Sketchbook Drawings With Ink Pen

Woman and Her Dog

Gazelle and Friend

I've been drawing more and more in my sketchbook lately and just wanted to share some recent creations. Hope you like them!




Happy Halloween!

Trick or Treat!



Thank you card for Elizabeth Stewart at KZSB Radio



Kathy Temean features me on her blog, Writing and Illustrating

Ooh look!  I was interviewed by Kathy Temean for her terrific blog, Writing and Illustrating, which was posted today. Learn a little more about me, my stained glass mosaic illustrations process, and see lots and lots of photos of my art.  You can read it here.

Kathy’s blog is such a great resource for published and unpublished authors and illustrators. She posts information she gets from her interactions with editors and agents in the industry and shares thoughts and techniques of other writers and illustrators in the field. I always look forward to her weekly “Illustrator Saturday” posts, and now I am a feature! Check it out and leave a comment if you wish - we’d love to hear from you.  Thanks so much, Kathy!!

Betsy Bird on Fuse #8

Betsy Bird featured my book on her blog, A Fuse #8 Production, on the School Library Journal's web site, saying it's "one of the most beautiful Christmas children's books I've ever seen."  Read the post here.  Thanks so much, Betsy!

Mrs. Figs' Bookworm with Carol Heyer

I had a great time at the book signing I did with Carol Heyer at Mrs. Figs' Bookworm!  The store is absolutely charming, as are the owner and staff, who were so friendly and welcoming.  I loved the indoor porch reading area, so cozy.

 

I brought one of my mosaics from the book to display, the one that shows the Christmas tree, so when the kids were doing their own paper mosaic Christmas tree, they could see that I also used cut triangle pieces to create mine.

Connie, the owner, read both my book, The Night Before Christmas, and Carol's book, Humphrey's First Christmas.  I am going to have to up my game when I read my book the next time if I want to do as great a job as she did!  She is a born story teller.

I LOVED Carol's book, which I had never read before.  It has humor and heart and the illustrations are so beautiful.  I particularly enjoyed the images of Humphrey and his wonderful expressions.

Thanks so much for hosting me, Mrs. Figs, and I hope to be back again next year!

Christmas Book Signing and Craft Event

I'm excited about an upcoming event I'll be doing with author/illustrator Carol Heyer at Mrs. Figs' Bookworm in Camarillo, CA.  I will be signing my book, The Night Before Christmas, and Carol will be signing her book, Humphrey's First Christmas, the story of a lovable camel that accompanies three wise men to bring gifts to the Baby Jesus.  Here are the details:

Date:  Saturday, Dec. 6, 2014

Time:  2-4 p.m.

Location:  Mrs. Figs' Bookworm, 93 East Daily Drive, Camarillo, CA

Bring your kids for a fun paper mosaic craft and Christmas illustrations from Carol's book to color.  Also plan to visit  Santa's Workshop in the Las Posas Plaza from 10-4 (Santa eats lunch from 1-2).  Hope to see you there!

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Finished 11th mosaic for children's book!

I was hoping to finish this one by the end of the year and I just glued the last piece today!  I'm on track to finish the book by summer, so continue to watch my blog for updates.  I plan on having an exhibition of my book mosaics next fall or winter, so the early part of next year will be in finding a location to show them, most likely downtown Santa Barbara.

Happy New Year - may you have a wonderful 2012!

Finished Mosaic #9 For Book!

I'm so happy to be done with this mosaic. It took a very long time, my longest yet, AND it created more future work for me: I had to change a couple of things to make them work for this design, and now I have to change them in previous mosaics! It's times like these, I wish I were a painter!

Here are a few detail shots. I've been adding as many personal touches as I can to this book. Raymi, our cat, features heavily in this book! The guitar is my husband's. And all of the artwork on the walls will be of my already completed mosaics. I take photos of them and put them in between two pieces of glass. I then seal the edges with tape so the grout doesn't seep through later. Here's a couple of my cats!

I won't be starting mosaic #10 for a few weeks (but hopefully sooner) while I work on a design for an upcoming project. More details on that to come later!

Finished Mosaic #3!

