Sketchbook Page.

Happy Christmas!
(Yes, yes, I know this picture has nothing to do with Christmas, but have a happy one anyway.)
Oh yeah, and my website had been updated, so check it out and let me know what you think!

Who doesn't love graphite!

I have been having a little fun this week with those good ol' pencils.
Here is what I came up with.



Also, have I mentioned before that Wordgirl is my favorite show? Well, it is. I think it classifies in the "hilarious" category, and on a funny scale from one to ten it fall somewhere above Veggie Tales and below Brian Regan.
Here she is on youtube.
Just though I'd mention it.

Taming of the Shrew

I wanted to share this illustration poster with you all. It is for the play the Empress is doing in January.

Right now Babes in Toyland is showing at the theatre. I haven't seen it yet but it should be good they have written all kinds of new music for it and I'm excited to see how it turned out.

Taming of The Shrew starts in January, and if you can't tell by the poster--which I think you can--it's going to be a Western. I'm excited to see that one too.

A Thanksgiving Illustration and my BIFF's

So tell you what it has been a while since me last post. I've been so busy, it has slipped my mind. So here is some stuff that's been going on.
First of all here is my entry for the latest SCBWI illustrator contest. We were supposed to draw two children who are invited to a Thanksgiving dinner they weren't too excited about eating.
I think my idea is hilarious, so look close I hope you get the joke too. And I'll be honest I didn't get the stuffing reference myself until I was in the middle of painting it. (maybe that is why it was so funny to me, hmm...)



Also I had the great fun of attending another SCBWI conference. I love conferences. There is always so much to learn, and cool people to meet. And everyone I talk to gets the random references to obscure children's book I might make.
Here is a picture of me with some of the great people I met, and my BIFF's (best illustrator friends forever)



My good friend Shawna has written a great post about the conference on our other blog check it out. CBBFI
Soon I'll have more to post including some of the theatre posters I have been working on. So check back again soon.

Strings, and Strange Oliphant Brother Hobbies

I just finished this painting this week, I'm so glad it went with the Illustration Friday theme since I haven't had time lately to do anything for it.
It's a painting of my violin made by my dad.

Violin making is his hobby. Our garage is full of so full of wood working saws, and tools that as far as I can remember we've never parked a car in it once. It's fun to go out and see him working away at violins and other projects. Every year he donates a violin to the Utah state folk and blue grass festival as the first prize in the fiddling contest. His brother, my uncle Ben donates a handmade bow for the second prize. He has a bow making hobby.

My Dad's other brothers have some other uh...different hobbies too, but I think besides telling you that they have included such things as emus, harmonicas, and many, many boats, I'll jut let you wonder about them.

Some Paintings, Yeah!

I have been getting the itch lately to do some oil painting and so I did. I did these two pretty quick, last night and today. The first on is my sister Kezia, and the other is Kezia and Lariah (my other sister) in a field. It's been a blast I think I may go paint some more.

Edmund, Molly, and The Goose

Okay, so one time I had this awesome story idea with a really cool plot, and setting, and characters. Pretty much a best seller. So I started to write it down, but didn't get too far because drawing it is more fun. So here you go, some characters from my unwritten middle grade novel, that maybe I'll actually write some day. It remains to be seen.

Sail

Here's an entry for this weeks Illustration Friday topic. I haven't posted and IF illustration for a while so it has been fun to have the time this week. So there you go.

Now on a totally different note I just have to say that I saw Word Girl for the first time today and it was so funny. If you haven't seen this fun cartoon you should totally check it out. I laughed and laughed and totally got sucked in.

The Plant

This was a spread for a picture book. It isn't going to go to press now but I still liked the sketch so I finished it up for fun.

A Crazy Vacation! (this post complete with sketches for your viewing pleasure)

Picture this: One motor home containing two parents and seven of their children ranging from 26 (that's me) to seven years old, (don't forget the teenagers) driving from Salt Lake City, Utah to upstate New York in 12 days. Does that sound like fun to you? Well I didn't to me either, but I went anyway and it had it's pretty great moments...and I am so glad to be home.

Sorry I haven't posted for almost a month but here are some of the sketches I did on thsis crazy vacation. I had a great time with my little micron pen.









So now you've seen the sketches I think I better just tell you what they are pictures of.

Here is the story: we went to pick up my younger brother. He has been on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. This means that basically he has been hanging out in upstate New York telling people about the true gospel of Jesus Christ for two years. Pretty cool!

