Colorado gift cards

Here is the set of 12 images I made as gift enclosure cards. Originally I was going to stop at 12 but somehow I talked myself into doing at least 8 more. So now I'm calling them the never ending squares...

They look really sweet as little 3x3 inch cards!

Update- Here are 2 more- Fish Creek Falls, a beautiful waterfall here and some ice skates.

Early

The early bird gets the worm... and time to sing a little song!

I'm working on a set of very small linocuts for gift enclosure cards. I have one more to do and I'll post the whole set soon.

Equipment

What equipment operator doesn't wish his dump truck or loader could talk to him?!

This one is from my children's book dummy A Lucky Day. I'm hoping I'm lucky enough that someone wants to publish it!

Gamblin Ink

A few weeks ago I got some new ink that is just fabulous! I've tried different inks throughout the years and disliked all of them. I was always struggling with gloopy indistinct lines and ink that didn't work well with fine detail. But this Gamblin ink is perfect. It's thin and light so it prints the details cleanly. And it has very strong pigment so you don't get a splotchy, uneven print. I love it!
Gamblin is based in Portland, Oregon and I got this ink at McClain's.

Painted Creativity

I got it done! I guess I used similar sky colors to The Reading Tree in my blog header, eh?!

I think I like the grass painted over the black ink. I can still carve more black away if the grass is too dark...

Let Creativity Take Flight

This block is for a new print I'm working on. The Rocky Mt. Chapter SCBWI has a conference in September and they do a challenge for illustrators ahead of time. This year we are supposed to illustrate Let Creativity Take Flight. In my image, a little girl is flying a kite with crayons tied to the tail. The crayons are drawing a rainbow in the sky. 

I may carve out more from the grass area. But first I'm going to try printing it in black and painting over it with green. Sometimes it's a nice effect. If it doesn't work well, I can always carve more away later.

The Light-Hearted Grocery Store

Here's another one from the distant past!

My 6th grade teacher, Mrs. Wiley had us each write and illustrate a children's picture book. Then she bound them for us with staples, glue and tape.

This is the oddball story I wrote- The Light-Hearted Grocery Store. I think it's interesting that I drew such stylized people. I don't remember drawing in this style any other times. But then my memory is kind of rusty...