These are some random pieces that I finished recently for various reasons.  This first one is a digital painting that my mom requested for her birthday.  It’s based on a photo of a barn near their place in Montana where I grew up.  Yes, we occasionally get bald eagles that visit there…

These next two were created as project examples for my new Digital Art class I am teaching this year.  For this one, we working on our digital painting skills.  I found a lot of more painterly brushes I liked with this one.

This was a new musician portrait I created for the class.  Been wanting to add a Dave Brubeck to this series of mine.  He is one of my all-time favorite jazz musicians.  In the background, I tried to visualize the complexity of his experimentations with different time signatures.

This summer I finally had time to take some online classes through the Society of Visual Storytelling.  I highly recommend it if you are an artist interested in improving your illustration skills with classes taught by world class artists. I ended up participating in the monthly art contest there for the first time, too. The challenge for July was to illustrate a new cover for the classic Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum.  It was intimidating to be in the mix with so many amazing artists, but I had fun trying to find a unique moment to capture from the book.  I chose to show the characters on the way to the witch’s castle and tried to hide something in the design of the image. I’m not sure if it is hard or easy to see… what do you think?

Below you can see my designs for the characters. I feel like I could have probably made Dorothy look a little more unique, but I’m pretty happy with how the lion, scarecrow, and woodsman turned out.

This is a digital painting for my dad’s birthday, based on a photo I took of him on one of our hikes back in 2012 in Glacier National Park. So thankful for a dad that shared his love of the outdoors with us.

Kory’s Curious Adventure: Where Snow Comes From is a new children’s book that I illustrated for my friend W.E. Hawkin.  It was a real joy to work on a project like this with a friend.  The story is very sweet and something any kids would enjoy.  I tried a few new things artistically, and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.  Check it out on Amazon, if you are interested!

The theme for our church’s vacation bible school this summer was a jungle adventure, and here is the logo that I designed for it.  It was fun to work in this theme (and to hide some words in the design).