feliz dia de los muertos!

Hope y'all had a fabulous Halloween! I took a couples hours off from freelance to paint a happy skull. This is my latest encaustic painting, an experiment with accretion: basically lots of layers of drybrushing.

I've been taking an online encaustic course from the lovely and talented Judy Wise, which has been fabulous. We're in the middle of four weeks of daily lessons, which makes me super excited to go home from work and paint every night. Unfortunately the freelance has to come first, so haven't done much for the class. Hopefully I will have some more time to paint soon.

Here's another I did last week for the class. The assignment was color mixing and carbon transfer. I only had white saral paper, which didn't show up well, so I tried a bunch of other things... blobby lines as a result, but it's fun. I quite enjoy the idea of Gary the Chicken Whisperer.

Feliz dia de los muertos and a happy november to you all!

Booster's Costume Creator

I better post this before it's actually Halloween! I did the artwork for this fun little ecard deal at Imagine Learning. Pick from two of the Imagine Learning characters, then click to change their costume and background. Then send it to a friend! Or lots of friends! Or casual acquaintances!

I always love doing these flipbook sorts of things. It's a fun challenge to get all the pieces to work together properly, plus, gotta love making costumes. We decided to make it a little "educational" - each character got three historical figure costumes plus one halloween-style costume, plus one Imagine Learning character costume. So much fun to make.

The rest of the Marketing team did a great job with the opening sequence, the site design, music, programming, writing, they are a great bunch to work with. Thanks guys!

halloween sneak peak

Six years in a row I had a super out-of-control Halloween Party. Last year I was too swamped with work and still recovering from gallbladder surgery that I decided to take a year off. This year, the schedule is still full, I recently moved and have no time to even think about excavating all the Halloween decor from the depths of unpacked boxes... so another year off. I will be in some serious Halloween withdrawal by next year. So plan for quite the extravaganza in 2012. Unless the world ends first. Then we'll all be enjoying the Zombie Apocalypse together.

But I got a pretty good Halloween fix this year. I got to work on a super fun Halloween-themed project at Imagine Learning. Here's a little sneak peek. Stay tuned, the rest should be out next week.



ps: for pics of Halloween parties past, check out The Two-Headed Goose blog.

TIKI KABOOOOM!

Tiki Kaboom! It's live! My first iPhone game is now available on iTunes. Some genius friends of mine designed and programmed this super addictive game and asked me to help them with the artwork. So I got to draw some tikis. Never a hardship.

So if you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, click HERE for the free version.

Or click HERE for the full version with more levels and features.

Still not sure? Here's the Facebook page to check out.

Have fun!

summer vacation over

Hello friends out there in the internets! How have you been? I've been swell, thanks for asking.

So what have I been up to lately? Oh lots. Moved, tried to take a break from freelance while I got settled into the new place. That didn't last very long, and I am once again up to the eyeballs in work. Always a good thing, especially since now I think about things like: I need a new fence! Got to save money for a new garage door opener!

Above is an illustration I did for The Friend Magazine. Always happy when they call with an assignment. They are great to work with. Mostly what I remember about this illustration though, was hurrying to get it finished and sent off before heading out to see U2. Awesome concert!

Currently working on lots of different things, two of which are new types of projects for me. One is an interactive book for ipad, iphone, etc. I'll post a link when it is released. Another is an actual game for the iphone. Also will plug the heck out of it when it goes live.

Speaking of promoting stuff... new book to be released Sept 29:

new house!

Oh yeah, I have a blog. So I've been a little busy lately. I bought a house! My first ever house. It's fabulous. It's a simple little 1961 brick rambler, with a walk-out basement. The basement is essentially a crafty arty wonderland. I have a great office space with an adjacent patio, a workshop, and a room for encaustic painting. Oh the projects I can make! Will update as spaces become functional.

sweet pea benefit boutique

Want to amaze and impress your friends by owning an actual encaustic painting? Or how about all five Sugarplum Ballerina books when the fifth book isn't even out yet? You can do these things and more at the Sweet Pea Benefit Boutique!

The Sweet Pea Benefit Boutique is a charity auction whose funds will go to help pay for fertility treatments for a couple of folks, one being my pal Devanie. Go check out all the cool things for auction! Bid lots! Devanie needs a baby. :)

hmong rhymes for good times

Things that rhyme in Hmong:

Hawk. Net. Frog.

Fish. Car. House.

dueling banjo pigs: the exhibit

Come check out Dueling Banjo Pigs: The Exhibit. Opening reception is this Friday! Between Guy and Stacy they'll have about 40 banjo pig paintings there. I'll have 7, plus lots more from folks from all over. Hope to see you there!

