St. Thaddeus concept art

This is a piece I completed in August 2013 for my husband who is writing a Christmas story. This scene depicts the moment when the main character first meets the woman he puts all of his hopes and dreams upon. The background comes from a memory of my own in Tahoe's south shore in Winter during my honeymoon. The face for St. Thaddeus is a combination of famous pop culture male figures, most predominantly that of Robert Downey Jr. The woman's face was based on an old 1930s clothing model photograph I found in my files. Their attire is original but based on designs worn during the Charles Dickens era. Notice St. Thaddeus' capricious little pet! The art was sketched in pencil, outlined in ink and water colored background with acrylic texturing and details.

Charicature- Jenny Watts

I love Micron pens when they aren't dry! Always seems to be a challenge finding a workable one in my art drawer. I guess that's a good sign - it must mean that I'm using them frequently. Here is a black and white line drawing of my friend Jenny Watts for her birthday. Its fun to do these little character sketches because they work like small visual journal entries. I like to show what a persons current hobbies, job, and interests are by incorporating images to tell their unique story.

Baby Richards Card

I was recently thrown a baby shower by my fabulous coworkers at Nimitz Elementary School. Being the art teacher there, I felt I had to show my thanks with some sort of artwork in the thankyou card. Since babies and presents are usually the theme of most showers, I thought it would be appropriate to just combine them in a little surprise! I had abundant amounts of tissue paper too so it was a great opportunity to recycle some of it in the art. Here we go! Pen and ink, tissue paper, photoshop.

Self Portrait

This self portrait illustration was created in response to the beautifully talented Angelica Hagman, a young adult fiction writer and hobby photographer. Angelica wrote an introspective and captivatingly eery short story about self discovery and the oft-times jarring awakening we have to secrets kept hidden, even from ourselves. Hoping she publishes it someday because it was fabulous!

Sherbet Sunset

The first painting in a "yet-to-materialize" series of whimsical landscape paintings. (including the blue Rancho San Antonio below). An effort to break out of my meticulously small painting format and expand with bigger more melodious brushstrokes. I am absolutely enchanted by the magical artistry of the Californian landscape. My weekly commute down highway 280 along the Peninsula is endlessly breathtaking at every hour of the day. I am ever inspired and in awe of natures grand design.

Camouflage Chameleons

Painting done with acrylic on watercolor paper. An attempt to create an out of control camouflage environment for two little chameleons who've chanced upon love in the most awkward of circumstances.

Rancho San Antonio Sanctuary

This was my first attempt at painting large! Living in a one bedroom apartment makes this particularly challenging, however Home Depot has some great canvas dropcloths which I used to cover my dining room table. Just set up the canvas on my portable easel which folds into a backpack (used in Florence Italy for landscape painting) and voila! a makeshift art studio. Next time, I will invest in larger tubes of paint.

Twas the Night Before Teacups

Just finished a watercolor commission for one of my art students parents. (a surprise Christmas present). I believe the key to a successful watercolor, at least for me, is thinking backwards from light to dark. Glazing layers of shapes that get darker and darker on top...not forgetting to add wet into wet washes within each graduated shape to create interesting reflected light. This project was interesting because my client, an engineer, had very specific quidelines for the outcome. I really had to reign in my extravagant/ flamboyant painting style. :)

Heavenly Ever After T Shirt

I was chosen to be camp director this past year for the youth of our church. The theme was "Heavenly Ever After" so I wanted to incorporate 2 ideas: one of a crown for royalty and the second, a temple spire for spirituality. I also thought it would be fun to put hidden images of girly things that I enjoy into the designs of the crown. Can you find the egret, fig, notes, flower, high heel shoe among others? This project really stretched my shape making skills, but I learned a lot!

French Baby Shower

Here is my first photoshop experiment using the paint tools. I watched a fabulous video tutorial by DaniDraws on Ustream. It was very interesting and informative. Basically, a sketch is scanned into photoshop and cleaned up using the erase, pencil and levels tools. An Alpha channel is created (select all artwork, copy, new channel, paste into channel, Select > load selection). Here only the drawing is selected, at which time it is inversed and deleted all background white leaving only the drawing on a layer. Draw marching ants around sketch, create new layer, and make a layer mask. (underneath sketch) Attatch the sketch to the layer mask by clicking in betweent he two layers with cursor. Colorize the sketch. Create layer under the sketch. Add basic color shadow, midtones, highlights. Create new layer above sketch. Recolor sketch in various places. Add shadows etc. Create a new layer and fill with color. Select "Hard Light" and create layer mask to erase most, but not all (opacity 80%). Create a new layer and add finishing touches. Clean up the edges of the illustration but going back to eh original layer mask and using black to conceal the rough edge. The idea here is that we are incorporating the original elements of the sketch, but cleaning them up and building layers among the sketch to give it more life.

Wanted to try this illustration in pen and ink. My favourite medium! Its so fun to create patterns and textures. I learned about a type of textile patterning called Damask. It incorporates elements such as spirals, leavees, scalloped edges, graduated dotes, etc.

Mosaic Mural

Another 30 foot nautical mosaic mural this time! Completed with the help of over 500 kids at Nimitz Elementary School. (2005) Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the School. My part to play was designing over 20 different clay sea creatures and subsequently teaching each grade a to make one of each creature. Mosaic piece collected from old pottery, china, and scraps from local bay area tile companies. Gray grout used. Mural Design by Tracy Burris. Picture taken of Me and my sister Julianne Hansen.

John Lennon Mural

A 30 foot mural painted by myself and the singularly amazing Thomas Stanton of Holy City Art Glass. (2009) We had to get a pool guy to smear plaster all over the wall before we could even paint so as to create a nice smooth surface. Tom and I worked on this for 1 month during the summer and had a blast! We incorporated children from all over the world in the front of the mural and even got one of my students to pose for me. Karen Rivera is pushing the big beach ball. I can't seem to find a pic of the whole mural finished, so I will have to go take a pic and post it later!

Hot air balloon library mural

A hot air balloon mural painted for the Library of Nimitz Elementary School. (2008) Painting done in exterior house paints mixed with Nova Color paints. Clouds sponged on with huge bristle brush and smeared with cloth.

School is Cool! Nimitz T-shirt

T-shirt illustration for Nimitz Elementary School, where I have had the awesome opportunity to teach art since 2004. What an honor and what a fabulous bunch of kids! We wanted to convey the idea that school is cool! and thus the surfing dolphin, who happens to be our school mascot. This illustration was drawn in pencil, scanned, painted in Corel Painter, and typeface done in Illustrator. (created 2010)

Sammy Learns to Talk : Love is in the Air!

Sammy Learns to Talk : Dancing Pig

Sammy Learns to Talk : Moose Lips

Sammy Learns to Talk : The Flirty Lamb

Sammy Learns to Talk : Giraffe

I had the fabulous privilege to illustrate 2 books for Good Sound Publishing, a couple of years ago. Along with Lovely Lily, I also illustrated Sammy Learns to Talk which is a fun story about a Snake who goes on a walk and meets all sorts of characters with different colors. The fun twist at the end of the book shows Sammy finally meeting Sally the Snake and they slither off into the distance, making a heart shape with their bodies. The following posts show a few pages from this book.

Shop-o-holic

A funny little illustration of a woman who searches high and low for supreme quality and rarely finds it. Illustration done in Fireworks over scanned in pencil drawing.

"Download" Google Buttons

Here are a couple of graphics I created in Illustrator for a possible Google "Download" Button. The idea was to show tremendous amounts of information whizzing down to someone's computer.