It's been awhile since I have done larger mosaics. I have been concentrating on doing a series of mini mosaics for local art fairs. Most of these range in sizes from 4x4, 4x6, 5x7 to 8x8, They are quick, fun to create and they sell. I belong to a local Art Group in Rancho Santa Margarita, CA. One the participants is the coordinator for gathering the art for the walls, essentially setting up Art shows for the City of Hope Cancer Center in Irvine. So a lot of the local Artists in Orange County, CA have been submitting their art for these 6 month shows. I was asked to submit some mosaics as she h ..read more

Last Christmas I was commissioned to do a Sailboat Sunset for a client's future father-in-law. I have never attempted a gradated mosaic. I have done so in drawing, but never with glass. Initially I found it rather stressful and found I was overthinking it. I gathered all of my yellows, oranges, reds, shades of blue and sketched out approximately where I wanted to have the variations of color. From there it was just a matter of cutting the glass and positioning pieces until I liked the way the transitions from light to dark looked. I did print out a few photos of sunsets to give me an idea of ..read more

This coming Saturday September 23rd, 2017 I will be a vendor again for the Art/Wine Fundraiser for the Animal Rescue in Modjeska Canyon. I have been working on some new watercolor and colored pencil drawings, still experimenting with both mediums. I am really enjoying the learning process. This is a recent drawing of Blackstar Canyon. I also have been doing more drawings of beach scenes, specifically the Cornwall England coastline. I'm a huge fan of the PBS series Poldark and I was inspired to look for some coastal images of the bluffs and sea. These originals are 6x9 and are a blend of wat ..read more

Recently I received a commission from a lovely lady in Tel Aviv, Israel to draw her pup Wasabi. It is such a blessing to create memories of our fur babies. I really enjoy doing special commissions. The drawing will be an 8x10 rendition. I am working on Stonehenge Lightweight paper for the first time. I will be using mainly Caran d'Ache Luminance pencils and a few Faber-Castell Polychromos. This is the photo reference I will be working from. He is so regal. I love the pop of color with the rose. I started work on him the last week of August. I normally will work all areas of a drawing at once ..read more

Last month I purchased some Albrecht Durer Watercolor pencils. I love the look of Watercolor, but have I have trouble controlling where the color goes if I use only a brush. So, I purchased 3 Aquash water brushs by Pentel. I really love how these brushes give me more control because I can lay the color down in the area I want and then go over it with the water brush. When the pencil is dry, I can layer over the image with colored pencil to refine detail. What is even more fun, is I can then go back and forth with the watercolor pencils, and colored pencil applying layer after layer. When addi ..read more

Taking a brief break from the Glass on Glass Floral Mosaics. I picked up my Colored Pencils again & have been working on a series of Rural Villages, Colorful Alleyways and Old Ruins. I was fortunate to get a set of Caran d'Ache Colored Pencils for a great bargain & wanted the chance to test them out. I wanted to see how they performed compared to my Caran d' Ache Pablos & Prismacolors. Happily, I really like them. They work well with all my other pencils and I have no problem with breakage. The drawing on the left is of a 600 year old village in Zhongtian, Hunan, China. This one w ..read more

Earlier this year I was asked to do a mosaic depicting the spiral of the yellow brick road. I spent many months just trying to picture how I wanted this to look. I finally decided on showing Oz through Dorothy's perspective before she stepped out of her house after landing in Munchkinland. My idea was to show what she might have seen through the window of her bedroom. I purchased an old window frame, stripped and stained it a dark walnut. The window glass was epoxied in so it would not come out. I then taped a large sketch I did on newsprint to the back of the window so I would have a guidelin ..read more

I decided to try a different type of mosaic than what I usually do. This type of mosaic is called glass on glass. I adhere stained glass right on top of clear glass in a frame. The series I have spent most of the spring and summer doing I have titled Floral Fantasy. The piece below is 12x36. These have been a lot of fun to do. I have enjoyed doing these, and they look pretty spectacular with the light shining through. They can be hung in a window, or on a wall ..read more

Decided I needed to stretch myself a bit and work larger. This drawing/painting is 8x24 and so far the largest piece I have worked on. I chose birds again, however this time the Southern Carmine Bee Eater. They are a lovely bird, with bright pinks and rusty reds with brilliant blue hues on the head & tail. This is a migratory species, spending the breeding season, between August and November, in Zimbabwe, before moving south to South Africa for the summer months, and then migrating to equatorial Africa from March to August. They live across sub-equatorial Africa, ranging from KwaZulu-Natal ..read more

Decided to do a couple of butterflies per request. These images are 5x7 and will be matted and possibly framed in time for the Artisan Faire December 20th ..read more