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!

bookster

Last week Imagine Learning released its first iPad/iPhone app called BOOKSTER. And it's FREE!

Blurb from the website: Launch your kids into literacy with Bookster, the read-along storytelling app that reads to your kids, records and plays their voices, and teaches vocabulary along the way.

So go download it from ye ol' iTunes store. Just do a search for "Bookster" and it should pop up. More books to come in the future. The first free book happens to be one I did ooooooh so many years ago. I don't like to look at it or think about it. ;-) One of those things that makes me itch to redo. But it's a fun story, and kids have fun recording and listening to themselves read the story. And don't forget: it's FREE!

http://itunes.com/apps/bookster

terrible terrell (sugar plum #4!)

Sugar Plum Ballerinas #4: Terrible Terrell is being released this week. Go and buy! You'll feel better about yourself and people will like you.

rejected character design

The levitating bunny. Rejected in favor of a different animal, although it's all good. The new character still inexplicably levitates, and really, that's what's important here.

imagine learning picspam

Last week at Imagine Learning, we celebrated hitting the $50 Million total revenue milestone. Pretty awesome for a little company that started up 6 years ago. It's a great company, and I love working there. I thought I'd post a few things I've done there recently, which also serves as an example of why I like it there so much. I am given pretty much free reign to do my illustrations in whatever style suits my fancy (and is appropriate, etc.). And for someone like me who is always trying something different, it's perfect.

 For a small story about endangered seahorses.

A book about seed dispersion.

 Sometimes I even get to write my own books, which is pretty cool.

Just an inhouse thing, but fun to do our product Level 1 characters in a slightly different style.

So there you go. I keep thinking I'm going to do some tutorials, or post about encaustic painting, but I'm realizing that it isn't going to happen anytime soon - especially since I just lost two weeks recovering from gallbladder surgery. Freelance has me swamped through the end of the year. Guess I can't complain about that!

Happy Drawing!

gallbladder begone!

After sharing the state of my massively diseased gallbladder, a friend challenged me to draw a cute one. Gallbladder free for a week now, and feelin' fine! Good riddance!

i like to draw vines

illustration in the current issue of the friend magazine. quite enjoyed working on this one.

yes, i did draw all those leaves and vines individually, but cheated on the flowers. ran out of time. :-)

awwwww. missing banjo