Dueling Banjo Pigs: The Blog

happy st patrick's day!

hiring artists at imagine learning

Howdy out there! We are hiring for two art positions at Imagine Learning (among other things) - a full-time senior illustrator and a part-time junior illustrator. You can check out the job listings and descriptions here.

Feel free to pass the word along - thanks!

Oh, and the my little pony version of the taj mahal has nothing to do with the job hunt... just part of my latest project at Imagine Learning. :)

imagine learning office + art!

 
Ever wonder what the Imagine Learning offices look like? We moved to a new building about a year ago and it's pretty fancy. We just hung up 6 foot prints in the halls, which was interesting since the original artwork was originally done at 600x800 pixels! The picture above is of encaustic paintings of the level one characters I did for the lobby. That was fun. In the article you'll see other art done by Jim and Nate for the lobby. Nate's "bronze" booster is pretty awesome and Jim's portraits of the Level Two characters turned out great.

All this and more at the Imagine Learning Blog:

The best-decorated classrooms and a tour of Imagine Learning

season's greetings (from imagine learning)

Another Imagine Learning post! Here's a little video I helped the Marketing Department put together over the past few days.  


Season's Greetings!

how to draw booster + interview

I've recently had two little articles/features at the Imagine Learning Blog. First is one of those how-to-draw deals. I tried to make it so it wasn't step one, step two, step three, then something magical happens and step four it looks all finished.

So head on over here to learn how to draw Booster!

The second blog post is a short little interview. Every month they are planning to spotlight one of the writers or artists or someone, so it was my turn this time around.

So go here to read my very important thoughts about important things.

the lesser-known pork banjo cut

just a quick little encaustic painting that i've been meaning to get done for awhile. finally took a few minutes to finish it up. hooray for banjo pigs - they can't be stopped!

for the how-to portion of the post... i painted some layers of pink then purple and fused it all flat. then i took a needle stylus and incised all the lines in the wax. then i took some pink and yellow oil sticks and rubbed them into the lines wiping away all the excess paint. presto magico: a banjo pig!

encaustic painting demo nov 19

This Friday at the Reagan Academy in Springville, Utah I will be participating in the Art and Gift Basket Auction. I'll be doing an encaustic painting demo from 6-8 and whatever I make will be auctioned off at the end. All proceeds will go to the school. So if you're curious about encaustic painting, want to bid on some awesome gift baskets, or just like hanging out at a middle school gymnasium on a friday night - come on by!

So what is encaustic you might be wondering? It is the method of painting with melted beeswax combined with resin and pigment. It dates all the way back to ancient greece. When I have a bit more time, I'll put together a more comprehensive tutorial.

For the past year I've been learning all about encaustic painting, but I'm still quite the novice. I've taken three workshops so far, and have done a little bit of practicing here and there, but haven't had much time to devote to it. So these samples are no great works, but some of the experiments that have turned out maybe not so bad.

This is my studio. You can see the skillet is full of melted encaustic medium (beeswax and damar resin). There is a sheet of aluminum with a hot plate underneath to use as a palette. You have to have good ventilation: the contraption on the middle left. The torch in the foreground is for fusing. You have to heat every layer of paint to fuse it to the previous ones.  

Encaustic is super versatile. You can have lots of texture or be smooth as glass like the painting at the very top.

You can use it for collage or embedding objects. This was an experiment where I poured the wax over little scrolls of paper.

This was from a class where I learned about layering and using oil paint in between those layers.

One of the coolest things about encaustic is the translucent quality of the wax. You can play around with layers and easily create depth. This was a really early experiment. I hadn't quite gotten the hang of fusing. I sort of over-melted those trees which is why they are a little mushy and feathery in spots. I also hadn't yet figured out how to paint details, so the little red riding hood is a print-out collaged into the wax.

So if you find yourself in Utah Valley this Friday Nov 19 - drop on by the Reagan Academy and say "Hi!"

Ronald Reagan Academy
1143 West Center Street
Springville, UT

art demos and silent auction 6-8
live art auction 8-9

little wonder tv spot

Last weekend Leslie Sell, CEO of The Little Wonder Company, was on a local Minneapolis tv show touting the Little Wonder Custom Children's Books. I did the illustrations for these last year, with some additional attributes a couple months ago. A nice segment, and hopefully lots and lots of sales for Leslie! ('tis the season after all!) Go check out the site and you can even build your own character.

gnomey and deerie

just a little sumpin sumpin i've been working on today. some more puppets to animate in aftereffects.

cantonese rhyming powers activate!

So I know I'm crap at "dramatic lighting" but I tried anyway. Here is a rhyme scene for the words apple, lock and fire. They rhyme...in Cantonese.

banjo pig in motion!

I've been wanting to learn AfterEffects forever, and finally getting some time at work to do some training. Here's my attempt at trying to figure out how to animate. hooray for banjo pigs!