Lily Lake

I'm working on another image in my Colorado series. This is a loose interpretation of Lily Lake, a beautiful mountain lake on Rabbit Ears Pass near Steamboat. Here's a photo of the lake in the summer- pretty eh?!

Illustration Friday: Sky

In a workshop recently, we were asked to write a poem starting with the words, "I come from..." Most people wrote about their families, but I immediately thought of the plains and big blue sky of Wyoming where I grew up.
I'm trying this out as a blog header without the text. I've been wanting to change the look of my blog for quite a while!

Super Knit Girl painted

Here she is painted! And below is the original sketch my friend gave me to explain her idea. Go Super Knit Girl!

Illustration Friday: Water

This is a drawing from my sketchbook that I decided to paint for this week's Illustration Friday prompt, Water. It's an illustration of Nathalia Crane's poem The Janitor's Boy.

I discovered the poem because Natalie Merchant made it into a song that I love! Every time it comes around on my ipod I giggle and dance. The album it's on is called Leave Your Sleep- a very quirky fun set of songs from old poems by or for children. You can hear the song and see footage of the recording session on Natalie Merchant's website.

I ordered Nathalia Crane's book and I tell you what, she was VEEEEEEERY in love with that red-haired boy. There are lots of other poems about him also.

My drawing was also influenced by an illustration of a boater on water by Julie Paschkis. I love the way she incorporated words into the layers of water. 

Julie has a new book out about the poems of Pablo Neruda illustrated in this wordy style. I can't wait to see it! You can find out more about it on her group blog Books Around the Table.

Printing on a Rainy Day

Today I got to print the blocks from my last two posts. The printing itself went really well and it reminded me that the added humidity of a rainy day has always seemed to keep the ink nice for longer. I'm happy with the way the Wyoming poem turned out. I think it will look even better with paint.

It was much easier for me to print the four blocks on individual pieces of paper although they would have looked nice printed together on the same piece. Now I will cut a mat with four windows or maybe I'll trim the paper closer to the image and float the artwork on top of a mat. Not sure yet!

And here's Super Knit Girl ready to save the world through knitting!

Super Knit Girl

My friend Barb is a knitter and needed some artwork for an Etsy shop, Ravelry site, and some tags to attach to knitted products. Guess what her avatar name is....? Super Knit Girl of course!

She special requested the clogs and knitted cape. :) I think this will be fun and I'm looking forward to seeing it printed and painted!

Wyoming and.... Monsters!

This is a poem I wrote about being a child in Wyoming. I'm really into making clouds lately- even though linocut black lines defining white puffy clouds isn't really an ideal way to do something so delicate!
I'd already gotten these 4 small square blocks ready for something else that I decided not to do. So I'm going to try this image broken into 4 separate prints. We'll see how it turns out.

And on a very fun note- my friend Tina Kugler is posting a new monster drawing on her blog every day this month- and she has quite an imagination!