I decided to paint all weekend. I have not painted in a while, and decided I wanted to paint doodles I was drawing during the week. Mostly during meetings or on the phone. All of my notebooks, planners, sketchbooks are covered in doodles. Of dogs, cats, penguins, an alligator here and there... Some are from scenes from children's books in progress in my head and make it onto paper, some are just scenes that pop into my head and must be put on paper or else they are all I think about all day long.

So here is what I painted this weekend. And like always, painting is what I love to do most in the world. It calms me. And my style is meticulous. These paintings are small, no taller than 4 inches on one side, but they take a lot of time. I use many, many coats to get them as opaque as I do. I hate to see a hint of white from the canvas. In a weird way, the saturation of color calms me. And the outlines? Making everything "just so" and finishing it up with nice tight edges? Better than any anti-anxiety medicine there could be out there! Truly, based on my style you would think I would be a neat freak. But just to take these pictures, I had to dust off the layer of dog hair on my dining room table unless I wanted to actually document my UN-neat-freakness...Which I don't. So here they are:





This one is for Best Boyfriend Ever, who worries about every possible way ANYTHING can go wrong. Which it never does. And I try to tell him what ever doom and gloom he thinks up will NEVER happen, but he still takes precautions. As a girl who leaps and looks after she realizes she has no parachute, we are a good team and even each other out. I have become a bit more of a planner and he has become a bit more of a risk-taker. But while I was painting and we were discussing an upcoming trip (that needs it's OWN entry, I am SO excited!!) he came up with some scenario about how the trip could be DOOMED and I told him his "What If Monster" needs to go take a nap because he is bugging the ever-loving crap out of me and he is NOT going to ruin my dream trip! So I painted him and boyfriend took him to work today to remind himself that the "What If Monster" is really very teeny tiny and he can stand up to him any time he wants!





This is just a lil' alligator that crept onto my sketchbbok page while I was in a meeting about, um, er, um, prolly something I should remember, but this little guy charmed me too much to pay attention...




This is a scene from a children's book I am working on. I have a "Be Brave" print that I have printed and sold well from another illustration of it. In the book Little Dog is off to face his fear and cross the water in search of his dream. Little Mouse is the encouraging friend that bids "Good luck and be brave!" I love how the paintings work together and think prints could be really cute.




My polar bear needed a friend. And this little penguin appeared along with the alligator during the same meeting.




I sketched this a while ago for a study for a prototype painting for another book concept. I ended up not using it, but I loved the angle so I keep sketching it from time to time and decided it needed to be painted. And I had painted so much blue this weekend, the little pup needed some hot pink!



I think I might put these up for sale on etsy, or make prints. Or both. We'll see. I would love for my little doodles to have homes that love them.