Tales and Legends

Announcing "Lord Reginald Willoughby", for this weeks tales and legends at Illustration Friday. He was the first to set sail for and map out the untamed and exotic jungles of Borneo. It was among this wild and enchanted land that Lord Reginald discovered the ancient Golden elephant. Soon after it's discovery he disappeared, and was never heard from again. Lord Reginald's legend still lives on in the hearts and bravery of all explorers.

Last weeks painting also fits under the "tales and legends" theme, actually, a lot of my work does. Here is the Dream maker from last week.

Lord Regi also counts as my painting for this week in my quest to paint a picture every week this year. So far so good!... Don't forget, you can buy most of my weekly paintings over at my Etsy sotre, theWoodyMart for less than $50!

Painting a week, #3

Yep, so far I'm on track with doing a painting a week. This week, like last week, I was able to do two! This one is a sketch/painting, really, just an idea experiment if you will. The palm tree was just me trying to work out some colors and drawing a palm tree that I'm happy with (they're hard!). It will be for sale at the "WoodyMart" over on Etsy, as well as most of my weekly paintings. So get yourself an original Woody painting for less than 50 bucks! You heard right, the weekly paintings are selling for less than $50!

Except for the moon man. He is the other painting I've finished this week, but to be fair, I've been working on this one for about 3 weeks (most of the time the idea percolates until I'm satisfied with the composition). He's sort of a re-visiting of a painting I did in art school. I wanted to try my new technique/style and had this drawing of a horse that I liked. Anyhoo, here he is...

Caldecott Medal Winner

So they announced the Caldecott and Newbery awards from the ALA (American Library Association) yesterday and I'm happy to say I've read the Caldecott winner! "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" by Brian Selznick won the Caldecott award (for the most distinguished picture book/illustrator of the year).

It is actually a quite hefty book, not really a picture book, not really a novel, not even a graphic novel in it's commonly thought of form. It's a story that involves the pictures and uses them as part of the story, and what lovely drawings they are! I highly suggest anyone who has not read this, to go read it, and if you haven't heard of it, at least check it out. Amazon has a little extra bonus with a letter from Brian Selznick and a bonus drawing that didn't make it into the book.

It is a great story and so different, it's nice to see something fresh being done in the mainstream. And now back to reading my other favorite new book, "The Arrival" by Shaun Tan (...said as my drool hits the pages full of amazingly crazy drawings).

Week 2 painting(s)

I actually did two paintings for week two in my painting-a-week challenge to myself, and I've already done one for week three. So here are the week two paintings. I'll post week three's this weekend.

I'm also selling some of them through my Etsy store: the WoodyMart. So check it out if you see any you like. There are also other Woody goodies (prints, cards) in the Etsy store. Just check under "original paintings" to see the weeklies (and some of my ATC's/ACEO's).

So take that Mike Baker, already got a head start! Please do give me a hard time if I slack off!

100% focused

You've got to be 100% focused to charm a snake. I have also been roughly 90% focused this year so far, but I'm 100% focused on meeting my goals/new year's resolutions. One of them is to do a painting a week (and sometimes more if possible!). So to that end, here is the first weeks painting:



Check back each week as I add new paintings, sometimes finished paintings, sometimes small paintings to work out ideas fro larger ones.