Paper Koala

A work in progress screenshot. The dogs are based on a couple that some friends own.

Something I painted a few years ago. :) Pretty out of season now though!

A couple new pictures have been added to my site.  They are from lines of An Ordinary Day by Kenn Nesbitt.

Just in time to be completely out of season!

This picture gave me a lot of trouble.  I would work on it until I got so frustrated with it, I had to close it for a while.  I put a lot of work into what ended up being a fairly straightforward looking piece.  Anyway, I always wanted to watch scary shows when I was little which is what inspired me to draw this.  Unsolved Mysterious was basically my favorite show when I was a kid.

I’m getting married in about 4 months and life has been pretty chaotic.  I finally took some time to upload some random sketches I’ve done recently.  I definitely feel like I haven’t done a lot of “just for fun” type drawing lately but I haven’t stopped completely.  I hope that after the wedding craziness is over, I’ll be able to relax and get some free time back!

Here’s just a couple things I’m working on right now.  The koala will be a new header image for the main site and the other picture is part of a larger set.  I’m making a mini-dummy book for my portfolio and I decided to use a poem by Kenn Nesbitt for it.

I swear I must catch every single germ that floats through our office.  I’m getting pretty sick of it.  No pun intended.  That aside, I have good news!  My portfolio is done! All of it!

Go look at it here: http://paperkoala.com/gallery.html

There are a bunch of new pictures and pretty much every picture has been reworked in some way.  I’m pretty happy with it and hopefully some art directors will be too.  I’m also getting some postcards and business cards printed up.  I was happy to find a local printer that was having a good sale on postcard printing.

This was announced awhile ago but on October 2nd at the MNSCBWI Annual Conference I was awarded a year’s mentorship with Barb Björnson.  I’ve had one meeting with her already and I’ve been making a lot of updates to my portfolio.

Our next meeting is in a week.  I’m working on some new pieces according to the advice I got from the portfolio review at the conference.  I had a few surprises.  Namely, which pieces were people’s favorites.  The Halloween and detective ones always managed to come out on top.

Next up, I’m working on finishing a new owl picture.