This is a departure from my other work. It was a personal piece I did many years ago. It depicts moments in my life where my thoughts and emotions have left me feeling worn and sometimes desperate.

As I mentioned in my last post, I was contacted by Red River Kids Magazine to produce a few illustrations for a story in their summer issue. The story centers on a girl who is beginning her first summer without her father. He is in the military and was stationed overseas. The day leads to a small adventure with her sister. As soon as the issue is published, I will post a link to the site.

Here are the final sketches. A few tweaks were made as I painted, but it pretty much stayed true to my sketches. The important thing was to portray the emotions experienced by the characters. I felt pretty sensitive to this story, so I knew what i wanted to see in expressions. Thanks to my children for posing for me. I hate to embarrass my son like this, but he posed as the older girl. The fun part was to get him to look panicked. I had to act out the scene with him to help him understand and we just went back and forth. I am very happy with the work and I will post the final paintings soon.

This is part of a series of illustrations I did recently for Red River Kids Magazine. The story centers on a young girl as she begins her first summer without her dad. He is in the military and has been stationed overseas. This illustration takes place at the end of her adventure as she is drifting to sleep thinking about her father. Stay tuned as I will premier these illustrations in the coming days.

As soon as he heard the noise, he immediately donned his "SpaceBoy" astro helmet and grabbed his "SpaceBoy ray gun. What adventure is ready to unfold?

I'm digging back to my Photoshop experiments for this one. I think one day I'll probably go back and play in Photoshop, but illustrating in the computer just doesn't compare to actual paints and brushes – even though I used pencils to do the base drawing. I'll let the illustration tell the story, but I think we can get a sense of what each character is craving.