Pensive thoughts & old art videos

Happy Friday! Always a good day I think. I often go to a pub to meet my Dad on Fridays where we share a few beers and some pub grub. Or it's movie night and we go and see whatever awesome comic or sci-fi movie is out. And if either of the above doesn't work out, we go out for all you can eat sushi. That's why I love Fridays! Tonight I think it's out to dinner.

Above is a new page from my journal, theme of Limericks - always fun to make those up! I'm not very good at it but I try. This was painted in acrylics over book pages. Barely mixed media, LOL. I think that counts though.

In other news, I'm working on many new online classes - themes in link. I used to do a lot of workshops for ArtTrader Magazine but that was ages ago. So I'm (slowly) uploading a lot of that old content to my brand new YouTube channel where it's available for free. Plus I'll be adding various new videos too. Please subscribe if you're into art vids! I made a few new videos this week but they need an edit first. I hope to have them up next week.

Bright Pop Flowers in Pink & Yellow

A new set of bright and shiny graphics! This retro pop flavored set of flowers comes in bright pink, orange and yellow.  There's a bigger set of these graphics in my store and on Creative Market with a small set on Etsy - (they have upload restrictions unfortunately.

I managed to shake off my summer relaxation mode (which was working well) and get back to work on editing graphics. Lots of new sets to come including a big Christmas set next week. Can't wait to share it.

Experiments in art

Continuing on with my lazy and indulgent, barely-working summer, I'm still in art journal art mode. Yay! The lady at left was created for either prompt: Holding On or Letting Go. I went with both. Might as well complicate things when you can! :)


The page at top right was made with a new local art journal group. It's really fun to create art with people and ever since I stopped the weekly life drawing group, I've really missed being around other artistic people. At the last journal meeting, we tried Gesso Overpainting (I don't know if that needs capitalizing like it's a real thing) and it was pretty cool. I'm not sure what I made! It's a shape with blobs and fangs and could possibly be people in weird positions?! Maybe? But I could see this technique being used for something much cooler. I'll add it to the journal list of things to try again!


I started yet another journal - this is number four. It's getting ridiculous. My art journal addiction is strong. This one has a focus on interesting portraits. I think I paint way too many pretty girls in journals and in general so this book will be different. My reference for this painting was one of the old vintage mugshots found online. I think this man committed a crime in 1924. I don't know what it was but I hope he was a bootlegger. Maybe he needs a backstory added to this page. Rum runner...

Happy PPF. I hope to win the lottery this weekend, wish me luck!

Professional dreamer, lazy summer worker

This summer has seen me working very little and actively trying to avoid work. I went on holiday and came back far too relaxed and it's not wearing off! Then again, the work that I have to do is sort of mind numbing. I create graphics for designers and creatives to use in commercial art - that's the fun part. I love to paint things up. The mind numbing part is editing all of those graphics to make them into nice digital files. I have pages and pages of pretty watercolors, all waiting for a clean and edit. And in order to avoid this sort of eye burning work, I've been making many art journal pages. It's a nice change of course - I get to keep this art!

Above are a couple of pages from my summer art journal. The antler lady is a mixed media / acrylic. I actually used some of my own graphic files in this one, LOL. All of the flowers are from my watercolor graphic sets. The entwined ladies on the right are in colored pencil over a mixed media background (quote is from Tom Robbins).