Garage Kids

Doing illustration for kids is fun because it requires me to pull things and situations from my childhood. A lot of my free time was spent messing around in our chaotic garage. There was a brief time when a car my aunt gave me was parked in it, but other than that, there was simply no room for a car because of all the junk that was piled up there. My dad encouraged me to make my own toys and there was always plenty of tools and pieces of cars and machinery around to make things with, so this was probably the start of my imaginative thinking.

A Way Out

This piece is a donation for illustrator Kelly Light's Ripple project, a fundraiser that sends money to help the wildlife affected by the BP oil spill. http://ripplesketches.blogspot.com/

Sprinting Practice

I saw a cartoon with some scary rhinos in it that gave me the idea to do this piece.

Haystacks

An illustration from a story I wrote about a mythical village that is terrorized by a wind demon. Acrylic on watercolor board.

Teacup chihuahua

A line drawing for sample art. This might become a series of visual puns but basically just a fun drawing that came to mind.

Wind Demons

An illustration for a kids' story. I wrote it a while ago and decided it was pretty good so I am developing it for an upcoming writer's conference. I re-drew the kid in this about twenty times. I'm learning that creating a children's book is a lot of work.

Dragon's Back

Another illustration for my kids story Days With Dad. This is based on an actual incident when my Dad decided to install a totally new engine in our car the day before we were supposed to drive from Oakland to Los Angeles, about a 400-mile trip. My mother freaked out, like any rational person would and my Dad was like, "What's the big deal?" The idea that something could go wrong never entered his mind. So we were driving up a long steep mountain called the Grapevine and the engine started to overheat because it should have been broken in properly before being subjected to strenuous usage. Dad was about to pull over and stop when it began to rain. The rain cooled down the engine, we got over the mountain, and Dad proceeded to go about 130. I'm calling the Grapevine the Dragon's Back in this story.