Sharing My Creative Life

Let's begin this journey together

As I begin penning this creative blog, the first thing that I need to do is take a deep breath. Starting a brand new venture like this is both exciting and overwhelming at the same time. A collage photo, that gives you a glimpse into my creative mind, seemed like the perfect beginning to my first Substack.

I LOVE COLORS!

I’m sharing this with you as it’s one of my true passions. Mixing colors sweeps me away to an absolute place of happiness! When I need a couple hours of escapism, I’ll mix up some of my favorites so they’re waiting in color marked containers ready to be used. When I let a brush full of color flow across the surface of my paper or canvas, a wave of joy swirls around me filling my aura with the warmth of sunshine. After writing about this, I need to go mix up more colors!

To begin my day, I doodle a quick b & w sketch using a black ink brush pen. I eat my breakfast at my studio table and as I sip a cup of very strong coffee. I doodle whatever comes into my imagination for a couple minutes. Here’s a photo of a morning doodle that I just completed. The cat’s markings strayed off in a strange direction so I filled them in to be black. An elephant popped into my mind and levitating him made me smile. The content snail came along to hitch a ride.

Sam Could Levitate Elephants: A Hidden Secret Power

I love coming up with names for my characters and artwork.

This spunky cat below was just painted in my sketchbook. Staying loose and not taking too long to make these illustrations is a constant challenge as I want to tweak everything! The details share nuances of characters which can bring a whole image together whether it be a doodle, pattern design, or final illustration. I’ll explore this further with you in another blog.

For this sketchbook page, the first layer was a brilliant yellow Golden fluid acrylic and then Holbein Acryla Gouache (essential in my studio) layers were built to quickly make this cat artwork. I finished it off with line work using a Palomino Blackwing pencil (these are awesome). Finally, I sealed everything with Mod Podge Matte which is my favorite glue too.

Sprocket The Cat

Making collage pieces is a joyful regular artistic exploration. On my studio table, I have different size bowls filled with scraps of papers to cut up and create unique pieces. The sample below is a mini collage for a special sketchbook. If you click the button below, it will whisk you away to see a short video of how I made this.

Maurice And Toby The Turtle

I need to sign off as my next blog is gathering momentum as I fill it up with new colorful characters, quirky doodles, animation silliness, and whatever else is happening in my studio. Thanks for giving my blog a read and I appreciate your time. See you soon!