There is still some minor touch-up required (the water around the big bear most obviously) and of course it needs a frame, but I think this is coming along quite nicely. You can click it to zoom in to a higher resolution version (although it looks better in person — my camera just can’t capture the subtle tone gradients, as well as the fact that you can’t really get just how textured it is).

To those who’ve been asking I’ll probably set up an online shop for both originals and prints soon. Thank you for the support in this!

Work continues… (click to zoom)…

I’m working on a painting based on the song “Tiger Whitehead” from the Johnny Cash children’s album that’s also a loose fantasy self-portrait of Caitlin and I. The lyrics to the song continue above. I have a really nicely prepped canvas I’m doing it on — here it is sketched out roughly in marker. Click to zoom in.

Wild blackberries bloomin’ in the thickest on the mountain
Sheep shire and water cress are growin’ round the fountain
Where a big black bear is drinkin’ lappin’ water like a dog
Tiger Whitehead’s in the bed sleepin’ like a log
Tomorrow he’ll see bear tracks seven intches wide
And by sundown he’ll be bringin’ in the hide

Pretty Sally Garland comin’ down the mountain side
Where Tiger Whitehead’s tryin’ to nap a mill at the mill
She sits down on a bearskin and she says you’ll be my man
I’ll have me the best bearhunter in the hills
A wild child was Tiger Whitehead and they say he killed
Ninety-nine bears before he went to rest went to rest
Once he left two bearcubs orphaned but he brought ‘em right on home
And Sally nursed the two bearcubs upon her breast

Tiger now is eighty-five and he lay upon his bed
And the bears he killed now numbered ninety-nine ninety-nine
Some fellers trapped the bears but Tiger said just let him go
If he ain’t running wild he won’t be mine
But at night when the wind howls cross eastern hills of Tennessee
And when the lightnin’ flashes there’s the strange thing that the people say they see
An old grey headed ghost runnin’ through the mountains there
It’s Tiger Whitehead after his one hundredth bear
Wild blackberries bloomin’ in the thickest on the mountain
Sheep shire and water cress are growin’ round the fountain
Where a big black bear is drinkin’ lappin’ water like a dog
Tiger Whitehead’s in the bed sleepin’ like a log
Tomorrow he’ll see bear tracks seven inches wide
And by sundown he’ll be bringin’ in the hide

This painting is finished off and hanging in my hallway now. You can click to zoom in. The panels, clockwise from top-left are:

1. The sun and moon.
2. The house that we all built ourselves.
3. Me, Caitlin, and Nefarious.
4. A princess being scared by a werewolf (not sure how this fits into the story).

A few days ago Nefarious hid under the table (which is where she goes to draw when she wants it to be a surprise) and created a four-panel drawing that turned out really wonderfully and I’ve been working on finishing for her. Panel #1 (top-left) is the sun and moon:

Panel #2 (top-right) she tells me is a house that we built ourselves:

Panel #4 (bottom-right) is me on the left, Caitlin in the middle (wearing a black nightgown), and Nefarious on the right.

Panel #3 (bottom-left), which I haven’t had a chance to fill in for her yet, is a princess being scared by a monster…

Nefarious, Caitlin, and I spent a couple hours painting… Three new projects are well on the way. Here’s where mine is at so far. I figure it’s about half done in this photo. As always, it involves my secret to life in art: “just add snakes!”

Edit/Update: I actually changed the picture a bit since then… Added some foreground, and changed it from night-time to day-time, and changed my mind about the eyepatch, as I don’t really want the boar to be quite that “mean” looking. Still lots more to go though.

I finished “Ocean Storm”, drawn by Nefarious and painted by me. It’s a very wavy ocean, and in the sky is a band of stars and the sun and moon. A rocket is blasting off, en route to the space station. In the sky is also a “princess angel” as well as a singing bird, and a butterfly carrying two flowers. In the ocean is a sailboat with a star on the sail being captained by the world’s tallest snowman, with evil Ursula and the Little Mermaid swimming nearby as a shark jumps over them. Anyway, you can click it to zoom in.

I drew this t-shirt design quite a long time ago but just realized I never posted it…

Here’s how the painting is doing now — as you can see, I’ve added a large number of elements to it. Generally when I do a painting based on a classic, I like to do it pretty “straight”, and then add bits after I’ve started. Unfortunately my little camera doesn’t pick up many subtle colours, so in reality there are a lot of pale shades that just look white in this shot. Anyway, click it to zoom in.

I’m working on a little painting for my daughter’s room, based on a drawing from an 1865 illustration in “Le Magasin pitoresque” of Sinbad’s fifth voyage (a Roc egg being broken open). Here are the first two pictures from it. It’s a lot smaller than I usually work.