hey everyone!

hope you all had a wonderful christmas! i'm looking forward to the new year (not really, haha...to me it just signifies the end of the holiday and the return to the real world...blah) but in the meantime i'm enjoying time home with the fam :)

i finally got to do a digital painting for fun! here's a christmas present i made for a friend. i think it's the best photoshop work i've done, and while i wouldn't count myself with the digital painting experts yet i think i've come a long way :P the character is "hinata" from the manga series "naruto." she's usually a very timid character, but i chose to portray her in her fighting stance - she can be very fierce when she's protecting someone she cares about.

merry christmas, everyboday! i realized that i never put the last two pictures from the book up :P here you go:





also - i designed a tshirt for my old high school band's annual trip! this year they're going to new york (no fair, we never got to go there haha). here's my first design - waiting to hear from the director to see what he thinks....

so many new pictures!

in a construction site....

what do you use in a city street? a car of course!

here it is! the poor guys are so confused



now they're not! they have a bike!



and this is a box i painted. gonna try to market it in a local boutique (once it's done - i still need to treat the wood) christmas gifts anyone?

what i did at work today

so i started substitute teaching recently. i was kind of nervous at first - i'm not really the most experienced (or successful) at controlling little kids. if they all suddenly decide to pull together and mutiny against the sub, what can you really do? hopefully they will never realize there are more of them than me..... anyway today i subbed for an art class, which sounds exciting and all but was actually quite boring. at least today it was :P i guess teachers often don't trust the sub to be able to teach the material, so the teacher left a bunch of busy work for people to do. i just handed out packets for them to read and watched them do homework. needless to say i got bored.
which means...dun dun dun!!! today is your lucky day! because i spent most of it drawing fun pictures. oh pen drawings of animals, how i missed you.

this is what i felt like in the morning when i first got to school:



and this is what i felt like after the elementary school class:



iiiii'm just kidding - it wasn't bad, really :P but it was good to just draw for fun again - i was worried i'd forgotten how. i hope you enjoy the rest of my artistic vomit:







this is what i would look like as an alien! you know, if i had curly hair and wore polka-dot dresses and stuff. but it has a weird neck bump just like me, so...we could be twins

here is an alleyway! the image isn't done - this will be the setting for the next 2 layouts, but i still need to paint the characters

round 3!

hey hey hey~
well, the author liked book 2, so here we go with number 3 :P this is probably the largest number of vehicles i have ever put together in one image. i've been playing around with different filters - haven't decided on a style yet - but here are 2 examples. thoughts anyone?

woooooo second book is done! XD i need to go back and adjust some stuff (like the wheels probably) but......ready to start book #3

yayyy the train overcame it's fears and went over the mountain! :D

hi everybody!
the sad train cannot make it up the mountain :(

new picture! going into the tunnel.....
i also made some corrections on earlier pictures. for example, they are now always in the same car (instead of magically switching around in each image). also, i added a tiny bit of train reflection in the first lake picture. i would re-post those, but my computer doesn't seem to want to attach any more images. so here is the new one. (also, i realize that the wheels change in each picture - i'm going to go ahead and finish the rest, then go back and establish a standard wheel design)

book 2, layout 3

here's the 3rd one - going over a bridge!

oh man - the mural was fun, but i definitely lost some of my working with photoshop momentum. sorry this is so late, everyone, i seem to have gotten slower again. the kids are now blonde (request of the author). i'm not sure how i feel about the second image :( but i really need to make progress on the other layouts, so....here are layouts 1 and 2 for now.

the mural is finished!

wooooo here it is! i apologize that there is a head in the corner (i'll photoshop it out soon, but i wanted to go ahead and post what i had) there were little kids running around all over the place. i would have selected a different image - but the angle here really turned out the best. i am no expert photographer *sigh* but the kids were adorable :P

well, i had a friend in town visiting so work was a little slower this week. but here is a possible first layout for the next book - i'm just waiting on the author's approval before i proceed. finish the mural tomorrow! (hopefully)

mural - part 2

wooooo more pictures! and more monkeys - the blonde one is now finished. and there is a girl monkey! (request of the boy's older sister). almost done! but i won't be able to go back and work on it for a week, so expect more book illustrations :P

the mural - part 1

i started the mural i started the mural! i had a lot of fun today getting my hands dirty using real paint again :P my clients wanted the tree painted in the corner bridging both walls, which has proven quite tricky (i think the trunk turned out surprisingly well, but the perspective on the branches....fail) anyway, there will be monkeys, a crab, small island, water... i wish i had a room this cool as a kid.

okay, so here is what's happening:
i'm taking a photoshop break! yayyy time to get away from the computer and do some real painting. i start the mural tomorrow (monkeys and a palm tree on a desert island and stuff) - should take a couple days. i'll post pictures of that when i finish. also, the official count now is 6 books - 3 due in november and 3 due in march. looks like i'll be busy for a little while :) i'm changing up the style a little bit on the next one (or at least adding a real background). the first image is almost complete - i'll post that soon as well.

one down! a million other projects to go! not really, but a fourth book got added, so i'm kind of back to where i started XD not that i'm complaining - i'm always glad for work. anyway, just waiting for final approval by the author for this and then 1 book is done!

one more to go!

one picture left! on this book at least - and this is only one of the short books. i have a potential mural painting job in a nursery. will i have time to finish all of this and make deadlines? stay tuned and see!

time for blue cars! here is "dancing a jig jacob."