustration children's books.  He also offers a course on illustrating children's books for about $216.00 which isn't really bad at all.  I was thinking of signing up for the course, but I wasn't sure if I would be able to do the work.  Mark Mitchell offers a Power Color course free of charge so if anyone is interested in the course, they can try out that part of it for free.  That is what I am doing now.  The first thing he has a doing is making a color wheel.  This si not a typical color wheel like what we learned in school.  Mark uses a different set of watercolor paints for his wheel.  I spent some time this evening working on this.  I think I did it right, but I'm not sure.  I screwed up the blue purple spot on my wheel, but I tried to re-do it next to the spot I screwed up.  If his whole course is this much fun and interesting, then I am going to think more seriously about taking this course. 

I love children's books!  I have wanted to write and illustrate one myself, but I don't know how to begin, or what to actually do.  Mark goes into the business of children's book illustration and you learn how to present your work to publishers.  I would love to get into this area of art!

This is a picture I did a few weeks ago.  I didn't feel well for quite a while and I didn't get much done artistically.  This is a bigger version of the Seussical bending buildings I like to draw.

I actually did this drawing a while back with the intention of posting it here on my web page, but because I was sick for a while and trying to work, I didn't get the chance to post this until now.

This was my collage that I was working on.  I found the little clown shapes at the dollar store last week when I was out hunting for collage items.  They were part of the back to school stuff they had.  Of course, these are just made out of green paper not card stock.  If you want good card stock items like that, you would have to go to The Supply Closet-a teacher's store.  I kinda like this one better than the Artist's Muse Game project because I like the colors.   I like pinks, blues, and purples. 

 I shuffled the clowns around until I came up with this arrangement, then I traced around two of my french curves and cut them out, and arranged them the way you see them here.  The only problem was the white background of the board I was using.  Too much white!  Since it was clown oriented, I wanted to make the background colorful and kinda fun, so I just splashed watercolors all over the board to give it a background, then I glued my shapes in place. It was still needing something.  I dug through my collage box and found the ribbon, so I used that as a border around the whole picture.  Now, whether or not I mangaed to pull this into a whole picture with a center of interest, I'm not sure.  I'm going to wait until tomorrow after work and then take a second look at it and decide that.

This is my project that I finally did for the Artist's Muse Game.  I picked the puzzle piece as my design subject, then I picked red as my primary color, purple as my secondary color, and black for the muted color.  I'm not very satisfied with this project.  When you play this game, you are suppose to do the projects in watercolor, but this was a large project, and I think the watercolors are too washy.  The larger the area was, the harder it was to get a solid color.  The smaller the area was, the easier it was to get a solid color.  I think this would have come out better if I had done it in colored pencils.

This is the first webpage I have ever had.  I want to use this as a place where I can share my artwork and do a some writing.  I want to start a blog about what I am doing as an artist and what I want to do in the future as an artist.  I have posted a picture that I finished last week.  I basically just doodled it out and I call it The Emerald Sea Creatures.