Octopus Garden

Pencil on Paper

This is the original sketch for a painting (below) I made for a friend's new baby boy. The theme of the nursery was "An Octopus Garden", based on the song by the Beatles. Octopuses collect shiny and interesting objects they find on the bottom of the sea and make themselves gardens, which is such a happy thought, thus a happy song about the idea. I was aiming to reflect that happy, safe feeling in the painting, where C is well-cared for by a friendly, albeit eccentric octopus in his undersea garden. I'm not sure what an octopus would collect for his garden, but I imagine buried treasure and old ship anchors would be a part of it!

Oil on Painting Board

(I used a Colourfix[TM] Painting Board, the first time I have used one, and it was really nice, sturdy but flexible, with a nice texture. It came precoated with primer.)

The Stinky Soap Adventures

I sent these drawings to my niece and nephew in West Africa, in a package along with two bars of stinky soap (Grandpa's Pine Tar Soap-which has been highly recommended for heat rashes). As a child, I don't know if I would have been very excited to receive a couple of bars of stinky soap in the mail, so the drawings depict some of the fantastic adventures they could have with a bar of stinky soap, if they use their imaginations.

Here, H uses the bar of stinky soap to top off her fantastic tower of blocks, before C knocks it down (he's going through a destructive stage).

And here H and C sail away together on a great bar of stinky soap over the ocean to faraway adventures. Stinky soap, I think, is very good for the imagination.

Ink (Faber-Castell pens) on Paper

Work in Progress

Graphite on Paper

Some sketches that are part of a book dummy I've been working on. The final illustrations would be rendered in ink and oil paint with other textural elements.

Here our young hero climbs into a cave. What will he find there? What possible attraction could have lured him from his home into this little hole in the ground?

Probably rocks.

Graphite on Paper

Our successful hero struggles back onto his horse for the long journey home. Aww, such a plucky little guy. Now I like him.

Portraits

My favorite little neighbor. She reigned like a little queen over a neighborhood gang of boys, and stopped by often to ask to play with a highlighter, or colored clay, or to drink my water, which she seemed to think was different from her own water at home. I got her to sit still for a little while and made this quick sketch of her, shortly after she began first grade.

Then she drew me. Very promising, I think. I like how she got my glasses, and my sandals.

Markers and Gel Pens on Paper

Child

Another moment. I was sitting in a market, bored, waiting to meet someone. The market was full of men who watched me curiously, and so, as a strategy to avoid conversation, I sat on a stool by a woman's sewing shop and began this drawing of a young girl who was sitting nearby. Called to my appointment, I never finished. This person, who I met, would change my life, but of course I didn't know that then, trying to capture the girl's face quickly before some older sister called her off on an errand. And then someone did call her, and someone called me.

So here is the unfinished face of a child whom I never met before or after. And here is the moment before everything changed.

Ink on Paper

Potty Training

I made these illustrations to put together into a book to send to my two-year-old niece, H. She was in the midst of potty-training and my sister requested a good picture book that would simply show all the steps she needed to learn. They are living and working in West Africa currently, so the story is very specific to H's setting, environment, and family. There were no words to go with the pictures, H not yet being very proficient at reading.

The first page illustrates the woeful times that have befallen H and friends pre-potty training.
H begins to think about other possibilities.

H is very excited and decides to plunge into a world without diapers.
H didn't have the advantage of a kiddie pottie. I did want to let her know that, in an emergency, a bucket could also do the trick, as her gecko friend demonstrates.
Waiting. The baby is H's little brother, C, a future potty-trainee himself.
Kids always take too much. Luckily, Mommy is on hand to help.
Now the joy of flushing! Everyone is very proud of H, and gecko, too.
Sanitation is always important. Soap and water.
Now H and gecko can feel very grown up in their big kid underwear (which my younger sister and I included in the mail with the illustrations). And the process can start all over with C.

Did it help? I like to think so. At any rate, H seemed to like it, and is by now an old pro with a potty.

Marker, Colored Pencil on Recycled Paper