Watercolors in Menemsha

I went to Menemsha today for a little bit to eat lunch and to get in some watercolor practice. I brought my little travel watercolor sketchbook and decided to work on pictures featuring buildings, since those are a weak point in my drawing skills. And so, here are pictures of the Coast Guard station and a little garage down by the water. I was hoping to paint more than two pictures this afternoon, but it was just too windy down by the water to manage more than this.

Island Summer

Yesterday I made the annual summer trek out to Martha's Vineyard. I'll be here until August 12th, teaching art classes for children at a local art gallery. This will be my fourth summer teaching at the art gallery, and here is what I have planned for the classes this year. I'm strongly encouraged by my grad school program to do some teaching this summer, and since I was going to be teaching these classes anyhow it works out nicely.

I'll be posting art whenever I can this summer. I always carry a sketchbook around the island with me, and I try to draw during my lunch breaks or whenever else. I'm hoping to finish up some bigger pieces I've been working on, as well as possibly make some more Lost character portraits this summer. I might be sharing some stuff from the classes I'm teaching as well.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with this silly little doodle. My mom had left a note on the kitchen counter about family dinner plans at a local seafood restaurant, and since there was no morning newspaper lying around I felt the need to embellish her note while I was drinking my morning coffee. I think the correct inner monologue for the biggest fish would be, "Nom nom nom!"

Completed Mailbox

And the custom mailbox is done! I finished painting it earlier this week and attached all of the hardware yesterday. It feels good to have that project done with.

Mailbox Progress

Last night I started working on the new mailbox for my parents. It's no where near done, but I thought it would be fun to share a progress photo. The lettering on it will eventually be white, it's just kind of roughly laid out right now. And I still need to paint the front, back, and other side of it. I just wanted to finish this fide first so that I'll have the colors all properly laid out and then I can quickly do the other side. And that will eventually be a "message in a bottle" picture if it's unclear to you right now. ;)

Zoo Sketches

On Sunday I went to the Rosamond Gifford Zoo with Jeff. I'd never been to that zoo before. We brought our sketchbooks and drew pictures of the animals. We couldn't do too much drawing outside because of the rain, but we did get to draw inside the buildings a lot.


I love the penguins. They're just so much fun to watch! I took a bunch of photos at the zoo, but haven't had time to upload those yet. However, I did manage a teeny little video of the penguins swimming. They're like little torpedoes!

Lost Character Art - Ben

Yet another Lost portrait. Benjamin Linus is an extremely interesting character, and people keep asking me to draw him, so voila!

Oh Benry. He's so crazy.

As before, I drew this with brown and white pencil on brown toned paper and then did all of the coloring in photoshop with my tablet.

You can see more of my Lost pictures right here.

Pirate Mailbox

A few years ago I painted this mailbox for my parents for the family's summer house. This mailbox was made to replace one that I had painted for them back in high school. Mom put in a special request for a pirate mailbox, so I sketched out some designs and she picked this one. Over the years, weather elements have caused the mailbox to become a bit worn down, so I'll be painting a new mailbox for them soon.

High School Mural

I was cleaning out some old photos the other day and and came across some pictures of a mural I painted back in high school. I thought it might be fun to share here.

Another student and I collaborated on this mural for our senior art project back in 2000. The mural featured the Rochester city skyline, and when you looked more closely at it you could see that the painting was composed of a bunch of smaller pictures. In fact, there were 406 4"x6" blocks that made up that painting. Much of the smaller images contained things that related to our graduating class or the high school in general.

Last time I was back in my old high school, which was the middle of last year, the mural was still there and they still plan on keeping it.