You may have seen these butterflies in previous posts.   They are collaged onto paper altered with Citra-Solv and have gold mica flakes added.  I wanted to put them in my store but I didn't want to frame them because glass is so difficult to ship.  Instead I tried mounting them on artist wood blocks with a gloss varnish and voila!  These are kind of cool because you can sit them on a table or shelf or hang them on the wall.  They have a saw tooth hanger on the back.  It's a much sturdier way to display art!

Here's a little sketch in my sketch book for Illustration Friday's word, "bicycle".  What is it about wheels with spokes that is so much fun?  You put wheels with spokes on just about anything and it becomes fun and whimsical.  I added some crayon and watercolor.  It's one of my favorite low tech  techniques. 
Happy Easter!!!

I love the way children delight in simple things, like balloons that aren't even helium filled.  I'd like to recapture that feeling more often myself.  This is my newest painting for my shop.  There are 3 more underway.  All are based on photos of my own kids when they were little.  It's odd, but I find that poor photos translate into more interesting paintings than good ones.  I'm glad I hung onto all of them.

I've been having some good packets in the mail these days!  These are the beautiful ACEOs I received from my Melange teammates.  I'm so thrilled to add them to my collection!  Melange is a group of talented mixed media artists and our recent swap was a great success.  Thanks to Indira of DharmaKarmaArts for doing the arranging and mailing!  Click on the Melange link above, or in my sidebar if you want to see more of our teams wonderful art: )

The butterflies journey meanders here and there, blown by the wind, stopping at all the flowers.  I could learn something from butterflies.  No straight lines for them!
This is done on National Geographic paper altered with Citra-Solv.  As soon as I saw the word "Journey" I thought of this page because, as you can see, the word journey is spelled backwards on the page through the random magic of Citra-Solv!

Look what arrived in the mail today!  I had won Pam Carriker's book "Art at the Speed of Life" on Jodi Ohl's blog.  Jodi is one of the contributing artists.  It arrived today, signed by Jodi,  with oddles of boodles!!  A Strathmore journal, a waterpen, distress ink, so much cool stuff  AND some of Jodi's own art!!  I love color.  My kids say I'm like a moth to the flame when it comes to color so I LOVE Jodi's work!  I can't wait to read the book.   It look like it's full of great advice for busy artists.  That's me!

Thanks Jodi!!!

I've always been attracted by sparkly things and I've been wanting some gold mica flakes for a long time.  They are expensive.  I finally caved in and bought some.  No regrets!  This is my first experiment with them.  I love the way they look on paper altered with Citra-Solv.

This is a very busy week and I want to get started on a commissioned piece that I'm super excited about.  However, I love the word "duet" so I didn't want to let this Illustration Friday get away from me.
Here's a little collage from my art journal.  I throw random bits of left over paint and paper into it  to see what I can discover when I'm not trying to acheive anything in particular.  This diagram of a blocking oscillator reminded of the concept of a duet. I really have no idea what a blocking oscillator is, but it sounds cool!   So I added the word and a little color with GIMP and voila.