Closing down another year and a nice way to end the week

Can you believe that we are down to the last three days of 2007? It is so hard to believe that the entire year is over and 2008 is ready to begin. What used to be 12 months until the show I am having at Homewood Studios, now has dwindled down to 6 months and a few days. Can someone say Help! But it is not all that bad. I have been working alot lately on a couple of great book projects and will be wrapping them both up in the month of January. That should give some more time to the painting side of things. With that note, I was also surprised this week with a great letter in the mail. It was from the Arts in Harmony 2008 show and they said that one of my paintings was accepted into the juried competition. It is the Richland County painting that recently took second place at the St. CLoud Art for Artists show. So it seems to have a following and will hopefully find a good home with this show. Plus there is almost $10,000 in prize money up for grabs!

I also wanted to mention that a fellow children's book illustrator and MNSCBWI member that I know by the name of Christina Rodriguez has recently started a blog of her own. If you get a chance, stop by and say hi(tell her I sent you) and congratulate her on a Minnesota Book Award Nomination for her new book "Storm Codes" that she illustrated! It is always fun to see people that you know get the recognition they deserve!

Illustration Friday - Horizon

Thought I would keep thinking of warm thoughts since coming back into the snow. Here is my summer themed Horizon.

Back from a great little trip

After much fun in Arizona, it was time to come back to the beautiful weather here in Minnesota. I know that is hard to believe that there could be beautiful weather here, but when you live here, you have to have the sunny outlook. Nonetheless, leaving the upper 60's to come back to the teens were a little hard. The reason for the trip was my family and I were on a mini vacation to Scottsdale to see my brother Cory graduate from the Mesa Police Academy. He is now a fully sworn officer for the Scottsdale Police Department! Overall, the four days we were there went extremely fast and we always seemed to find fun things to do. One of those things included climbing on Camelback Mountain which you can see by the pictures below was a little bit of a climb (especially coming from flat land)! But we made it quite far and got some beautiful shots of the landscape. You can also see the steepness of the climb in the last photo. Now for the near future it will be snow and cold, but am hoping to get back to AZ sometime in the springtime before it gets too hot down there!

Off to see the desert

Well the good thing about really cold weather is you can get alot done inside that normally would be hard to stay in and do. But with my upcoming trip to Arizona on Thursday, I have been busy getting all of my art projects up to speed and am hoping to not fall too far behind by the time I get back. Overall though, it will be a much needed break that will probably lead to more productive time from here until the beginning of the new year. I hope everyone has a great rest of the week and will be back to the blog with a better post and some new photos from the trip early next week.

Illustration Friday: "Little Things"

Often in life we take the little things for granted. Where did you get your water from this morning?

Decided to sign up for Technorati

Well after a few months of hearing how beneficial it would be to have a Technorati Profile, I have decided to sign up it. What this will help do is bring more and more of you to my site and also create a profile for how much traffic and all is coming here. The thing that really pushed me to deciding to do this was when the Top 101 Artists' Blog list was released today. Having noticed a few people I know like Cynthia listed on it and then being suprised to see my name as the first one on the predictions area. So with that I am hoping to break into the top 101 artists list come the next time it is released. We will just have to see where it goes from here!

Need more wall space

So as you are probably aware of, this weekend there was a nice little storm that dumped lots and lots of snow here in Minnesota. Now, usually I love snow and all the fun that it brings, but not when there is a big art sale that requires people to show up to buy things. There were a few brave souls that made it and bought a few things, but it was pretty slow. So with more things(framed at that) coming back to the studio than I had imagined, I am need of a lot more wall space. But the bright side is I get to look at all of the framed pieces that usually disappear shortly after being framed.