It took me awhile, but I finally decided on which mosaic to use for the framed picture. It had some of the same colors as the rest of the mosaic and isn't so detailed that it distracts from the action on these pages. What's great is I'm keeping the mosaics on mesh until I'm done with all of them and every once in awhile I'll peek at them again and see little things I'd like to change, and I am still able to do it. So I can refine them as I go along! I printed out a photo of "Brown Kitty" and glued it to a piece of clear glass. Then I put a second piece of clear glass over it and "taped" the edges with Deco Tape so that the grout would not seep through later. I did this once before with a wedding invitation and it worked great!

This mosaic took me 70 hours and like the others, is 15x24". It took me 23 days straight, some days I worked only one hour, others I worked 6 or 8 hours, but it all averaged out to about 3 hours a day. Hmm... I think I need to do better than that!

Mosaic #4 is going to be chaaaaaaallenging!! But first, the mosaics for my dentist! I'm actually looking forward to a little break and doing something a little more simple and smaller!

Nearly done with mosaic #3!

I should be finished with it today or tomorrow. Here's a picture of some of the progress. I was going to make a jewelry box next to the vase but decided to go with something personal, which is a bowl that my son painted for me for my birthday when he was five. The characters in the book will closely resemble me and my family, so the items in the house will, too! I will put a picture of one of my older mosaics in the frame above the bowl and vase. Haven't decided yet which one, but when I am close to done, I will know what works best. I want to do that throughout the book - mosaics within a mosaic! Oh, looking at the photo, I think I need to re-work the inside of the bowl...

After this mosaic I will take a break to complete a commission for my dentist (trees). Though I am waiting for a glass order to start them and if it doesn't arrive soon, I guess I'll have to start the fourth mosaic for the book! Oh well.... :-)

Mosaic #2 is done and onto #3

Mosaic #2 went pretty good! I'm really happy with it. Took me 60 hours exactly (my goal) and only 16 days. I will be done with the book by next May if I keep this up!!

The design for number three was another challenge for me. I had more perspective issues and many other problems with the composition that stretched the designing time out to 18 hours! (compared to 10 or 11 for the other two). I’m working on mesh and will not grout the mosaics until they are all finished so that I can make last minute changes if I need to.

This mosaic features my husband and our cat, Raymi, both of whom had to pose so I could take photos of them and use them as reference! Hopefully I can make the mosaic look enough like Greg – I haven’t done too many mosaics of people yet, and none of them were men. Here’s what I’ve done so far of Raymi.

Update on Mosaic #2

Making some great progress on mosaic #2, pages 3 and 4. What I am loving about these mosaics is the detail, and, of course, the mille! I'm big on detail, and these mosaics will be even more detailed than my usual detail, which is really making them fun to do. I get kinda bored if a mosaic design is uncomplicated (or if I have to make 40 of the same design, aka San Diego trivets, haha). Barb has been researching printing costs (thanks Barb!) and I think I've decided to go hard cover on my book. Yes, it will be a higher price, but I think it will be so worth it!

Can't wait to see this puppy finished!

Got started on second mosaic of book, pages 3-4

I finished Lin's puzzle piece and I haven't heard back yet from the woman with the 2 portraits, so I'm back to working on the book. Yay! (Thanks for the photo, Lin!)

The second drawing took some doing. I had some perspective issues! I'm not the best drawer so I had to redo and redo and redo the drawing. I like my compositions interesting, and for this book there are several pages with a bit of a crooked perspective, I guess you could say. Anyway, I finally got it to where I am happy with it and I think it's going to be really sweet!!

So the first bit I mosaiced today was..... hmmmm.... a cat! (Bet you didn't guess there would be a cat in this story, haha) And who am I modeling her after but our family kitty, Raymi. I've already made two mosaics of her since we adopted her a year ago. What can I say, she's a beautiful cat and a great subject for mosaics!

Here she is! She will figure prominently in the book, so look for more mosaics of her. I'm soooooo excited about this book. On the one hand, I can't wait for it to be done, but on the other, I am really enjoying the process, too, so it will truly be a "labor of love!"

Finished 1st Mosaic of Book!!

