The First of Many...I Hope

Welcome to my blog. People usually blog about one of two things- something they love or something they hate. My reason is my very serious love for storybook art. Of course I have those silly things that I love that make up the core of my inspiration, like Corgis and Orangina and especially Corgis drinking Orangina, but the one thing I truly love more than just about anything is Storybook Illustration. It’s sort of like it’s in the center of a spinning wheel that I have created. It’s surrounded by creative projects, past art, my creative experience, corgis, chocolate, and chalk, among other things.

As a working artist I don’t always get to choose projects that are truest to my heart. As a matter of fact it can be rare to find those projects that give me satisfaction. And where would these fall on my wheel? Somewhere in between Dry and Controlled along the outer rind. I’ve illustrated in the past for books and a few publications and even designed textiles for a while but none of these were close the center of my wheel. So for myself I have chosen a serious challenge- to illustrate exactly what I want. To bring out my inner youth, to illustrate and express this youth as a quality in my work and explore the notion that youthfulness is not always a physical state of being. I’ll create a family of work that tackles all things about illustration I love and struggle with. They’ll be scenes from another place that conjure memories of some sort that I sometimes forget to enjoy.

So with that I’d like to share that I recently saw a beautiful example of inspiration. The Society of Illustrators hosted a show of “fantastic” art in an exhibition called Spectrum.

I had been thinking of this idea of Five Pieces for a longtime and when I saw the amazing work in this show it blew me away. Here was the visualization of what I had wanted for myself- a collection of pure, original illustrations. So with this being said, my goal will be to create Five Pieces, from my truth, my center on the wheel. My deadline I’ve given myself will be for October 2^nd at 7:00 pm. I’ll show these in a celebration that Storybook Illustration deserves.

My next blog I’ll show snippets of progress and probably talk about where the heck I’m getting my subjects and ideas from. And of course the symbols and why I put them in.