Pencil & Graphite Drawings

Charles Chaplin graphite & pencil drawing on Strathmore drawing paper

Posing nude done in graphite and pencil on Strathmore drawing paper

Erin & Nic - Nov. 19, 2009

Erin wanted to preserve her wedding flowers on three 8x8 paintings for her and Nic and then give a fourth to her mother as a keepsake of their wedding.
Her wedding flowers were red roses, purple carnations, red gerberas and orange lilies.

The bride wanted the focal flowers to be the red roses. Since red roses dry to a deep burgundy I had to hand paint each petal and dry them before adding them to the canvas.

Here is a edge view of each canvas showing some of the flower petals used on the front surface of the paintings.

Emma's Room - A Joint Venture Wall Mural

What started out as an idea for a few favorite Disney characters on Emma's bedroom walls, turned out to be a growing obsession and a joint adventure for the whole family.
Gramama Ruth lent a helping hand filling in the main colors on the characters.
Mom and Dad, Ana & Gene were becoming pretty good at choosing and transferring characters onto the walls.











We ended up having over 65 Disney characters on Emma's bedroom walls!

Sarah & Eric October 3, 2009

Sarah's flowers were soft pink roses, white roses and stephanotis. She even had me incorporate the pearls that were in her wedding bouquet. For an extra accent she wanted a little chocolate brown color which I used in the stems of the pearls. This painting was done on a 16 x 20 inch gallery wrapped canvas.

Carrie & Shawn, September 26, 2009

Carrie and Shawn had a lovely outdoor wedding in Kansas City, MO. They couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day. Carrie's bouquet was a combination of different shades of purple from mauve roses to deep purple mums, lisianthus and sweet peas. The hydrangeas were very unusual with shades of blue, green and white. This is a great example of wedding flower preservation.

Here is a view of the wrap-around affect on the 1-1/2" gallery wrapped canvas.

Carrie wore a gorgeous Victorian period dress and with her outdoor celebration I wanted to capture the feeling of the day in their wedding bouquet painting. This painting was done on a
16 x 20 inch canvas.

Aimee & Jay August 8, 2008

Aimee's wedding bouquet flowers consisted of different shades of pink and peach roses with white hydrangeas. These flowers press well and make for a lovely painting. I placed her flowers on a soft sage green background with a soft yellow/white glow behind them. The stems of the flowers were flowing in soft curves coming out of the water color like background.

These wedding flowers were preserved and created into a painting on a 16 x 20 inch gallery wrapped canvas.

Hand Painted Sun on French Wine Barrel Lid

While driving up in the wine country of northern California I spyed some old oak barrel lids along the road. I thought they would be a great surface to paint different images on so I purchased them and took them home. This was one of the first images that I painted. I am working on California Poppies next.