Thanks for stopping by! This is my self portrait for the Senior Poster! I was originally just going to do it in oils like I would normally do.....but let's face it...this is more me!

Willis in London touring around! This goes to Gail!

ZOO!

This is for Illustration Friday! The subject is ZOO. Don't worry all the animals are let out at night. During the day they love to hang out in their sweet wagons.

Here is some more Seymour spreads. The happy Giraffe! My plan is to finish the 32 pages by January, and for my thesis I want to do spin off about an Ostrich. I'm thinking about Olga, but any name suggestions would be awesome! Also there's some more pages from my Willis book for fun!

The top was a something I did for fun. I did two more Seymour Spreads ya! I've really been enjoying Willis and my Seymour book, they get me through the day. Everyone loves a Giraffe butt right? Anyways, he makes me smile, so I hope he makes you smile too!

...and something just for fun. I imagine them humming a tune with smiles all the way to a picnic.
Hooray Seymour! This is my first illustration for my children's book. It's when Seymour comes home with his new family from the zoo!

Willis in England!

This is what I'm going for on my website. I wan't it to be fun and playful! It has all of my little tid-bits thrown together...stripes, swirls and glazes. It scanned very dark... so I'm going to do some tweaking. The portfolio, blog, contact, links and bio sections will be on the windows. Hopefully it'll work into a good website.

This was for illustration, I wanted to create a dog park paradise. :) It's large, so it's probably best to click on it.
Willis in Rome, showing off his arms!
Wills smashing grapes to make wine, or grapefruit juice for kids.

Look at me...I can hold up the Pisa!

Willis is traveling through Italy right now. He's been to Venice and then visited the leaning tower of Pisa. Right now he is in Rome (haven't painted it yet) and tomorrow he goes into the country for grape smashing with his footsies.

I wanted to have some fun and get into the Halloween spirit!

This was an illustration I did for an article I read about vacationing in the Hamptons. It's thousands of dollars to rent there...so many people camp. So I thought I'd be fun to smush a tent between two big mansions covered with windows, because the more windows the more expensive the view is.

Willis in Venice!

Willis at a Cafe in Paris. I've been having so much fun lately doing these self promotion Willis pieces. Each one takes 30 minutes to an hour, they come so quickly because I'm not really
worrying about it being perfect. It's funny because I always worked on something until I killed it...now I think I know when to stop. My self promotion is going to be postcards as postcards. I am going to send out all of the vacation spots to make them look like snapshots from Willis' travels. Soon I will be setting up a blog for Willis to talk and give educational tips, something that children can tune into. I've just been working on something I can do a bit differently for my self promotion.
This is my cover rough for my children's book.

Willis in Ireland!
Ice Fishing

My vacation man as an egyptologist. I think his name is Willis. I have plans for Willis...
Yodel lay Yodel lay hee hoo!


Would you like some hot coco?

Another series of my vacation man.

Hiking

I thought it would be fun to do a little series of this man that I created the other day, the one skiing. Now he's hiking!

Illustration for the short story "The Butler, by Roald Dahl.

Illustration I did for a kid's imagination with a box...everyone played in boxes!

Study for my robot illustration and class sketches

Lido Beach

Sketch from the Don Cesar in St. Petersberg, beautiful hotel!




Lately I've been trying to use the style and freedom that I have in my sketchbook in my Illustrations. I always tighten up and I loose something when I do a final illustration, so I'm working keeping that freedom/creativity that I naturally do in my sketchbook. I'm playing with proportions, perspective, line quality, leaving somethings unpainted...Here are some sketches and a couple illustrations.

Something I did for fun last night, I think it's cute :)

Sketch for my next Illusration, I'm playing with kids imaginations...This one uses his box to play as a robot, and I'm doing another in a Spaceship with planet cutouts on string around his room. I'm really trying to bring my sketchbook style into my Illustrations.

Sketchbook page from Sarasota News and Books

Farmer Wheee!

So I had a pretty fantastic day today. I had a phone interview with Adam Rex, if you don't know him look him up....now. He's a great illustrator with wonderful books including "Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich" and a new one coming soon that I'm really excited about..."The True Meaning of Smekday" (both written and Illustrated by Rex). He's incredibly nice and even gave me feedback on some of my work! You can imagine how overjoyed I was when he found some pieces he really liked....oh joy. It's so exciting contacting our "heroes" of illustration. Its a great way to get direct feedback about the field you want to go into...and just to see that everyone started out in the same place..as an art student. Did some concept sketches...and at 1am I decided to paint a farmer man for fun. I've been experimenting with color...anyways I like it because I had lots of fun...which is always a plus. Have a great day!

Working on my piece for the word "manscape". I've been having a lot of fun...playing with the twist of manscape and landscape. This is the most stylized and static piece I've ever done, so it's been very enjoyable to work on. I had a lot of ideas for this project, so I'm going to do some spot illustrations too, all playing with landscaping. I'm going to do a man getting his chest hair raked, a bald man's head being watered by a flower pot...and other sorts of fun things :)

Happy Barber Men

I always get sidetracked when I'm doing thumbnails...I'm illustrating the word "manscape" in Illustration. So I'm going with this funny barber shop...where the men come in..and have "landscaping" done. Bald men's heads are watered with the flower pot, men's afros are turned into tree like sculptures. It's going to be fun! But then I started painting little barber men ...I'm always distracted. :)