Today I finished the first of the mosaics for my children's book - woo hoo! It is 15x24" and will be the first 2 pages of the book. It took me almost 70 hours, which is close to what I estimated, so I'm happy. What surprised me was that I was able to put in mostly 4-7 hour days, despite it being summer and having my son home with me. Although it took exactly 4 weeks, I worked only 18 days of it (due to vacation or simply needing a day off!). Imagine if I were to work completely uninterrupted! I could be done in 7 months! So that's not gonna happen. Moving on...

Here is a teensy peek at the mosaic. I know it isn't much at all, but this particular mosaic gave me little to share because any part of it gives too much away on what the story is about. I promise to share more with the next mosaic!!

Unfortunately I won't get started on it for maybe a month as I have a mosaic puzzle piece to make for Lin Schorr's collaborative jigsaw puzzle mural, as well as a commission I just got yesterday for a cat and a horse. I'm really excited to start the next 2 pages of the book (there will be people in it and that will be my greatest challenge for this project), but I'm happy to still be making money, too. :-)

The Start of My Children's Book!

So.... I've embarked on a project I've wanted to do for nearly twenty years: illustrating a children's book! Before mosaics I painted and thought, one day my paintings will be good enough. Wrong! At least in my eyes. So I kept painting, hoping to get better.

In 2005 I discovered mosaics. After creating mosaics for almost 2 years, I suddenly got the brilliant idea of doing a children's book in mosaics! I was so excited because I had never seen it done before. I went online to see if I could find such a book and who do I find but Barb Keith! Her book, The Girls and Boys of Mother Goose (Brownian Bee Press, 2006), is a collection of nursery rhymes illustrated in stained glass mosaics. Since then, her second book has been published, Mosaic Zoo, An ABC Book (Brownian Bee Press, 2008).

I was so impressed with the book, all of the wonderful details, the different borders, how she did the faces. I wrote her immediately to tell her how much I admired her work, and to order a book, of course. From there, a new friendship began.

So Barb, amazing and talented in so many areas, published the book herself through her own company, Brownian Bee, and offered to publish my book, should I ever get to it! But, I still didn’t have an idea.

Well, about 9 months later in December 2007, I got an idea! I wrote Barb and said, “You should do this!” She wrote back saying, “It’s a great idea. YOU should do this!”

Yes, a year and a half went by before I started. I got distracted with marketing myself in every way possible, which included producing as many new mosaics as possible so I could get my work seen in galleries.

Last month I posted two new works on Flickr: a skunk and a mouse. Among the feedback were many comments telling me how perfect they’d be for a children’s book. Wellllllll, I have to say that lit the spark that made me say, “If I don’t start, it will never happen.” I knew it would take me a year to three years to finish it (depending on other projects that would come up meanwhile) and I like to focus on one thing at a time, so this thought contributed a lot to me delaying this project.

So I want to say a huge thank you to those who posted on Flickr for getting me started on this, as well as Barb, who continues to encourage me and support my ideas. Thank you!

Now, as many of you know, I am a FLICKR ADDICT! And I am a lover of documenting my works in progress. I post almost daily the work I accomplished that day, as well as my thought processes and decision making as I work. Therefore, this book is going to be a huge test in self discipline because I really want the book to be a surprise - soooo I won’t be posting daily WIP photos. :-(

However, I WILL post cropped bits of my mosaics every so often. I simply cannot NOT share! I’m too excited! Plus, I hope by having an audience, it will continue to motivate me to finish the book even sooner. And it will definitely make me blog more frequently.

I can’t share too many details about the book but I will say this:

There will be 15-18 mosaics, each 15x24”
The printed book will be 10x16” when open, so each page will be 10x8”
I’m estimating each mosaic to take about 60 hours
They will be made of stained glass and millefiori (lots of mille!)

And that’s pretty much all I can tell ya! Here's my first photo to share, a teensy part of pages 1-2. I am nearly done with this first mosaic and have spent about 45 hours on it so far. (That is another OCD thing I do – log each and every minute I work on a mosaic. But in the end, I can tell you exactly how long it took me!) So it’s possible I can finish sooner than I am estimating. We’ll see! Stay tuned for more on this exciting adventure of mine ….. :-)