Hope springs eternal. Even though we're looking at a train wreck happening at 12:01 on January 20th, my hope is that the little message these kids are sporting will somehow come to pass. Like I said - hope springs eternal. I think I'm going to stick my fingers in my ears and do "lalalala I can't hear you" for the next four years. I think that's the only way I'll get through. I'm going to try to concentrate on positive things instead of obsessing over . . . all of that. I managed to scritch out this little piece over new year's, even though my hands and wrists are still stiff. I'm looking f ..read more

My "Red Scott Tartan" watercolor from a few years ago. No new Christmas art this year, sorry. This is a heavier post than I usually do, but I need to vent, so here goes. The Holidays. (insert heavy sigh here) This year they are more challenging to get through than usual.  The past several months have been difficult, with the last two being particularly hard. My Mom went into the hospital with 'aging issues' (sparing you the details), which was traumatic and exhausting. She is now mostly better, but I've had to arrange care for her, and that's been another huge emotional and physical ..read more

My homage to Fall. Someone on FB suggested I call this one "Squans". (Get it? squash + swans) I love that! This was drawn with Prismacolor pencils on Bristol vellum. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ In other news, I was featured on the colorindaily website for my drawings of knitting. Its a nice little blurb about me and my kitties and drawings. I appreciate the attention, so thank you Nadia! ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ And in other other news, of a more personal nature, I'm starting to face the music about my elderly Mom. She's been in failing health, and is teetering on the edge of needing to be placed in care of ..read more

Fall just arrived, so of course that means I'm in panic mode about Christmas. ! I finally managed to get the first set of gift tags into the Drawings of Knitting etsy shop, which are all pretty Christmas-y. I'll be adding some sets, and some other non-Christmas colored ones (Navy Blue and Gold) in the coming days. These are all instant downloads, which means you'll receive a jpg and pdf file of the art, which you then print out yourself. You can print as many as you like or need!  I may do some note cards, too, we'll see.  I bought some cool gourds yesterd ..read more

I just finished this one. An American Colonial family is gathered together to listen to the Father read a letter from a loved one far away. Its all done with Prismacolor colored pencils, one black Verithin pencil for a few details, and the clone stamp in Photoshop to pick out a few pencil crumbs that ended up where they shouldn't. I'm pretty happy with this, and figured out some technique things that have been bugging me.  Here are a few close ups: Yes, I love doing woodgrain. That rug was fun, too ..read more

This month's SCBWI Draw This! prompt was ROYAL. I've never participated in this before, not sure why. They usually send out the new prompt on the first of the month, but this month it didn't arrive until the 15th, I'm sure because of the SCBWI LA conference. So that left way less time than usual to get the art done. I love all things "royal", so felt compelled to draw a little something. This is another one done with a black Polychromo colored pencil. That's all. Notice that the crown has one jewel missing. I think there's a story here waiting to be told ..read more

I used three black Polychromo pencils on this one. Almost - two are total stubs, and one has a little life left in it, barely. This was a lot of fun to do! Its all colored pencil - no digital at all. All I did at the end was use Photoshop to clean up around the outside edge (erase the paper texture), and a weird blob that's on my scanner that I always have to clean up on everything I scan (sigh). This stayed remarkably clean, otherwise. I resisted the urge to 'nudge' a few values here and there, because I figured I'd end up redoing the whole thing once I got started. That's the good and bad ..read more

Tom and Catrina are the Purrs for Peace Party candidates. They believe every kitty should have a warm place to sleep, nice treats, and that catnip should be legal. They're getting my vote, for sure! OK but seriously. These guys were fun to do. Even if you don't follow politics, unless you're living under a rock, you know what a crazy election campaign season we're having here in the States. At this point I kind of think a couple of cool cats wouldn't be a half bad choice, given our current options. Tom and Catina were drawn by hand with colored pencils, then I added the whiskers with Photo ..read more

I've been busy making a lot of drawings of knitting lately, for various projects. People are commissioning me to do custom coloring pages to promote their knitting sites and projects, which has been a lot of fun. Here are two I did for verypink. They are both free downloadable pdfs on the site, to go with a knitting pattern for the cowl, and the boot cuffs. Staci has a youtube channel with videos for these pages and the projects they were done for. Check it out! This is a snippet of another custom coloring page I just finished for another client that will be for kids to color.  ..read more

Here it is all finished. If you saw the last post where I was still in the drawing stage, you'll remember I had him with a pitchfork, flinging pancakes off the roof. Yeah - this is way better. Consider that a peek into the mind of an illustrator, somewhere in the middle of the 'brainstorming and tossing out all ideas' phase of putting together an illustration. You have to 'go there' and sit with things for a while. Sometimes they're weird ideas, sometimes they work, and sometimes you wake up the next day and go "whut?" and keep going. So this is a style I used to do a long time ago, and fo ..read more