So any way, we went to get him and on the way home we stopped at many of the major sites in our churches history, and that is what a lot of the sketches are, excepting the Niagara Falls pictures.

Hopefully I'll have some new art to post for you soon. Have a great day!

Happy Summer!

A Disneyesque bunch of color studies

They always turn out a little off on color when I post them on the web, but you get the idea.

Back to the Blogging world

For all of you who are completely sick of looking at that rat in the last post, (I know I am) here is a picture with plenty more where that came from. It's based on the poem "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" by Robert Browning.

I have been working on it all month and finally with other deadlines out of the way I have it done.

I realized I'm Not a Fan of Scanning...

...but here are a lot of pictures anyway. One of them is my latest watercolor a day, the rest are from my sketchbook.

Wrinkles, Thirty Watercolors, and A Confession

Here are my two latest watercolors. I did them because I am working on an illustration and I thought one of the characters might be wrinkly, so I practiced painting some. It turns out the character in my picture needed to be a little younger, so I didn't get to use the wrinkles after all. Thats okay though, wrinkles are kinda fun so maybe I'll do another illustration with wrinkles soon.

So on to the Thirty watercolors and the Confession.
I have now done thirty watercolors since I committed myself to do a watercolor a day. Overall it has been a really good experience and I got some nice watercolors out of it. I also got some horrible watercolors out of it too. But I missed Monday and Tuesday. Sorry crit group, I just didn't want to work on watercolors and I spent a lot more time on other projects instead. Hope you can forgive me.

Watercolor, Watercolor, Watercolor

I think am to the sick of it stage of this watercolor a day thing. I guess I'll keep going and hopefully it will turn fun again.
Do you all ever have that problem when you working on something? Either with thumbnails or during painting? You know where you just don't want to work on it any more and then you keep going and it turns out all right after all.

Sometimes I watch too Many Movies, (okay, most the time)

A lot of times I listen to Books on Tape while I draw but a lot of time I watch movies. Most days I do both. What more could you ask for in a job. Really I don't have much more to say about that except if I told you how many movies and books on tape I watch you would think me the laziest person in the world. Luckily I still get a lot of work done.

Enjoy the watercolors for this week. The first one is really a digital painting. I didn't have my watercolors that day I was in Idaho. Maybe I should buy a traveling watercolor set.

A Dragon, watercolor 21 or something like that

Here is today's watercolor. I had fun with this. I realized that one reason I don't like to add prisma to my watercolors is that the paper is just too rough. Also I don't much like watercoloring on bristol so I painted it. (first picture) scanned it and printed it onto my bristol paper and then did the prismacolor. It was fun. I think I might try something like this with some of my illustration work.

Some Watercolors

Here are some of the watercolors I did this week that I haven't posted. I have done one every day but I am not posing all of them because one of them I don't like, and another is too big for the scanner and I don't feel like scanning it in in pieces right now.
The last watercolor I am still working on so I'll post that in a bit.

Watercolor 16

Here is today's painting. It was a crazy busy day but I still managed to fit it in. I think if had more time I would have pushed the values a little more to give it more contrast. There is also some other stuff that bugs me but I am not going to tell you about it. Instead I'll tell you I really think the mountains in the back ground worked out well with the atmospheric perspective and all.

Jonathan Strange, watercolor 15

This is a quick sketch I did of Johnathan Strange. He is a character in a book I just finished called Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. It is a crazy long book about two wizards, and Its is awesome. I really didn't think I would like it as much as I do but if I could have read it in one night I would have. Anyway if ya'll get a chance read it. It's great fun.
I wouldn't really say this is exactly how Mr. Strange looked in my head but for a fast drawing and painting it's not too bad.
Bye.

Watercolor 14

Here is the watercolor for today. Now you may be wondering where yesterday's watercolor is. Well it is in a basket over there (you will just have to imaging my pointing finger) on my desk, and it is really ugly so you don't get to see it. I like today's though. It's just a copy of a photograph but it was still fun to paint.

Watercolor 12

Here is yesterday's watercolor.

Rupunzel, watercolor 11

This ended up taking way too long. I had to finish it up rather quickly. Oh well, You can look at it anyway.

Flowers Again, Watercolor 10ish

Here is todays watercolor. My friend Guy suggested yesterday that I try mixing it up a little and combining some of my media. So I put a little colored pencil on top of my painting. It was pretty fun but I think the painting looked better before I add the colored pencil. I think I'll have to try some other media ideas and see how that goes.