Beach, Please
With every painting I am digging to reveal what lies beneath sand Watercolor, colored-pencil, and for the first time a wee bit of yellow gouache on hot-press paper. 9×12″
With every painting I am digging to reveal what lies beneath sand Watercolor, colored-pencil, and for the first time a wee bit of yellow gouache on hot-press paper. 9×12″
Hello, art professional here, just learning about the existence of a tool for my particular need. Remember that vacation I talked about two posts ago? While there I did some plein-air sketching of Windsor Lake with some oil pastels. I like sketching with oil-pastels; they’re fast and loose. Never suited… Read More »Oil Pastel Plein-air of Windsor Lake
I’m branching out into new materials and ready to get truly original with this crocheting habit. Yarn can be just so…fragile, I want to see what I else I can crochet with and what kind of forms those new materials will sustain. Tying in my other skills from a long… Read More »Crochet Rope Purse With Leather Handles
Now that the date has passed, I can show you, strangers on the internet, the wedding invitation suite that I designed for my vow-renewal and wedding reception. Forgive the weird color-variation that occurs between different browsers. Themed weddings can be a bit tricky to do well. A theme can easily… Read More »Wedding Invitations Design
I have not taken very many commissions in this very busy year, but here is one that I have recently finished and can share with you now that it has been delivered to the client. A watercolor portrait of a family home, framed by snow in the owner’s favorite way.… Read More »Portrait of a Home Commission
My next design campaign for Artworks Westfield is for a Queer Pride show this June. Fairly self-explanatory, this show is meant to highlight LGBTQIA+ artists and LGBTQIA+ causes. I got to use our new logo, fonts, and color pallet but applied in a completely different style from the last show… Read More »Art With Pride
My first design campaign for Artworks Westfield is for their Spring exhibition ‘ArtiCulture.’ My top priority as a new board member of this local non-profit is to achieve a cohesive visual brand identity. As such I have designed these promotional materials pro-bono to promote the experience of the arts within… Read More »ArtiCulture Campaign
If you want something for your community, sometimes you have to do it yourself. That’s why I’m donating my time and professional expertise as a recent appointee to the board of Artworks of Westfield, Inc. Artworks is a non-profit organization who’s mission is to bring arts and culture to the… Read More »ArtWorks of Westfield
Commission alert! Last year (? maybe, what is time?) I was commissioned to sew a custom A/C cover to keep the draft out of a mountain resort condo unit with a permanent A/C unit installed. I now have photos back of the cover in it’s new home. The cover is… Read More »Air Conditioning Unit Custom Cover
We got a small tease of spring before plunging back into below-freezing highs, prompting me to paint another wish for warmer weather. This tiny watercolor was supposed to be less of a burden to finish in it’s diminutive format; a relaxing way to pass time with my hands I won’t… Read More »Sunset Sail
The snowpack was late this year, but once it arrived, it grew quickly. Still trying to get outside as much as possible, there were a few days when extreme cold kept me confined to the house to an even greater degree than the rest of the pandemic has. Embracing my… Read More »Heavy Snowfall, A Winter Landscape in Watercolor
Thank you for rejoining me in 2021 after my short New Year’s hiatus from blogging. After posting every single week of 2020, I thought I deserved a little time off to recharge and set some new goals. I’m heading into 2021 with loads of painting goals, but gentle ones. To… Read More »Endurance, a Winter Landscape
When we last left off, I had just put down my darkest values and finished the sky and mountains. Continuing to work primarily back-to-foreground, top-to-bottom, I’ve begun building up the tower and filling in the grasses with many overlapping short strokes. It took a long time to build up the… Read More »Commissioned Landscape in Progress, Complete
I’ve had to keep this one under wraps until I know the gift has been given. Today, I’d like to show you some in-progress shots of this commissioned landscape. We’ll talk about process, and next week I’ll reveal the finished painting, long since delivered to its intended recipient. The process… Read More »Work in Progress Commissioned Landscape
Happy Labor Day, everyone! Today’s post is very on-theme, with a garment about labor. Recently my oldest friend bought a house that came with many chickens and a very fancy coupe. Apparently, it’s rather difficult to carry more than like four eggs at a time, especially if you need to… Read More »Eggpron
A really simple drawing exercise, continuous line drawing, involves making a doodle or a masterpiece without lifting the pencil or pen. Drawing with only one line forces the artist to pay attention to what edges are most important to an image, and to think ahead about where they will fall.… Read More »Continuous Line Plants
Right now it’s very difficult to look past the day-to-day. Long-term goals are hard to focus on in the stressful short term. As a form of relaxation I’ve returned to a very basic comfort by sketching what I’m thinking about: by sketching a food diary of all the calories helping… Read More »Colorful Food Diary
