Humblearts Journal

Magic

"There must have been some magic in that old silk hat they found..."

Here is my little guy for illustration friday, this weeks theme is magic.  A tiny block print from this soft-kut material I have, it's like a giant eraser.  And just to mix things up, I've been playing around with gouache to hand-color the print.  I print my work on vellum and paint on the back.

Okay, that's it, I have gotten all the Christmas out of my system.  The tree comes down tomorrow.  I promise to stop singing Christmas carols.  The wrapping paper and bows will be packed away.  And I won't start this madness again for 6 months...ha!

Pearls

Whenever my Mom and I get together she teaches me a new beading technique.  Over the Christmas Holiday she showed me how to do a quick and easy hand-knotting technique.  There is a knot in between each bead on this necklace.  It has such a supple feel to the way it moves.  I used a blue silk cord so that the little knots would echo the blue dots on my art bead.  The long bead in the middle is handcrafted by me, that's my day job, making beads.

I love my creative jobs and wouldn't pick one over the other.  They both serve to fill my need for obsessive art making.  The beads are more practical, they keep me from working a 9-5 job and pay the ol' student loan each month.  I sell my work online, sell articles to magazines, work with a gallery here in town and do a few art shows a year.  It keeps me just busy enough to feel like it's a real job, but not so busy that I can't work on my illustration. 

Muses

Here are my muses.  They sneak into my portfolio pieces all the time.  But more than their angelic little faces, my desire for them to have an idyllic childhood pushes me to create that magic in my work.   To not have the commercial override my vision, but to create images that speak to a simpler time, to view children as more than consumers.

Welcome to my blog, filled with my work as an artist which will run between my two worlds as a bead and jewelry designer, (which brings home the bacon) and my budding career as a children's book illustrator.