Sometimes life gets in the way of life, but I’m back! I took a few months off to manage some health issues and other things. It’s only been in the past couple of weeks or so that I’ve gotten back to the creative side. I’ve been painting, drawing and doing a little bit of photography as well as a little bit of graphic design work.

I dug out my acrylics and started painting with those again. I also happened to pick up some gouache on sale last week. It’s nothing fancy, I think just a generic brand, but I’ve been experimenting a bit with it. I’ve heard the main difference between gouache and watercolor is that former blends a bit more readily so it is hard to do washes or glazes without the colors getting muddy. I couldn’t imagine you’d want to do too many layers of color anyway since the gouache can be so opaque. So far, I like it but both paintings I’ve started are still in progress.

I’m also working on the last two watercolor paintings in my Scooter Trek series. I found pearlescent watercolors on sale as well and tried them out on the background for these. It’s hard to capture, but you can see how it shimmers a little on the upper left corner. The paint I found came in cakes in a tray and it was really hard to not feel like I was painting with one of those huge palettes of eyeshadow.

Also got a chance to do some photo editing yesterday. At the beginning of May, there were so many beautiful blossoms in the neighborhood, so I was pretty happy to get some nice shots before storms rolled through. Some of the roses are blossoming again, but a lot of the blooms disappeared with the heavy rains and wind. Roses and peonies are my favorite!Some of these photographs are now available in my shop. Please visit if you would like to buy a print, and feel free to send me a message if you need a custom size.

I’d also like to announce that you can find my photographic greeting cards for sale at Local Harvest! I will be adding new stock there every month or so depending and I just delivered a bunch today. Follow me on twitter or my blog to get updates.

Hopefully the next blog post will not be so far away from the others as this one has.