Their Hearts and Eyes are Golden

For a while now I've been keeping record of all my Tarot readings and interpretations, written in a notebook that I use specifically for Tarot. I think Tarot reading is pretty fun and useful— I read the cards to clear my mind and to sort my thoughts, much like guided introspection. A journal for secret little internal explorations deserves a special cover, so I painted an alternate version of a favorite Neatbook page, Tree Children.



By the time the first Tarot journal was filled, I'd grown so accustomed to the cover that I didn't want to let it go. I decided to paint the same image on the next two, with varying background colors. I think it's interesting how differently the covers came out, considering they came from the same initial drawing.  It was a fun and frustrating experiment, though not one that I'll be repeating any time soon!



Happy as I am with the copies, the first is still my favorite. Someday I hope to take a screen printing class, and once I've learned and gathered what I need, this will be the first thing on my screen printing to-do list.

I actually painted a different and redrawn version on a larger notebook, but after some consideration, I decided I didn't like the size for a Tarot Journal. I have other plans for that notebook, so I'll save it for another time.

On an unrelated note— Let's pretend that I did not completely miss a full month of blogging.
Technically, today is April 1st, but if I pretend this is March 31st, will you promise not to tell?
Shh... It will be our little secret.

In Circles

Another from the neatbook, portraits in circles. The bear and the freckled girl in the upper right are my favorites. Click the image to enlarge.

King of Newts

Above, I present to you the good King Edmund-- the great and gentle giant bearded newt, lord of all newts, and protector of rivers and rolling hills. Often on warm days he can be seen emerging from the waters to bask in the sun and watch children play in the shallows. Click the image to view larger.

Doodles of this fellow have been in my sketchbooks for quite some time now, and I am happy to have finally done something about it. This was a fun one, with a few experiments along the way. The tree and the water are things I tried to tackle differently from how I normally might, and I am pretty proud of them. There is nothing so satisfying as the completion of a new painting.

Below, you can see the sketch to final. Start from the bottom left.
As always, click the image to view larger.



It has been too long since my last post, again not for lack of things to be posted. For some reason I always wait, I hold on to things before posting them. That, and I have a terrible tendency to all but forget/ignore the existence of the internet for long stretches of time. A few of many New Year's resolutions: blog more often, don't hold back, have no shame or fear, find balance, get it together.

See you soon, friends. All my love.

Happy Halloween!

Here's a new painting just in time for Halloween!
It's the time of year for scaring, sharing, costumes, and candies!

My plans for this weekend: Watch something fun and spooky, eat things with pumpkin in them, and hand out sweets to all the cute little witches and devils of the neighborhood. I'm so looking forward to all the costumes! Happy Halloween 2010!

The Telephone Series

Looks a bit familiar, doesn't it?

It's the third and final part of the Telephone series!
I'd been meaning to make a third piece from the very beginning, while working on the first and second parts of the series, over 2 years ago. I put the project off to the side for the longest time, but now it's here and finally, the Telephone series is complete:

Secrets, Telephone, Tangle.



It's strange to think that this is really the only sequential series of paintings in my entire portfolio... Perhaps there will be more in the future, who knows.

Looking at the three together, there's a small but noticeable difference in style over the years, though the basics of my sensibilities and style have not much changed. I tried to match the third piece to the original two, but little differences in the faces in particular came up that I didn't noticed until the end. I also had to do a bit of digital color correcting after I scanned it in, as I'm apparently a lot heavier handed with my colors than I used to be. Differences and all though, I am thrilled. I feel a nice sense of accomplishment now that this series is complete.

I love it, I love it, I love it.