For my wintertime image of Buttons and Just Be, I plan to set up a miniature theatre staging with the township in the background as my characters carry their Christmas tree home. This is one of four main junk-town houses - a teapot in case  you were wondering! Following images are a canned tomato house, a boot house and a lady's hat house! (I am having trouble accurately showing them in their actual colour). I will cut these images out, following along their edges, in order to paste them onto card and arrange them into the theatre, possibly sizing them differently so that they fit into the three dimensional space. When I am finished the images of Buttons and friends, I will do the same and arrange them in front of the junk-town backdrop. Then my complete image of the set-up in the miniature theatre will be photographed and printed as a card.

As an artist, I am constantly collecting images - the internet is a fabulous tool for this obsessive habit!! Then something sparks and a group of images "comes together" somehow! I haven't glued these together, so the edges stand out a bit, but the whole image, made up of other artists illustrations and a macro photo, is magical!! So much fun!!!

While cleaning out my basement, I went through my college portfolios and took photos of my work from that period. Some of it is worth sharing! I am amazed at some of the work I did so long ago. I didn't have much confidence in my ability, but it is clear now that was unfounded! Please question your own personal doubt against the evidence!! 

This illustration for "Commercial Art" is now stained, but still shows an eye for composition and colour. It's one of my favourites! It is guache, a difficult, fast drying paint that we learned to master as illustrators in this course at Capilano College in North Vancouver. 

Another guache illustration, this of The Lady of Shalott.

More guache, "A Day at the Zoo".

Guache and chalk pastel, illustration from "Dune", one of my favourite series of books.

This is a print made from an etched acrylic sheet. This was during my Fine Arts at Camosun College.

This is a lino print. I had traveled to Tunisia and Algeria and I remembered this image from a building, possibly a Mosque. I still love the colour combination.

This is also an etched acrylic sheet. I was very influenced by Mucha and the Art Nouveau period.

A pencil crayon illustration of a collage, at Capilano College.

Watercolour fashion illustration.

Watercolour album art.

One of two commercial illustrations, using markers. I worked with my partner, Cathy Mullaly, on this concept.

The second illustration for this advertising campaign.

Oh, how much fun can a person have!!! Not only did I just finish the mural last week, I just put the finishing touches on this first image of Buttons and Just Be two days ago!! I have 2 other summer images to come, one which is further back in this blog of these two characters planting a vegetable garden, and another idea of Buttons playing in a soup bowl pool, holding a ping pong ball and wearing an old fashioned one-piece bathing suit!

I really enjoyed creating and painting this mural! I had a chance to improvise on the image, as the original piece which inspired this was in the proportion of a square, and this rectangle is three times longer than it. I also decided to try to move the viewer's eye around the image, making the middle of the image lighter and brighter, and the edges more dark. I hoped the viewer would then move from the middle to the edges and discover what surprises were there - a family of quail, a snail, and butterflies and dragonflies. I especially love the two swallows flying in the middle of the image! When I painted the water, I used turquoise and white, working wet on wet, and discovered that it appeared as waves when I stepped back from it. Also using the darker blue on the outer edges seemed to infer shadows close to the bull rushes.

I've been working on a mural at my friend's daycare. She gave me a picture of what she wanted, but the space she had was 3 times the width of the original. I had a lot of inspiration to fill the space available - after all, I couldn't just make the frogs bigger : the pond would look like a puddle! I had lots of fun deciding what animals are part of a pond's ecological make up. I also learned about how painting with just one colour doesn't work for me - I used about three colours of green, brown or blue to create texture and light reflection on surfaces, instead of "flat" or a single colour for objects.

I started with the greens because I needed a variety of greens for most of the background. Then I painted the browns, then the water.

I'm pretty much finished here, I painted the birds next, and now I have to paint the insects. I have to do touch ups as well.

So digressing from the Christmas theme for the 3D Miniature Theatre card images, I also thought some other themes for cards would be good  - summer, gardening, dogs and having tea!! The last set of sketches is from my set of stories of Little Heart : it's the lady who grows from a tree and her little dog Bianco ( the lady doesn't have a name yet! ) The last coloured pic is of ideas for labels for jars and tins, based on Little Heart stories, The Maid and the Wolf, and Buttons and Just-Be!

I've always loved the Silly Symphony cartoons from the 20's and 30's. I am just crazy for the silly and creative ideas of the miniature and secret worlds of characters of all sorts: animals, insects, candy land characters, fairy and all! I started with an idea of having three main characters and setting up a 3D miniature theater scene to photograph for cards. This is Buttons the Mouse, first semi-final sketch, and his two friends Just-Be and Cheery Bird. Buttons is now a composite of these two original ideas.

 My first idea was to create a Christmas scene of these characters carrying their Christmas tree home, in front of their Junk Yard Town. These semi-final drawings were done first, then the town. I realized later that they needed to have winter clothes on - they are still in my original idea of summer clothing! Also, I tried colouring in the clothes, and town, but I still like the style of touches of colour instead. Junk Yard Town is in two pics, as it extends onto two pieces of paper.

So continuing with the idea of the Miniature Animal Acrobats, I thought they might need toys to play with! I like the idea of different materials that toys are made of - cloth, wood and tin.

Who knows where this imagery comes from? Somehow, my Handless Maiden imagery, inspired me to draw other pen/ink and pencil crayon images, and as I love the miniature and had some ideas floating around in my head about cartoons and toys, these images were drawn out - my love of maps and charts, armillaries and polyhedrons included!!!