In the Studio

My work space is where my creative mind blossoms. It’s filled with colorful objects and images from my travels, from childhood, and things that inspire me. Of course, it’s also full of myriad art supplies. I work with many art materials, and in several styles depending on my mood — the connection between all of them is my focus on exploring the natural world and the critters in it.

Some of my work is done in a precise colorful dot and line style. For these projects, I use very fine liner and dot brushes. I’ve never found a marker as effective, so crazy tiny paint brushes it is. The white or light outline comes first, then the repeated fine lines, then the dots.

I use two kinds of acrylic gouache paint — Turner Acryl Gouache and Holbein Acryla Gouache. Both have a wide range of beautiful vivid colors that dry perfectly matte and opaque. These works are done on either black watercolor paper or a dark painted background, which allows the bright colors to pop.

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Colored pencils have been part of my art world since childhood, and I love their versatility. If my studio didn’t have them, I would feel incomplete! I use them to create colorful images that I reproduce as cards and stickers.

For these images, where I’m rendering creatures with fur, feathers and scales in a whimsical but more realistic way, I often work with a wide array of colored pencils along with a base layer of watercolor. I especially love Faber-Castell Polychromos colored pencils. They are endlessly layer-able and allow for great depth of shade and tone.

I love pulling things from many sources, including found objects and paper scraps, and incorporating them into my art. Increasingly for my mixed media projects, I’m painting my own colorful, patterned papers. I use acrylic gouaches along with a range of Golden acrylics — mostly fluid and high flow. I begin my process by simply playing, layering colors and designs on heavy watercolor paper. Then I create an image from them — sometimes I plan ahead of time. But I also simply begin working in a more intuitive style.

For adhering papers to surfaces (usually wood panels), I used matte mediums and matte gels. Once the layers are complete, the works get a final varnish. It’s a time consuming process but one that results in beautiful, unique works.