Wild Mushroom Surface Pattern

I went to Point Reyes on a long drive with some close friends this last weekend. I was inspired to draw some mushrooms and turned them into a surface pattern. This is a new faster style then I usually work in. I made these mostly digitally vs some hand painting and some computer work. I have some good ideas on how to combine my paintings into this style. Anyway I'm pretty pleased with these little guys. And I'm also trying to keep a better sketch book so more work to come as always.

30 Day Challenge - Day 3

I'm doing a 30 day challenge where I do a blog post each day for 30 days based on this 30 Day Challenge List. Feel free to do the same and send me a link to your challenge.


3. A book you love

I LOVE The stranger by Chris Van Allsburg. It has been my favorite book as long as I can remember. This book has fantastic illustrations and is about a stranger (Jack Frost). He shows up and has amnesia and when he finally remembers who he is the leaves change color. 

Chris Van Allsburg has been my favorite Illustrator for 23 years. I discovered his books when I was in Kindergarden. I remember every week when we had library I would ask the librarian if she had gotten any new Chris Van Allsburg books. Sometimes she would say "yes," and it would make my day. 


I've had the pleasure to meet Chris twice. Once was in 2003 at the Curious George shop in Cambridge, MA. The second time was in 2005 in Boston, MA and I actually got to see him give a slide talk about his sculpture work. It is amazing when you get to meet your idol in person. Feel free to leave a comment about your favorite book. I'm always looking for new things to read. I am currently reading Decorate by Holly Becker and Heart of the Matter by Emily Griffin. 

Street Art - San Francisco and Beyond

Over the past few years I have fallen deeply in love with street art. I see it everywhere, on the side walks, on buildings, on bridges, even trees.

Now, I'm not onto the shitty tagging gangs and assholes do that freakin' ruins people's personal property. I'm into creative stencil art, paste ups and crochet graffiti. There is probably a fine line between these two, but that's a discussion for another time.   

I went to art school and it was really okay to draw on the walls. I think people are realizing that street art is worth something. Especially when someone will pay tens of thousands of dollars to cut a Banksy off of a wall, or the fact that an entire community was in an uproar when someone unknowingly painted over one of Banksy's masterpieces. I watched Exit Through the Gift Shop, which taught me a lot about how people make street art, and who some of the major players are. I was also fortunate enough to see several Invaders when I went to Germany last year. I'm also really into Jeremy Novy's Koi Fish. 

I'm always snapping pictures of cool street art and wanted to put it all together in a post for my readers to see. I also recently fell in love with Instagram, which I've used to put some radical filters on these badass pics. Would love to give these artists credit, so if you know who they are leave a comment. Heck, just leave a comment if you have something to say about street art. 

Casey Caplowe of GOOD

I attended a design lecture presented by AIGA SF last Thursday. Casey Caplowe the co-founder & chief creative officer of GOOD was the speaker. GOOD is doing a lot of Good shit, pun intended. You should check out their site and projects. But, without recapping the lecture I wanted to talk about one bit of information that I walked away with. My brain latched onto one quote that Casey threw out there, and it really resonated with me: Fail Harder. Fail Faster. Try to fail, and you won't.

This quote rocks. Don't just sit there, if you are afraid to fail you will never succeed. We were all put on this earth to be creative, that is why we have thumbs. So get out there and paint, draw, snap photos, decorate, sing, write, design, inspire.

This Week in Painting

I've been busy this week. I am trying to get a new collection put together called "Zombies are Sweet." I've been taking snapshots of my progress to share with you. While painting this collection I have been thinking of coordinating patterns to go along along with my ghouls. You can see little sketches of those in the margins. I've been wanting to make a paisley pattern for a long time so I took a stab (no pun intended ha) at it with some ghost inspired paisleys. There are ten different ghouls in this collection and I have some trick or treating goodie bag ideas. I also want to make these into a paper tableware and greeting card collections.

I am now working on isolating all of these images and creating surface patterns out of them. The more images I create for licensing collections the more I learn about what to include. This time around I added some key phrases along with some simple patterns I can use as accents or in the backgrounds of images.

Painting Type

Life is hectic as always. It's summer time, and for me that means it's all of my nieces and nephews birthdays. I always send them cards, and I always think I should hand paint or design these cards myself instead of buying them. This year I broke out my paints and my blank watercolor cards and started painting. I've been wanting to experiment with painting type for some time so I combined the greeting cards and type. I painted these cards for what seems like forever and I'm still not completely finished yet. I learned a lot about painting type and I still want to experiment with it some more.

I have been doing a lot of painting lately and I will post more on that this week. I'm alway thinking I want to do more and get more done. When I actually sit down and paint I realize how long it takes to complete a licensing collection. It feels great to make progress. I am currently painting a Halloween collection. The next two collections I want to paint are flowers and fancy drinks.

Illustration-Junk Food

Here is an acrylic painting I did for a magazine article on heart disease. I had a lot of fun with this one.

Spring Flowers

May is here and it seems time passes by so fast. I have a lot going on this month including a trade show visit to New York and a total Portfolio redesign. I'm hoping to update my website next. That project will probably take place in June and July. I'm so glad spring is here and the weather is warm. It feels like a time of change and new beginnings. I think as an artist I always have to be reinventing my self and learning new things.

Christmas Party Illustration

This is an illustration for my company Christmas Party. I created this image in Illustrator. It will be published in our Monthly Newsletter "The Messenger"