I first heard about the One House Project from a Blackrock Center for the Arts email last fall. The Art Watch website described the collaboration as a powerful visual statement of the strength of diversity and the common elements of our shared humanity. A timely theme, and in our neck of the woods. I mentioned to my DC illustrator friend that I was considering taking part. So, I learned, was she. “OK,” I said. “Now I definitely need to follow through on this.” Since my 2017 m

My mailer image The Hat was inspired by my father’s grandmother Maria, who came to the U.S. in the late 1880s. Times were bleak. Her blacksmith father had died, leaving the family without support. The loss was especially hard on the daughters, who would enter adulthood with no dowry. Maria, still in her teens, embarked on her first voyage, leaving her rural village and crossing the Gulf of Bothnia to work as a maid in Sweden. That job ended when a spark from a steamer set fir

Halloween brings out our inclination to see ourselves in the world around us. We impose human faces on twisted tree trunks, old houses, and pumpkins, with comic, sometimes unnerving, results. Last summer my husband and I hiked to a spot outside Twillingate, Newfoundland named Nanny’s Cove. I could guess why. Can you? Hint: stare at the rocks on the right side of the hill. How about now? That’s one creepy Mary Poppins. Happy haunting, everyone. #sketch #Photoshop #doodle #crea

My latest promo card went out this month. An exercise in vintage summertime nostalgia (with a lighthearted nod at global warming), it was inspired by the current DC heat wave, childhood vacations at the Jersey shore, and Nashville’s iconic Edgehill polar bears. I always begin an illustration by gathering photo references for inspiration, then play fast and loose with them. Sometimes too fast and loose. In this first version my elongated Modigliani polar bear just wasn’t bearl

My illustration professor at Art Center College of Design once described the creative life as a sequence of plateaus punctuated by breakthrough leaps. My corollary to this image: as viewed from the bottom, the next breakthrough often looks like a wall. A daunting, seemingly insurmountable wall. A wall that would stop my craft and career from ever rising to a new level. Each time the wall appeared I resisted the urge to hang up my pencil. I took classes. Sent out samples. Upgr

The new year work week starts tomorrow. But first, a look back. #video #Photoshop #digital #creativeprocess

When I read the theme for the 2016 MD/DE/WV conference postcard contest I was skeptical. Team SCBWI. Seriously? After all, so much of writing and illustrating is a solitary endeavor. The phrase “herding cats” came to mind. And so my entry featured a cheerleaders’ pyramid of felines, joined by one intrepid dog. It was the winning design. Fast forward to last weekend. Some of us from this region and the Mid Atlantic Chapter went out for the dessert discussion following the pict

I usually describe my medium as digital. Or a digital/traditional hybrid. Or computer-rendered art with a hand-made touch. It didn’t start out that way. In art school and early in my career I experimented with various media. Colored pencils. Gouache, acrylic, watercolor. Dyes and inks. Nothing quite clicked. All too often I engaged in an uphill battle, working against the medium instead of with it. Or the best creative tools for an assignment wouldn’t meet my deadline. Or t

Confession time: I was never a natural at activities involving large muscle skills. I didn’t learn to ride a two-wheeler until I was ten. For years my cycling was a work in progress. Lots of scraped knees and white-knuckled wobbling, then short coasts, and finally that exhilarating moment when the bike takes off and you feel like you are flying. This blog has also been a long time coming. I agonized over whether I could find anything fresh or meaningful to add to the glut of