I’ve been thinking… who is more grounded?
Happy New Year
January 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Â
The beginning of every year is the time we reflect and take stock of the past one.
We try to come to terms with what makes us tick.
We look back at the high and low points. Â Why do we save this for January 1st? Wouldn’t it be a good idea to do this periodically throughout the year? That way, if we blow our resolutions, it’s not such a big failure and it’s easier to jump back in the saddle and try again.
Â
The highlight of my year was adopting Mabel. She’s a tortoise shell cat we adopted from the Chatham Kent SPCA. She tears the house to pieces and terrorizes the other cats, but she has brought much happiness around here.
Happy New year!
Messenger
December 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Â
And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
Â
And the angel said unto them, Fear not:
Â
for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
I was able to spend a part of Thursday afternoon doing what I would really like to do everyday. That is, sitting at my drafting table with a stack of small pieces of paper and a chosen medium, drawing whatever comes to mind with little or no pre thought. When I do this, I try not to pass too much judgement on what appears on the paper, only accepting what is there and working with what happens. Often, one drawing spurs the next. A lot of stars, comets and spacey stuff was happening and that turned into more spiritual thoughts. At about drawing number 6, I switched to my Pitt India  ink pens because I was battling the dip pen nibs.
Interesting things happen when you draw like this. I was listening to Christmas music, I believe it was The Vienna Boy’s Choir. I was also eating those little chocolate balls that come wrapped in coloured foil papers. I took a pair of scissors and began to cut a green foil into small rectangles and I scattered them onto the drawing I was working on. That’s how the first drawing in this post came to be. The next two, obviously followed.
Eleven simple ink drawings appeared that afternoon. These are my three favourite.
Merry Christmas!
Would You Care for a Piece of Gum?
December 18, 2011 By 3 Comments
Sink Head
ruminate
ru·mi·nate Verb
Synonyms:
verb: meditate, reflect, muse, ponder, contemplate, cogitate, think, speculate, chew the cud, chew
ruminated past tense; ruminated past participle; ruminates 3rd person singular present; ruminating present participle
Think deeply about something
we sat ruminating on the nature of existence
(of a ruminant) Chew the cud
(From Google Dictionary)
This is my take on the Illustration Friday prompt “Sink”
Because it was… it was because
November 30, 2011 By 3 Comments
This is my response to this week’s Illustration Friday’s prompt “round.â€
It was because… because it was.
How do you feel about things that happened to you that kind of stunk? How do you rid yourself of the baggage and how does that actually come about?  It often takes time. I’ve found that once I can say “Because it was… and it was because,†I have put the gremlin in the blender, realized acceptance and moved on.
My First mini comic…
September 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment
I randomly selected six sentences from six different sources. I wanted to see if I could make phrases or even sentences using a predefined pool of words. I had no idea they would suggest a story to me.
The sentences came from:
Alfred Tennyson’s poem Enoch Arden
An editorial from a Hearst Newspaper,
Frank Baum’s novel Glinda of Oz,
Gene Stratton-Porter’s novel Freckles
Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
The Hacker’s Dictionary
The words accompanying each drawing are placed in the same location of the page as they are in the master grid at the front of the book.
This mini comic is 28 pages including the kraft paper brown card stock cover. It is black and white throughout. It is my very first mini comic
You can purchase Worng here at my Etsy store
Halloween Creepies and a mini comic for sale
September 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment
The Curse of the Parsimonious Great Aunt
This is a creepy little Halloween story wrapped in a coating of cuteness. Although unpleasantness occurs, you can rest assured that there is a moral to the story as the two antagonists get their comeuppance in the end.
You can read the Optical Sloth review of it right here: http://www.opticalsloth.com/?p=17187
This 2.833″ X 4.25″ stapled mini comic is 24 pages including cover, printed in full coloured glory!
*** Be forewarned, there is one part in the story that you might want to peek through your fingers at when you get to if you are squeamish. However it’s really no worse than anything that happens in Hansel and Gretel.
Ships by regular post
You can purchase The Curse of the Parsimonious Great Aunt here at my Etsy Store
The Curse of the Parsimonious Great Aunt
This is a creepy little Halloween story wrapped in a coating of cuteness. Although unpleasantness occurs, you can rest assured that there is a moral to the story as the two antagonists get their comeuppance in the end.
You can read the Optical Sloth review of it right here: http://www.opticalsloth.com/?p=17187
This 2.833″ X 4.25″ stapled mini comic is 24 pages including cover, printed in full coloured glory!
*** Be forewarned, there is one part in the story that you might want to peek through your fingers at when you get to if you are squeamish. However it’s really no worse than anything that happens in Hansel and Gretel.
Ships by regular post
I want to go to Palomia
June 6, 2009 By Leave a Comment
i want to go to palomia
I took the sentence which is the title of this post, divided the words and arranged them into chunks until each chunk had no meaning. Then I thought about what the combinations of letters represented to me and drew them. I also imagined what Palomia would be like. By the way, Palomia only exists in my imagination, similar to wanting to have Breakfast at Tiffany’s
I was happy with the result because it looks like Palomia is an actual, exotic place that I would like to visit. I wonder what breakfast in Polomia would be like.
Memory Machine
January 22, 2009 By
Memory Machine
Abstract mixed media drawing. Pastel, Conte, acrylic paint, typewriter ink, graphite, carbon, Graphitint pencil, coloured pencil, on Winsor & Newton 90 lb hot press watercolour paper.
This is another experiment, albeit the Memory Machine was an idea I had before I started drawing. As a result, I began to feel precious about the image, having started with drawing the machine itself. I wanted to keep the process fairly loose but didn’t want to ruin what I had already put down on paper as I am slowly weaning myself off the Ctrl Z function I have grown to know, love and rely on with digital imagery.
I layered the background alternating between Prismacolour, Graphitint and graphite pencil and washes of acrylic paint. Looking at it now, I am happy with the loose quality of the image, but it was a chore to keep myself from polishing and smoothing.
Beyond the Pale
January 21, 2009 By
Beyond the pale
Chalk pastel and graphite on black Canson Mi-Tientes paper
This is a drawing for this week’s Illustration Friday topic, Pale. I loved this topic because pale has a few meanings I was able to play with in this image. For example, a pale is a fence stake, or picket, an enclosure or an area that is protected or privileged within it’s boundaries.
Should you dare to cross the boundaries of the fence and go beyond the pale it may involve a journey into the irrational and unknown – or it could get you into a lot of trouble, or you could wake up and discover it was only a dream.