From My Brain to the Page!

I really love it when I have an image or an idea in my mind and I can get it exactly as I imagine it onto a piece of paper and into the world without a glitch!

Believe me, this is a rare occurrence. Usually it takes me a few drafts, centimeters from my eraser, turns with the pencil sharpener, and layers of tracing paper to get the art to look the way I want. More often than not, I either can't seem to make it as great as I imagined it in my mind's eye, so I have to compromise, or I didn't have a clear enough vision of what I wanted until I started sketching.

The drawing that inspired me to write this blog entry happened just an hour or so ago. I really am pleased and surprised with how easily it flowed from my mind to my pencil. The image has been floating around in my imagination for a few weeks and I just could not let it go until I made it real. I wish it was always that easy and quick.

Unfortunately I can't go into much detail about what the image is or what inspired it for reasons that I don't want to give away right now. I will be able to share all later in the week!

Road trip greeting card

One of my fellow volunteers at God's Love We Deliver, Jicky, has been planning to leave on a year-long, cross-country road trip this month and another fellow volunteer asked if I would create a custom card for her send-off party that the rest of the volunteers could sign. Luckily, Jicky had already e-mailed me a photo of her pickup truck with a camper attached which I was able to use as reference for my drawing.

Her ultimate goal is to make a visit to each of the continuous 48 states over the course of the year, so I drew arrows to indicate her routes in many directions. I was going for the feeling of asphalt by using the purplish-gray, crackled texture in the map portion of the image.






The inside of the card reads: Have a great drive, Jicky, we'll be cheering you on!