Category Archives: art

The View from Whiteheart Michigan

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This is another commission that I drew quite some time ago but didn’t have permission to share until now, and it is the map of the fictional town of Whiteheart and environs as described in Bonnie Jo Campbell’s forthcoming (WW Norton, January 2014) novel, The Waters, which is an excellent novel that you should pre-order from you local independent bookstore or library.

You can read some more of my thoughts about this novel here and you can read some of Bonnie Jo Campbell’s thoughts about the map here.

As for the map, it took me a goodly time to figure it out. Originally she asked if I could do it in the style of the famous “View From 9th Avenue” New Yorker cover, and I did start out with a more conscious imitation, but as the project progressed, it sort of expanded in all kinds of direction that took it further and further away from that aesthetic (including changing from a portrait to a landscape orientation). Plus, to fit the aesthetic of the novel, I needed to fit a lot of plants and animals. And the roads and the sizes of things and their relationship to other things grew murky. I just had to make choices and roll with them and I’m all in all pretty pleased with the result, but also I wish it could have been twice as big and a little more technically accurate. There are so many more things I could have drawn.

Fun anecdote: in early drafts, a raven appeared in the top right of the map, but the raven didn’t make the final edit of the story, and the very last change I was asked to make was to replace him with some mosquitoes. Hilariously, following a series of events that began with me getting COVID, my MacBook could no longer pair with my Wacom tablet, and I was under deadline…so I drew those mosquitoes with one finger, using the touchpad. Do not recommend. I ended up replacing the MacBook with a Lenovo Yoga 9i, which is a far superior machine. The keyboard of that MacBook was a crime against Apple customers. It was literally an impediment to writing.

Anyway, this map, in a slightly altered configuration, will theoretically serve as the frontispiece of the novel (I say theoretically, because it did not appear in the ARC, and I believe things when I see them) which should be a great feather in my cap. Typically, major publishers only work with in-house artists, but Bonnie Jo went to bat for this map, and as far as I know, it will be there.

Light Box Prototype

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This is something I’ve been thinking about since I finished the feigned glass windows: feigned glass light box. Michael’s had some tiny shadow boxes that they were, of course, sold out of, but I got this bigger box and The Man cut a hole in the back and installed the LEDs.

I used clear plastic for a background and sealed the whole thing with the clear plastic as well, and the rest of the design is scrap pieces from the original project, except for the bats, which are heavy cardstock that I painted purple. I used hot glue to stick affix the panel to the box and then more hot glue to seal the edges with ribbon.

This particular box was created to be a birthday present.

Definitely want to do some more experimentation with this type of thing but I have to find a good (affordable) source for the boxes and the lights.

Behold! The Biblioburro

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There is a long and glorious history of mobile libraries powered by sure-footed donkeys, delivering books to people in remote or undeveloped areas where readers have no other access to texts, so when the librarian asked me to decorate the cart she intended to use to bring books to classrooms on days when the library is inaccessible to students, I knew I wanted to make this donkey-drawn bookmobile to pay homage to the most literate members of the asinine species.

Total run time was probably just over 2 hours. The school counselor helped me laminate it so it should last for a while.

Feigned Glass Window III

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Whew! That’s a wrap on this project (more or less; I still have to add some latticework to cover the gaps but I’m glad to be done with the difficult part). Keen eyes will note some themes common to my work.

The whole thing took about 30 hours, a smidge under but will likely get to 30 with the latticework. My hand and my scissors are wrecked. I’m taking the scissors to be sharpened but my hand will just have to be endured.

We did the tech rehearsal last night and the whole thing looks even better with light streaming through the panels as intended.

Anyway, school starts next week so I have to go do my bulletin board now.

Feigned Glass Window II

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Whew! This second one took one about 5 or 6 hours, maybe half as long as the first one. Plus I didn’t have to wait for materials to be delivered. There should be enough of everything left to finish the third one in style (wish I had a *bit* more blue, but with care it should suffice).

This piece seemed to dictate itself. I had different ideas about how the color would play out, and for the geometric shapes as well, but then it sort of came together with way more yellow than I intended, with more complexity at the edges and less where I ended up using bigger pieces. But I think it looks great.

The person who commissioned it loves it so far, plus I got another commission today!

I can’t seem to figure out how to do captions on my phone; maybe I’ll edit it later. But the caption should read, “Google ‘lemniscate’ right now.”

It’s been a minute

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Yeah, I haven’t posted lately. All my equipment is messed up so I can’t do digital art until that’s sorted, the new BJC comic likely will NOT BE allowed out in public until 2025, and I have a new gig that pays money for my time.

I have started a new painting, and I have a potential new project that might materialize in 2024, and I have this fun activity—I’m helping transform this freestanding tent/pavilion thing into a church by creating faux stained glass windows with transparent plastic wrap and metallic washi tape.

It will be moderately NSFW.

How Do You Like to Go up in a Spring Bulletin Board?

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cut paper little girl swinging on a swing with Robert Louis Stevenson quote
I like it!

COVID knocked me down, but I am slowly getting up again. It took me a lot of weeks to make this bulletin board, because I got the long COVID and it slows me down. One week I cut out all the flowers, but it was a while before I got to the lettering, which took 2 days, and then the girl also took 2 days. And I still forgot to give her a second leg. In this picture I also forgot to glue her hair down. If it was, you would see that her hair beads are rainbow.I know I’ve done 2 Robert Louis Stevenson poems in a row, but they spoke to me.

Another Sonoran Switchplate

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I’m painting a lot lately, and I am working on a bigger canvas all week: it’s about 4 feet high and 18 inches wide. Making a lot of progress and wasn’t done painting for the day, but I needed to let that project rest/dry, so I did another switchplate. I’ve been wanting to do this design for a while. Honestly part of the problem was that I couldn’t find a screwdriver. However, I persevered.

It started out pretty good but then some of the paint pens exploded, and some of the pens weren’t flowing so all. I cleaned it up as best I could but some bits of it were better before. Paint pens are less versatile than actual paints. Still, it’s about what I wanted. I meant to put it by my front door, and put the zentangle that’s there now in my studio, but in fact they’re different plates. The one in the front has 3 switches.

Only 2 blank switchplates left in this house. Gonna have to start painting the walls soon.

A Cozy Pretend Fire

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I was asked to create a cardboard “fireplace” for an event that will involve children drinking hot chocolate before school. While it usually isn’t cool enough for daytime fires in Arizona, lately it kind of has been, but I guess you can’t have a real fire at an elementary school, so they still will have to sit around the pretend fire.

This piece took a little extra time because it had to fold flat, meaning that I couldn’t just wrap the whole thing up, but had to keep each panel separate. There’s one piece of tape on the back and the whole thing collapses if it’s removed. The fire itself comes out: the grate isn’t attached to anything, and the flames and the wood are stuck into grooves cut into the grate and can also be removed.

Currently, the cozy pretend fire is sitting in the front office next to an artificial Christmas tree. Maybe I should make a pretend Hanukkiah to go along with it. There probably aren’t that many Jewish kids at this school—guessing we have more indigenous kids than Jewish kids—but not everyone is cool with Christmas stuff. I never do overtly religious designs, although I’ve done culturally relevant adjacent imagery, like luminarias.