This is a drawing I did on a white board at the Pearblossom Art Festival on May 4, 2019. It was fun trying to draw an octopus with human hands (which I had never done before).

Art is supposed to be an adventure! But I get too timid sometimes…. I started this “puddle paint” watercolor painting well, but for the last week it has been sitting around and I didn’t know what to do to it next. I was thinking about taking a black sharpie and drawing big bold hair lines. But was that a good idea??! “Stop being so safe”, I finally told myself, just do it and create. And so I did –this last hour I added all the black lines. Do I like it? Not sure. But I like it I am being brave and taking chances. And I like this quote: “Art needs the courage to fail. If your’e going to be wrong, then by God, be thunderously, magnificently and gloriously wrong!!” The painting is not done yet. I hope I can continue to boldly create it till it is done. It feels good to be bold and not be too safe!

One of my favorite ways to paint that I have discovered is to use extreme wet-into-wet watercolor– I call it “puddle paint”! I started this particular adventure with puddle paint a couple days ago. Like most adventures I don’t know how it will turn out until it is completed. But it will be different– because there is a side view head and a front view head merged together…. And I think I am going to add some more unique things (but I don’t know yet what they are going to be).

I drew this picture for Halloween 2018 and left it up into December.  One of my students asked me if I was going to draw a Christmas Picture. So I just added Santa hats and turned one ghost into Santa Claus.

This morning at Skytower Park in Lancaster, CA from 10am to 12 noon about 14 students and I took on the challenge of painting a Tucson Desert watercolor painting that I originally spent MANY hours painting back in 1984! We had fun, but were not able to include all the details of the original painting in our 2 hour time slot. In this photo I am holding up 2 or the student’s paintings (the students, ranging in age from 10 to over 60, all followed along with me as I painted the larger painting).

Good advice, I think, for when we start creating: “Just Play and Have Fun!”
Sometimes I think artists and art students get hung up on being too serious and trying to make their art “perfect”. This is an image for my new book (Draw Fantasy Creatures) that I am in the middle of working on.

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I think I may have finally finished this painting I started 5 years ago. It is a girl, snake, and an apple.  But to me it has also become something more– an image of the battle in the mind that goes on between us and the monsters that try to keep us from creating and being the person we long to be.

Famous artist/illustrator Norman Rockwell said something like: “some paintings are easy to paint and some are very hard”. This painting of a “girl, snake, and an apple” has been kind of hard–but an enjoyable challenge. I think I started this painting around 5 years ago, and have worked a little on it once in awhile over those years. It started as a small sketch of hands, and then became a watercolor painting. A couple years ago I put a lot of scratchy ball point pen lines on it. Tonight I added the “white” apple (using gesso) on the far left and the blue long finger in the middle (those colors will change). It is all in a state of progress… One of the intriguing things I like is that the identity of the person with the eyes and the nature of the conflict between the snake and that person, and who will ultimately win the battle is somewhat of a mystery….is it all related to the Bible story or is it some other story….

I have been an artist my whole life. And I have had dreams and goals of doing great things with my art my whole life. And I HAVE been successful as an art teacher and at creating my Treetch paintings and becoming known to some degree for my unique art creations–especially locally in the Antelope Valley. But I have more I want to accomplish.
And I still dream… and still get discouraged that I have so much trouble making those dreams a reality!!! I have had a dream for over 7 years to create a Draw Fantasy Creatures book and website: DrawFantasyCreatures.com. But I am still bogged down in the creation of both of these. If you go to my website it says the website will be coming soon sometime in 2017. ( I will soon need to change that to 2018!) Many of you reading this may be artists who I imagine have similar struggles with your artistic goals. One of the keys I think to accomplish our dreams is to be more disciplined at working each day at our goals. I try to do that– sometimes! But there always seems to be roadblocks that I let stop me. So, I want to remind and encourage myself and any creative artist reading this to do what the sign I have on my wall in my art studio says to do: 
“Figure out what you are passionate about that you could turn into a living and spend some real focused time on it everyday. That is the only way to feel fulfilled and satisfied with your life.” (this “sign” is from a review on Amazon of the book The Art of War by Steven Pressfield).

I think it is fun to explore a theme in your art creations — like paint a series of dragon paintings. Over the last 3 decades I have had fun creating a series of paintings of tree creatures. I even made a tree creature mask to wear!