Mountain Dew

Okay. Some people drink coffee and beer.
I don't drink either.
I do the Dew.

Pirates!

Working on a new Rotty pirate painting for my next postcard.

T-shirt possibilities

So many things to put on a t-shirt, so little time.

Moving dirt

We're digging a spot in the yard to put the cement for the building we're going to put up to hold the stuff from the garage which we're turning into a studio. I get to be dirt leveler in the spot where the dirt gets moved.

Yellow highlighter

Spent some quality time getting ready for this fall's Graphic Design class. Highlighting things in the text I don't want to forget to talk about.

Change of heart

After several let-downs in house/studio hunting, we've come to the conclusion that what we already have is pretty darn good. We've decided to convert the garage into studio space.

House hunting analog

Today we went out looking at the houses we found. Six tries. Six "no's." Looking online again tonight.

House hunting digital

Looking for houses on the Internet. Need studio space. How did people possibly look before? Very slowly, I suppose.

String of pearls

Just a fun drawing to work on.
See how many different images you can get
from just a few simple lines and shapes.

Green dryer

Love the smell of clothes dried outside on the line.

Ucky drawing

Not such a great drawing today, but you'll have these things. It's not really a reflection of the day, just my inability to capture it.

• Out to lunch with my kids
• Sold a couple pieces of art (yay!)
• Bought two new sketchbooks

Sunday morning

Finally got a run in today.
Not a very good time, but I did it.
And I'm not racing anybody.

The Great Allegheny Passage

Biked today from Rockwood, PA to Meyersdale (and back, of course) with my hubby and two of our friends. The Salisbury Viaduct is a killer for people like me who inherited the fear-of-heights gene. Absolutely beautiful day for a ride!

Road trip to State College

Went to State College today to pick up two pieces I had in the Images 2007 show. One of them won the William D. Davis award in drawing (!). The winners are posted here.

Visual journal

My life as I see it.

Since I can't seem to keep up with writing what's happening,
I decided to start drawing it.

Where've I Been?

So if you've checked back here at all lately, you've probably noticed I haven't been around. So true. I've been (happily) busy working on a book which I finished a couple weeks ago. Amazon has it up for preorder here. I felt like I was grinding my wheels for so long before I got that phone call. But the people at Lark Books are great to work with which made up for the lull in action. Thanks Celia and Robin! When Celia called she said, "I've been collecting your postcards." What a fantastic feeling. Anyway, here's the image from the latest postcard.

Illustration Friday: I Spy...

Illustration Friday: Wired

I was asked to illustrate a story about one tech's experiences with technologically-challenged people who call in for support, and this is what I came up with. He had dealt with people who thought they had to physically aim the mouse toward the screen, and in one of the calls he took, the caller's computer wasn't even plugged in.

Alice & Ruthie

My mother used to tell a story about riding on the handlebars of her sister's bike, dredging up memories of braking and pavement; the "Aunt Emma incident". Although not verbatim, this image was inspired by my mother and her sister during the happier seconds before Aunt Emma ever became involved.

Spammers Suck

I'm so sick of spam you have no idea. At the end of January, someone decided it would be a great idea to use my studio domain name to send out spam emails. They didn't use my actual email address, they made up their own but used my domain name for the rest. I only know this because I have my email account set up to accept anything that comes in using my domain name regardless of the rest of the address, just in case somebody types something wrong or doesn't know the exact email. So I got about 250 emails in my "IN" box being returned to "sender" that I had to sift through to find the legitimate ones. I've also gotten emails from some of the people who have received the spam telling me they didn't want me to spam them anymore. I changed some settings on my server that hopefully will fix the problem of someone else using my domain name, but it's Feb. 24 and I'm still getting the returned spam! What kind of illegitimate business would try to sell something (they were pushing Adobe software products) by spam marketing? This stuff had to be illegal.

My second gripe about spam is filters. If someone spends the time setting up their email to filter out the nasty stuff they don't want in their "IN" box, does somebody else really think that the recipient will change their minds and open the spam when the subject line uses "@#^*" in the middle of words to bypass the filters?

Am I the only one here?