A Simple Riddle

I'm sure some one will post the answer in the combox.

Combox Explosion!

Well the response to that last post was fun!

I going to list the websites of a few of the talented artists who have stopped by here lately to say hello:

Jake Parker is another artist from Flight, and draws just about everything with style. He has a particular flair for cute robots.

Eric Orchard has a nice storybook style and some great characters posted on his blog. Also there's a cool picture of his drawing board in action.

Annie Patterson has a nice site and an even nicer blog. She has a warm, charming style and gets bonus points for living in Alaska.

As for me, I'm still trying to get my internet act together. I'll be thrilled if I can get my illustration portfolio to look right on Internet Explorer. Bah. Anyway, here are a couple pieces that will go in that portfolio:

The Merchandise: Part One

Getting a surprise in the mail is certainly among Life's Simple Pleasures. I'm lucky in that I seem to get a lot of surprises in the mail. Although, I should admit that one of the reasons I get surprises in the mail is because I am pretty good at Forgetting About Things. People who forget stuff generally get a lot of surprises.

Anyway I had completely forgotten about the American Chesterton Society's project of turning this magazine cover I illustrated for them:



into an actual 3-dimensional reality. So it was great to find this in the mail the other day:



I think the sculptor did a better job than I did. These great ornaments are available for purchase on the ACS Merchandise Page (They alo have a GKChesterton Frisbee).

And in other news: You may have noticed the title of this post was "The Merchandise: Part One. That's because I'm thinking of auctioning some of my recent artwork on e-bay in an effort to fund some ...costume-related activities. Hmm...

Little Experiments

ow if this works correctly (and I can see that it doesn't, quite) the decorative initial to the left should lead the eye right into the meat of this-here text. Howard Pyle (the great grandfather of American illustration) was a master at this kind of thing. Me, I just woke up wanting to draw a Pan. Here (below) is a larger version, as well as the unedited version so you can see that, to my shame, I just pasted the letter N in with photoshop:





If Howard Pyle were alive he would probably bash me in the head with the two-by-four of artistic justice.

Mostly Links

Here's a random bit of art -a concept piece for an old folktale called Cap o Rushes:



I've been doing a lot of juggling lately. On Saturday I went up to Winchester to practice at Incredible Flying Objects. I learned a lot, had fun, and came home with a new set of Dube rings. Now you would think that an intense juggling session would make you very aware of the objects around you. Not so for me! In fact, shortly afterward I walked full-tilt into a stack of two-by-fours sticking out of the back end of a truck. They were positioned right at forehead height and they knocked me cleanly onto the pavement. The worst part (apart from the facial bruise) was that I didn't hear any laughter. Apparently the whole world missed something that, I admit, must have been absolutely hilarious.

Also, thanks to Danny Schneible, I found out about this wonderful man.

Full Page

Well, I've shown bits and pieces of these so far, but here are the entire images for a couple of those new portfolio pieces:





Sorry about the small images! You probably have to click on these to see any kind of detail.

The text for the juggler illustration was written by the inimitable Gwen Adams -I hope she doesn't mind my posting it here!

Folletto Finito

Here's the final picture I came up with -sort of a concept piece for a story I'm working on:



You should be able to click on it for a biggered version. I even used Some of Angelica's crayola colored pencils for this.

Sketchy Goblins

Actually, Sketchy Folletti. A Folletto is an Italian farm gnome, similar to the Scandinavian Tomten, but unlike the Tomten, a Folletto is much more mischievous than helpful. I've been trying to come up with a version of my own:









update! After poking around at Dean's LJ I stumbled upon this website. It has jingles!!