It’s almost time to say goodbye to winter. What a kind and brief winter it’s been. I know that the unseasonably warm temperatures are a symptom of of our dying planet, and will bring increased disease-bearing insects to our summertime, however this warm and relatively snow-free season of darkness was… Read More »The Thaw: Late Winter Landscape
This is Zeke, Lord of Darkness and proof of concept for animals-as-dark-sorcerers portraiture. I feel a regal portrait is an appropriate thing to post for President’s Day…compositionally speaking. Zeke is a mischievous and smart good boy, with a face so much resembling a hell-hound that I was compelled to depict… Read More »Zeke, Lord of Darkness
Sometimes it’s really hard to decide what to make next. I am officially running out of room for my creations, a common curse amongst the maker class. But because of this lack of space, there is an implied demand that anything made should be made well, and better yet for… Read More »Inside My Sketchbook, Inside My Manic Head
I have practiced a ‘no shit, genius’ technique using gel medium and liquid acrylics. Simply spoon some gel medium onto a horizontal canvas and dribble strategically liquid acrylics, and dabs of solid acrylics as well, why not. Using a pallet knife, move the medium over the pigment and across the… Read More »Gel Medium Technique
Finally, I’m calling them finished. The large pair of abstract, moody landscapes that I’ve been working on since the start of the new year are done and hung. Not that I have put an excessive number of hours into them, but I have to tell myself that they’re finished more… Read More »Dining Room Diptych. Abstract Landscape in Acrylic.
When planning a large painting, it is wise to map out color, form, and composition on a small scale first. Thumbnail drawings and color studies help an artist explore different images for the same visual problem quickly, and make executing the final piece much faster. I have settled on the… Read More »Color Studies for Large Dining Diptych
Abstract art has it’s place in home decor. Representational work is my bread-and-butter, and how I’ve worked exclusively my entire career. The art I make is either utilitarian, or representational. Usually it’s both. But there are spaces in the home that don’t need the specificity of realism. For these spaces,… Read More »Desedimentation (My First Abstract Painting)
My mom wanted some new paintings to go with her freshly painted bathroom walls. Formerly, she displayed two green wooden panels with dreary flowers painted on them. She asked me to update the panels with some new flowers on a white background. My mom likes purple (the living room carpet… Read More »Rustic Flower Paintings
Now that I’ve purchased the base for an armored ensemble in a breastplate and back-piece from Medieval Collectibles, it’s time to add my own shoulder armor to take the look to another level. This children’s body armor is perfect for me because it’s made for the very small and is… Read More »Leather Spaulders and Pauldron
Happy Saturnalia! Bright Solstice! Merry Yule! It’s a very busy time of year for me, as always, so I haven’t had much time to post. I was doing so well there for a while! By now this painting has been published, so it’s safe for me to share. Above is a… Read More »Holiday Commission of the Boston Skyline
In the middle of July we took an absolutely lovely vacation to the heart of the Adirondack park to a private Island in the middle of Long Lake, in up-state NY. The Island is called ‘Round Island’ and it’s owned by the family of some of our closest friends. They… Read More »En Plein Air at Round Island
Happy Summer everyone! This post has nothing to do with summertime, but I hope everyone had a wonderful solstice nonetheless. This post is kind of the opposite of summer; it’s another skull painting that I finished last winter, but I was waiting to get it framed before I published a… Read More »Canadian Lynx Skull Watercolor
Arriving home after a half-day hike in the woods I attempted to recreate one of the beautiful landscapes that I came across by memory. Though the image seemed vivid in my mind, it is never preferred to recall an image by memory alone. Memory isn’t a reliable visual resource; most… Read More »Tiny Landscape From Memory
Another skull painting to add to the series I’ve been working on: a bison. This is the first full-size watercolor that I’ve completed in the new house, though the sketch and reference photos began last year before the move. Very straight-forward, I start with a pencil sketch transferred onto a watercolor… Read More »Bison Skull Watercolor
I’m back! It’s been a long time since my last post because life has been very busy happening. Those of you who have checked in before might know that Jake and I bought a house at the end of last year. It was a very scary and joyful experience and… Read More »We Do A Lot of Dreaming
I finished another painting! And it’s another animal skull! It is a 12×16″ inch original watercolor painting of a giant pheasant skull. Matted to 11×14″ and framed to 14×18″. The frame is much more beautiful in person. My iPhone does not do the image justice photographing through the glass, but you… Read More »Really into Skulls
