Archive for March 2013

Sketchbook Sunday: Lichen Deer & Rabbits

This week was fairly unproductive drawing-wise. The welcome spring weather brought a minor but unwelcome flood to the basement, my children had colds and the ignition switch on the car started to malfunction, causing it to turn itself off while being driven...all in all I spent a lot of time vacuuming water, wiping noses and not drawing.


I found this silk screen print of an earlier version of Hybrid which I made at the Martha Street Studio in Winnipeg when we were still living in Manitoba. For anyone living in that area, the Martha Street Studio is a wonderful place to hang out, take classes, meet new people and so on.

Sketchbook Friday has now become Sketchbook Sunday, but onwards and upwards! Included below are a couple of sketches I have been playing around with:
Lichen Deer

I am really interested in lichen from a visual standpoint, but I recently discovered it is actually a composite plant, consisting of a fungus and its photosynthetic partner, usually an algae, which I find vaguely off-putting.

Rabbit sketch for a piece I am planning called Migration



Sketchbook Friday: Kaleidoscope

I am hoping to post something from the week's sketches here each Friday, as a way to encourage me to sketch, as well as to share drawings with anyone who might be interested. When I was a student we were required to produce five sketches a week which were part of our final mark in drawing class. Thankfully I had old sketchbooks from previous studies which I could pilfer from in lean weeks, and if my teacher wondered why so many of the sketches in my book were taped onto blank pages he never said anything. Sketching is good, since the sketches of today usually end up being the finished pieces of tomorrow or a few years from now...


Process/Progress : Biota

Having just finished (finally) a panoramic piece called Biota, I thought it would be nice to post a few pictures of the process to complete it. For those interested in these kinds of things, a Biota is the combined flora and fauna of a region, from the Greek word bios, meaning life. Cards and prints featuring art from Biota are now available in the Butterbean Design Studio Shop.
Detail of finished Biota piece. 
Detail of finished Biota piece.
Early painting stages. 
Early painting stages.


Walt Whitman Commission



Just finished Walt Whitman's portraits for a private collector and will be exhibited this fall at the Walt Whitman Birthplace in Long Island NY. The image is based on the black and white photo of Whitman(above).  I was also able to incorporate one of Whitman's poetry into the piece and I am pleased with the way in turned out. I created two options for the client to choose from; One of the portraits have a slight blue tint w/ inverted white text on the right side and the other has a slight green tint for the background. As with most of my other artworks, these pieces were created digitally on the computer using Wacom drawing tablet and Adobe Photoshop w/ custom brushes. I took the liberty to add a few colors to the clothing; I felt the blue, the red and the brown seemed to suit the image well. The image size is 9"x14" and will be printed on Epson Velvet Fine Art Paper, signed and dated. I hope to make these prints available in my Etsy shop sometime in the near future. It will be a nice addition to another Whitman portrait I already have in my shop.

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