Best Friends

This is a large pastel drawing that I did from my favorite photograph of me and my best friend Jessie. We spent a lot of time on that swing set and the picture captures our personalities that are still so much the same. In the process of deciding how I wanted to draw this image to recreate what I love about it, I considered cropping the image and just having our faces. Including the bodies however allowed me to show two little bodies smooshed together on one swing. This represents how connected the two girls are and how we still lean on each other no matter how much distance life puts between us. Love her!

Where Is Your Heart?

I have never been interested in producing controversial art, and in the past, that is what I thought all social statements were. When I was assigned a project based on a social issue I am passionate about, it took a lot of thought and reflection to realize that I am most passionate about finding the good in people and that I feel the lost good of humanity is really the heart of every social issue. Every person, even the badest bad guy, has a heart somewhere inside and just might not being using it. I chose to draw a human heart, slightly darkened but vibrant, disconnected, and on a grey background to show the potential that we all have to choose wrong or to choose right.

Overwhelm Me

The idea behind this drawing was to convey a feeling. I wanted to express the sense of being consumed into warmth and energy and something bigger than myself when I lay in the sun with my eyes closed, just letting the sun warm my whole body.

This was a blind contour drawing done after ten other of the same lantern. This final one was then colored in with colored pencils.

Face in Shapes

Final work from a three part abstraction

First and second steps in a three part abstraction

Nature and Nurture

I created this watercolor from a photo that I took in an abandoned church outside of Sienna, Italy. I like the way that the image combines man-made with God-made nature. It was fun to recreate the tight structure but try to create the loose feeling of one particular moment.

Scenic Switzerland

The different colors were produced in layers by creating a reduction print with linoleum. I first cut away the white to print light blue. Then I cut away everything I wanted to remain light blue and printed the dark blue.