This weekend was very Game of Thrones around my house. Jake and I are preparing for King Richard’s Faire this upcoming weekend and so our individual chores were much more medieval than usual. In addition to drinking sweet mead-like drinks, altering costumes by hand and being gifted some vintage furs… Read More »Viking Drinking Horn Holsters
I am thrilled to finally be able to share this painting with you. I finished it some time ago but just presented it to the client this weekend. Commissioned by the Army Mountain Warfare school in Jericho, VT, this large watercolor painting combines the school’s mascot (a Ram’s head) with… Read More »Large Watercolor Commission
We had an absolutely amazing trip to Costa Rica this month! Days and days of adventure in the sun, water, mountains, and surrounded by animals. The food was spectacular and the views, beautiful. When a break was needed from our non-stop go,go,go adventures, I took some time to paint tiny… Read More »Mini Paintings of Paradise, Costa Rica
Last night I finished another commission piece! It’s a Sophie Hatter cosplay dress, a character from the animated film Howl’s Moving Castle. I’ve cosplayed as this character myself in the past, so this was my second time around making this dress. It’s a fairly simple design, with a very forgiving… Read More »Completed Sophie Hatter Commission Dress
Merry Christmas! Below is the painting that I made for my aunt’s annual Christmas card. It is a portrait of two new family dogs. I painted this piece in quite a hurry using watercolors and colored pencils. It is impossible to get a photograph of two dogs looking in the… Read More »Commissioned Christmas Card: Watercolor, Colored Pencil
For the entire month of June I will be exhibiting some of my brightest watercolor paintings in a Solo show at the iYo Cafe in Davis Square, Somerville, Ma! Though the subject of the work varies, the collection was assembled primarily for its warm-weather feel. I would describe the bunch… Read More »Solo Art Exhibit at iYo Cafe in Somerville, MA
Finally I’ve finished another painting! This winter has been brutal in every way imaginable. Because of this I’ve taken to painting dreamy summer scenes all season to console my shivering skins. Last summer I took a trip to P-Town Mass, early in the season before the crowds arrived. The town was just… Read More »Provincetown On The Water
This past weekend Kelley and I attended Granite State Comicon as vending artists in their Artist’s Alley and Dealer’s room. I had a wonderful time and met some really cool people! With Halloween coming up, many of you asked if I had a store online or made custom masks. Yes,… Read More »Post-Granite State Comicon
I’ve finished a new painting! in an effort to hold onto the summer sun for as long as possible, I decided to paint, just for fun, a picture of this beach beauty. It’s not often that I paint a picture for no reason other than my own entertainment, but I… Read More »Beach Beauty – Just for Fun Painting of the Summer
Remember all of those fairs I have been vending at? Well, I have accumulated a bit of new work that I haven’t had a chance to photograph and share with everyone due to the chaos of fair preparation. I still have lots on my plate, but now that two back-to-back… Read More »Spring Leather
For those of you who like to do things yourself, I’ve got some new paint-you-own-leather-mask listings up on Etsy. Leather masks are surprisingly simple to make from vegetable tanned leather. However, if you only need one mask, its hardly worth the large investment of your time and money to track down a… Read More »Paint-Your-Own-Masks on Etsy
On Saturday, June 22nd, Faire Trimmings (a collarborative brand between Kelley and I) will be vending at the Pirate Rendezvous in Damariscotta, ME. Activities begin at 10 a.m. and continue until 4 p.m. The pirates invade at high noon, which is essentially a large parade and general storming of the fair grounds by… Read More »The Pirate Rendezvous
I also want to let everyone know about the new masks that I have listed on Etsy. All handmade and one-of-a-kind. Click on an image to be taken to the listing. Also available in the Etsy store is the option to add ribbon or a suede cord to any of… Read More »Masks on Etsy
This week I have added several new items to the Etsy shop, including three new, and very different bracers! All hand-made and one-of-a-kind, these bracers are cut from the highest quality vegetable tanned leather. This study yet flexible material insures that these bracers will fit any arm (of the intended… Read More »Bracers on Etsy
Last week with the snow storm of the decade looming, bundled up in front of my computer, I decided to pick up my Wacom tablet and paint a picture digitally. I am not a very experienced digital painter. I’ve only completed a small handful of pieces on the computer before,… Read More »An Exorcise in Digital Painting
New lovey-dovey items for sale in the Etsy shop just in time for Valentine’s Day. Two new listings for handmade heart garlands! The first listing is for a pre-made, ready to ship string of four bright red heart ornaments, strung on a length of hemp and cut to your size… Read More »Wear You Heart on Your….House.
Alrighty, I will start with the Queen City Kamikaze Con business so we can get that out of the way and start looking at some pretty masks. February 16th, Manchester, NH, I will be vending at a one-day anime convention called Queen City Kamikaze Con. Admission is only $10! My… Read More »New Masks in Etsy & Queen City Kamikaze Con Announcement